Connecting your payout account

Lesson payments flow from your students, through your school's Stripe Connect account, into the bank account you connect on your CFI profile. Until you connect one, your share is held in an escrow balance — no payouts move.

Connecting your bank account

1. Settings → Payouts → Connect.
2. You're redirected to Stripe. They'll ask for your legal name, address, date of birth, SSN (last 4 for verification), and bank routing/account numbers.
3. Stripe returns you to Checkride. Status shows verifying while they confirm — usually under an hour, occasionally 1–2 business days for additional review.

Once status flips to verified, your held balance pays out on the school's next settlement run.

Reading your settlements

Payouts → Settlements shows every payout that's landed in your bank, plus pending ones. Each row drills into:

• The list of lessons it paid out for
• Gross amount the student paid
• Platform fee and school cut
• Your net share
• Stripe transfer reference (matches your bank statement memo)

The CSV export is suitable for handing to your accountant at tax time.

What "settlement no funds" means

You may occasionally see a notification: Settlement: no funds to pay out. That means the settlement cycle ran but no completed-and-paid lessons were associated with you. The notification exists so you know the cycle ran — not as an error. It's especially common for instructors who teach mainly ground sessions, which the school might bill separately.

Failed payouts

If your bank account is closed or rejects the deposit, you'll get a Payout failed notification. The amount returns to your held balance and the platform retries on the next settlement. Two consecutive failures pause auto-payouts until you re-verify in Stripe.

Switching banks

Open the Stripe Connect dashboard from Settings → Payouts → Manage. You can add new bank accounts and mark a default. Checkride uses whichever account Stripe has flagged as default for the relevant currency.