Stripe
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Papercrane
Stripe says one number. Your bank says another.
Neither is wrong. Papercrane's AI agent joins Stripe with QuickBooks, Xero, and your store, then builds a live hosted dashboard that shows exactly what separates them.
Connect in about a minute with read access you control. Free to connect and ask. Paid plans start when you publish a dashboard. See pricing
One month, three numbers
Collected, deposited, booked. Stripe knows the first two, your accounting knows the third, and the gaps between them are a short list of real items: fees, refunds, holds, timing.
Collected
$58,400
Stripe charges
processing fees $1,740
refunds $560
disputed funds held $200
about 3 days in flight
Deposited
$55,900
Stripe payouts to your bank
month boundary timing
deposits that settle in the next period
cash vs accrual
Booked
$57,200
QuickBooks · Xero
For most subscription businesses this is the first dashboard Papercrane's agent builds, from your numbers, with every gap itemized.
Why you can't fix this inside Stripe
A definition you didn't choose
Dashboard MRR counts trials, prorations, and month boundaries Stripe's way, and shows no movement breakdown. It rarely matches the number your board uses, and the tools that check it disagree with each other too.
Custom reports cost extra, in SQL
Past the built reports sits Sigma: priced by charge volume, answered in SQL, and blind to anything outside Stripe.
The deposit that matches nothing
Every payout lands net of fees, refunds, and held funds, bundled across days. Tying deposits back to revenue is a monthly ritual of clearing accounts and CSV exports.
Ask Stripe what Stripe can't tell you
Why don't last month's payouts match last month's revenue?
What moved MRR in June: new, expansion, contraction, or churn?
What is our effective Stripe fee rate by month, every fee included?
Which failed payments recovered after retries, and which customers quietly lapsed?
How much revenue is sitting in open disputes right now?
Do Stripe and QuickBooks agree for the quarter, and where exactly do they not?
What is combined MRR across both of our Stripe accounts?
Every answer comes back as a chart on a hosted dashboard, not a screenshot you paste into Slack.
1. Connect Stripe with read access
2. Ask a question
3. The agent plans, queries, and builds a hosted dashboard
4. It stays live, and errors route back to the agent
Read access only. Papercrane can see your Stripe data and can never move money, issue a refund, or touch a customer.
Three ways to get an answer out of Stripe
| The job | Stripe Dashboard + Sigma | Metrics tools (ProfitWell, Baremetrics, ChartMogul) | Stripe + Papercrane |
|---|---|---|---|
| Answer a question the standard reports don't cover | Sigma, if someone writes the SQL | Their chart catalog, their definitions | Ask it, get a chart in minutes |
| See past Stripe's edge | No, Stripe data only | Billing sources only | Joins QuickBooks, Xero, Shopify, Klaviyo |
| Tie payouts to revenue and the books | Payout reports, matched by hand | Not their job | Charges, fees, refunds, and deposits joined for you |
| Decide whose MRR definition wins | Stripe's | Each tool's own, and they differ | Yours, written on the dashboard next to the number |
| Share it outside the tool | Dashboard seats | Viewer logins on paid tiers | Send a link to a live hosted dashboard |
| When a number looks wrong | Rerun the query yourself | File a support ticket | Errors route back to the agent instead of sitting broken |
| Cost to find out | Sigma from $10/month by volume | Free tiers, then $75 to $129/month | Free to connect and ask |
Three mornings this replaces
The board number
A founder prepping an investor update asks for MRR movement with trials excluded and prorations handled one stated way. The number stops changing depending on who pulled it.
The close
A bookkeeper ties every payout in March to its charges, fees, and refunds in one view instead of a clearing account spreadsheet. The reconciliation takes an afternoon, not the week.
The recovery watch
Failed payments by week, what the retries brought back, and which customers lapsed for good. Saves that used to be counted as churn.
When you don't need us
If all you want is standard SaaS metrics charts from a single Stripe account, ProfitWell Metrics is free with no revenue cap; use it and keep your money. If you have an analyst who lives in SQL and your questions never leave Stripe, Sigma is already in your Dashboard. Papercrane is worth paying for when the answer has to leave Stripe: tying payouts to your books, joining revenue to your store or your campaigns, or putting a live dashboard where your team, your investors, or your clients can watch it.
Questions founders and bookkeepers ask us
Stripe is one ledger of three. Most subscription businesses connect QuickBooks or Xero for the books, and the store the revenue starts in.
Connect Stripe, ask why the deposits don't match the dashboard, and watch the answer come back with every gap labeled.
Free to connect and ask. Paid plans start at publishing. See pricing
Papercrane
Integrations: