Why a deal cannot be paid

An accepted deal that still owes money should always have a way to be paid. When it does not, the dashboard says so rather than waiting for the payout to fail. There are only three reasons, and each has a different fix.

1. No method is set on the deal

Every deal that pays out records which payment method it will pay through. That is set when the deal is agreed, and it can be empty — most often because the deal was accepted before any method existed on the account. Nothing is wrong; the deal simply has not been pointed at anything yet.

2. The method it was set to has been removed

A payment method that is deleted does not take its history with it. Deals that were set to pay through it are cleared at the same time, so they no longer point at something that is gone — but that leaves them pointing at nothing, which is the first case again.

3. The method can no longer pay that talent

This is the one that surprises people. A deal can be pointed at a real, working method and still be unpayable, because that method is no longer allowed to pay the talent the deal belongs to. It was allowed to when the deal was set up, and stopped being allowed at some point afterwards. The method is fine, the deal is fine, and the route between them has been cut.

What "still owes money" means here

A deal counts as needing payment while money is still expected to move, and that includes deals marked completed. Delivery being finished and payment being finished are different things, so a completed deal with an outstanding balance is still counted — it still needs a way to be paid.

What it is not

This is not an invoice status, and it says nothing about whether a payout has failed, been delayed, or been reversed. It is a statement about capability: as things stand, there is no route by which this deal could be paid, whoever tried.

Fixing it

All three cases come down to the same two questions: does a method exist that is allowed to pay this talent, and is this deal pointed at it? If the answer to the first is no, the account needs a method that is allowed to pay that talent before anything else will help.