The overnight agent loop, in plain English

What the agents actually do between your last email and breakfast.

While you sleep, a small team of agents watches your Shopify store, your bank, your ad accounts and your supplier inbox — then writes every sale, fee, refund, chargeback, FX move and payout into your books, in plain English, before 7 a.m. Here is exactly how that loop runs.

Six steps, every night

The overnight loop, in the order the agents run it.

Each step writes a line to your books the moment the underlying event lands. By 7 a.m. the loop has settled yesterday’s net profit and your bank’s cleared-and-still-flying balance — you just read the email.

What runs while you sleep
No nightly batch, no waiting for a CSV. The loop watches six categories of activity and writes each one as it happens.
  1. Step 1 of 6

    Sales, fees, FX

    The moment a sale clears, we book the gross, the Shopify platform fee, and any FX spread if the order wasn't in USD. One row per order, cents-only integers throughout, written the minute the payment hits — so coffee-and-receipts math has a real denominator, not a month-end surprise.

  2. Step 2 of 6

    Ad charges

    Meta, TikTok, and Google each arrive on their own schedule — Meta roughly daily, Google daily-ish, TikTok rolled up a few days behind. We attribute each charge to the day it ran against, not the day it billed, so cost-of-goods math settles on real attribution every morning.

  3. Step 3 of 6

    Refunds

    Customer-initiated reversals hit the digest the same day, alongside the reason the customer gave. You can spot a sizing problem, a shipping issue, or one bad listing in plain English — without digging a CSV at 11 p.m. on a Sunday.

  4. Step 4 of 6

    Chargebacks

    Bank-initiated disputes are a separate line on the digest and a separate line in your books. They come out of your reserve and carry risk weight — so we never lump them in with refunds, never quiet them down, and never let one become a "what is this charge" surprise three weeks later.

  5. Step 5 of 6

    Payout reconciliation

    Each day's Shopify Payments payout is tracked as cleared into your bank, in flight between Shopify and the bank, or reserved because the deposit date hasn't been booked yet. Every morning the digest shows the status of yesterday's payout next to today's orders, so the books reconcile against cash without you doing the match.

  6. Step 6 of 6

    Supplier invoices

    We keep an eye on every supplier bill — due, paid, or overdue — and chase the overdue ones with a friendly, escalating nudge. The only person chasing a $340 invoice at 11 p.m. is us, never you.

Shopify Payments vs your bank

How a payout closes, and what each status actually means.

The morning digest shows where yesterday’s payout stands against your bank account: cleared if the deposit has landed, in flight if the bank is still cooking, and reserved if the date has been booked but the money hasn’t moved yet.

Payout status · 01

Cleared payout

The money has actually landed in your bank — you can spend it.

Payout status · 02

In-flight payout

Shopify has released it, the bank has not finished processing it yet.

Payout status · 03

Reserved payout

A future deposit that has not been booked yet — the timetable is set.

The other two terms

  • Chargeback — A bank-initiated dispute. Comes out of your reserve, carries risk weight.
  • FX spread — The small gap between the rate Shopify charges you and the rate you booked at.

What counts as a movement

The six things the agents are watching, named so you can ask about them.

The same six the support page lists, framed here as the categories of activity the loop runs against — so a refund never gets lumped with a chargeback, and currency moves never mute into background noise.

The always-on watchlist
Each category is a different stream — the loop keeps them separate so the digest reads as six lines, not a soup.
  • Sales

    Every paid order lands the moment the customer pays.

  • Platform fees

    Shopify, app store and middleware cuts — tracked one by one.

  • Ad charges

    Daily Meta, TikTok and Google spend shows up as its own line.

  • Refunds

    Returns and partial refunds hit the digest the same day.

  • Chargebacks

    Disputes are flagged the moment they open, in plain English.

  • Currency moves

    FX rate changes are recorded as they happen, not batched.

Sample digest · Wednesday, Aug 19

Here is what actually shows up in your inbox.

A real digest from our own test store on Aug 19 — a typical day, with a refund, a single chargeback, Meta and TikTok spend, and a payout that cleared the next morning. The same card lands in your inbox every weekday at 7 a.m. local time; the same shape lands on the dashboard when you open it from the side menu.

All six sections below — the callout, the payout row, the KPI grid, ad spend, supplier invoices, refunds and chargebacks — are rendered by the same presentational component that backs the email and the dashboard. One piece, three places.

Want this loop watching your store?

Drop your email and we’ll send a sample digest of a public Shopify store — no card, no signup. Or talk to a founder first.