Reconciliation

Updated 2026-11-02

Definition

Reconciliation is the check that two sets of records agree. In attribution, it means confirming that the revenue credited to channels adds up to the money your payment provider actually recorded.

Without that check, an attribution report can drift from reality. A dropped refund, a double-counted payment or a rounding error goes unnoticed. People stop trusting reports that don't match the bank.

Example

This example uses made-up numbers. Stripe shows the following for October:

• Charges: $42,000
• Refunds: $2,500
• Disputes: $500
• Net: $39,000

Your attribution report credits $25,000 to organic search, $9,000 to paid search, $3,000 to email and $2,000 to unattributed. That's $39,000, which matches.

Now say a report credited $41,500. The $2,500 gap equals the refunds, so refunds probably weren't counted. Reconciliation points you straight to the problem.

Why rounding matters

Splitting $100.00 across three visits gives $33.33 each, which adds up to $99.99. Over thousands of payments, those cents add up. A good system assigns the leftovers so each payment's credits sum to the exact amount.

How Headstream measures it

Headstream keeps Stripe charges, refunds and disputes in an append-only ledger. Refunds are new rows, and nothing is edited. Each hourly attribution run splits every ledger entry across visits, including unattributed entries.

A run publishes only if credits equal the ledger. If they don't, the run fails and the last good run stays live. So a number on your screen comes from a run that balanced. You can trace any payment from the Stripe event to each credited visit using its payment trail. Connecting Stripe is in beta. See trust and the methodology page.