Why this matters
If you take a $50 card payment, you do not receive $50. The processor takes a slice (usually around 2.6% plus 10 cents per transaction, depending on processor and plan) and deposits the rest. Across a busy event, those slices add up to real money, and they are a deductible business expense at tax time.
The catch: processors charge per transaction, not per item. So if a customer pays for one $50 purchase you pay one fee, but if the same customer does five $10 purchases you pay five fees. The flat-per-transaction part hits small sales harder in percentage terms.
For tax filing, use your processor's actual statements. They are the truth. For during-the-event "am I making money" awareness, use fiveanddime's live estimate. Both paths are documented below.
Path 1: tax-accurate (Expenses sheet)
This path is what your accountant cares about. The numbers come from your processor's monthly statement, not estimates.
Download your processor statements
Square, Stripe, PayPal, and Venmo Business all publish monthly statements with a "fees" line. Log into your dashboard once a month and grab the number, or download the CSV.
- Square: Dashboard → Reports → Sales Summary, the "Fees" row.
- PayPal / Venmo: Statements section in account settings, downloadable per month.
- Stripe: Dashboard → Reports → Balance summary.
Record fees in the Expenses sheet
Open your fiveanddime spreadsheet and click the Expenses tab. Add a row per processor per month (or per event if you want event-level detail):
- Date: the month or event date
- Category:
Payment processing - Amount: the actual fee total from the statement
- Notes: which processor, optional event reference
That's it. At tax time the Expenses sheet has the year's processing fees totaled and categorized, ready for your Schedule C (or your accountant's spreadsheet).
Path 2: live estimate (in-app)
The estimate runs while the event is still going. It is not exact (processors round and tier in ways we cannot perfectly mirror), but it is close enough to answer "is this booth fee worth it after fees?" before you tear down.
Configure your rates in Settings
In the app, open Settings and scroll to Payments. You will see one row per payment method you have set up (Cash, Card, Venmo, etc.). Each row has a percent field and a flat field.
Typical rates as of mid-2026 (check your processor's current rates, these change):
- Cash: leave both blank. No fee.
- Card (Square in-person): 2.6% + $0.10 per transaction. (Square's online rate is higher.)
- Card (Stripe in-person): 2.7% + $0.05 per transaction.
- PayPal: 2.99% + $0.49 per transaction for in-person QR.
- Venmo Business: 1.9% + $0.10 per transaction.
- Venmo personal: leave both blank. (See callout below.)
If you receive payments to a personal Venmo account, Venmo does not charge a per-transaction fee. That is why the rate is left blank. But Venmo's terms of service prohibit using a personal account for business sales, and they have been enforcing it more aggressively. If your volume grows, switch to Venmo Business (which charges 1.9% + $0.10) to stay on the right side of their rules and to keep your business income properly documented for tax purposes. Talk to your tax person about reporting either way.
Save
Tap Save payment settings. The rates write to your backend and propagate to your other devices on next pull.
Watch the live estimate during an event
Open Reports during or after an event. The per-event P&L table now includes a Processing fees (estimated) row, with a breakdown by payment method underneath. The "Net to you" line at the bottom already has the estimate subtracted.
You see at-a-glance: gross sales, sales tax (owed to the state, not yours to keep), cost of goods sold, booth fee, mileage, processing fees, and your real take-home.
Reading the breakdown
Under the P&L table, you will see something like:
Estimated only. Breakdown: Card $14.32 · Venmo $2.18. Use your processor's statements for tax filing.
That tells you how much each payment method cost you at this event. Useful for:
- Spotting whether one method dominates (and whether its rate is the right rate).
- Comparing what you would have paid if you ran more sales through a cheaper method.
- Sanity-checking the monthly statement when it arrives (the estimate should be within a few dollars of the actual for the same period).
Worked example
A Saturday fair. You ran 28 transactions: 14 card, 8 Venmo Business, 6 cash.
Card total: $620 across 14 sales. Estimated fee at 2.6% + $0.10 = $16.12 + $1.40 = $17.52.
Venmo Business total: $180 across 8 sales. Estimated fee at 1.9% + $0.10 = $3.42 + $0.80 = $4.22.
Cash total: $90. No fee.
Gross sales: $890
Estimated processing fees: $21.74
After-fee net (before COGS, booth, mileage): $868.26
When the Square and Venmo statements arrive next month, you record the actual fees in Expenses as Payment processing. The estimate gets you there in the moment; the statements close the books for tax.
Why two paths instead of one
- Estimates are estimates. Processors apply tier discounts, round to the cent, sometimes batch transactions, and occasionally charge separate fees for chargebacks or refunds. The in-app estimate cannot perfectly mirror all of that.
- Statements are truth. For tax filing you need defensible numbers, which means the actual statement total. The Expenses sheet is where those go.
- You want both. The live estimate helps you make event-by-event decisions ("was this fair worth doing?"). The Expenses sheet helps you file taxes correctly and answer "what did I actually pay in fees this year?".
Common mistakes
Processor rates change. Square has raised in-person card a few times. Check your processor's current rate annually and update the Settings.
Online and keyed-in card rates are higher than in-person tap/dip rates. For a booth POS, the in-person rate is the one you want in Settings.
It is not. The in-app fee estimate is for decision-making during and after an event. For tax filing, use the actual processor statement total recorded on the Expenses sheet.
Recap
- Path 1 (taxes): record actual fees from processor statements in the
Expensessheet underPayment processing. - Path 2 (live): enter percent and flat per payment method in Settings, then read the estimated fees line in the per-event P&L.
- Cash has no fee. Venmo personal accounts have no fee but are not really meant for business sales; switch to Venmo Business when your volume justifies it.
- The estimate is for decision-making, not tax filing.