Import Adyen transactions into SnelStart

Adyen processes payments for many Dutch webshops, platforms and retailers. The payments almost always go through fine; the bottleneck is in the bookkeeping. Adyen pays out your balance to your bank account in bundled form, while SnelStart wants to see every transaction separately in order to book debtors, revenue, fees and chargebacks correctly. In this guide you will read how to import Adyen transactions cleanly into SnelStart.

Why Adyen needs special attention

An Adyen payment goes through several steps before it appears on your bank statement:

1. Customer pays — the amount is added to a settlement batch on your Adyen account.
2. Adyen settles — fees, refunds, chargebacks and reserves are netted within the batch.
3. Adyen pays out — the net balance of the batch is booked as a single amount to your business bank account.

On your bank statement you only see that payout: a single line with, for example, Adyen settlement batch 142 of € 12,480.33. If you only book that line, outstanding invoices in SnelStart remain wrongly open and you lose insight into fees and chargebacks. The solution is to import a statement with the underlying transactions — not just the batch payout.

Which Adyen report should you choose?

Adyen does not provide a ready-made MT940 file for your bookkeeping. In the Adyen Customer Area, under Reports, you will find the source files you need:

• Settlement detail report — per settlement batch, a breakdown of all payments, fees, refunds and chargebacks. Available as CSV. This is the report you use for your bookkeeping.
• Payment accounting report — all payments in a period, regardless of the payout. Suitable for analysis, less so for reconciliation.

For SnelStart the settlement detail report works best: the sum of the transactions minus the fees matches the batch payout on your bank account. You book the difference to a separate general ledger account, for example Payment service costs.

Which format does SnelStart process?

SnelStart reads MT940 by default, and CAMT.053 as well. For a clean import with individual transactions, MT940 is the most reliable choice: the file contains, per transaction, its own line with date, amount and description. Do you prefer to work with CAMT.053? Then read MT940 vs CAMT.053: what is the difference? first; for SnelStart we generally recommend MT940.

Approach in outline

1. Create a separate bank account with a clearing/intermediate account for Adyen in SnelStart.
2. Download the settlement detail report per batch from the Adyen Customer Area.
3. Convert the CSV to MT940 with StatementBridge.
4. Import the file under the Adyen bank account.
5. Book the batch payout as an internal transfer between the Adyen clearing/intermediate account and your bank account.
6. Book fees, refunds and chargebacks to the correct general ledger accounts.

Step 1 — Create an Adyen bank account in SnelStart

1. In SnelStart Web, go to Banking > Add bank account > With manual upload (in SnelStart 12: Bookkeeping > Bank accounts).
2. Give the account a recognisable description, for example Adyen clearing account.
3. Link it to a general ledger account in the liquid assets class, for example 1085 Adyen clearing account.
4. Enter a fictitious IBAN — a recognisable sequence that no real bank issues, such as NL00ADYE0000000000.
5. Save the bank account.

This account becomes the ‘intermediate station’ where Adyen transactions arrive before the batch payout is booked to your real bank. Do you process multiple merchant accounts? Then use a separate bank account with a fictitious IBAN per account.

Step 2 — Download the settlement detail report from Adyen

1. Log in to the Adyen Customer Area.
2. Go to Reports and select the correct merchant account.
3. Open the Settlement detail report for the batch you want to process.
4. Download the report as CSV and save it in a fixed location (for example \Adyen\Settlements\2026\).
5. Note the batch number; you will use it later to reconcile the bank line.

The report specifies, per line, the settled payments, refunds, chargebacks and the fees (Markup, Scheme Fees, Interchange). You reconcile the lines against your invoices via the Psp Reference or Merchant Reference from the report.

Step 3 — Convert the CSV to MT940

SnelStart processes MT940 by default, but not an Adyen CSV. With StatementBridge you convert the file in a few seconds:

1. Open the conversion app.
2. Upload the Adyen settlement detail report (CSV).
3. Select Adyen as the source and choose MT940 as the target.
4. Enter the fictitious IBAN that you linked to the Adyen bank account in step 1.
5. Download the converted file.

Read more about the procedure in Convert CSV to MT940 and Convert CSV to CAMT.053.

Step 4 — Import into SnelStart

1. In SnelStart Web, click Banking in the main menu.
2. Select the Adyen bank account you created in step 1.
3. Click the Upload statement button and select the MT940 file.
4. Check that the IBAN in the file matches the IBAN of the bank account.
5. The entries are read in automatically; confirm the import and process the statement.

For the general import procedure, see Importing bank statements into SnelStart. The procedure with payment service providers is identical; see also AMEX, PayPal, Stripe import into SnelStart.

Step 5 — Book the batch payout, fees and chargebacks

Under the Adyen bank account there are now all the individual transactions. On your business bank ledger there is a single line: the batch payout from Adyen. Process this as follows:

• Batch payout on the business bank → book it as an internal transfer between 1085 Adyen clearing account and your bank account.
• Fees (transaction costs) → book to a general ledger account Payment service costs or Bank charges.
• Refunds → book against the original debtor.
• Chargebacks → book to a separate general ledger account Chargebacks so they remain visible in your reporting.

At the end of each period, the balance on 1085 Adyen clearing account is zero, apart from any batch that is still outstanding. An unexplained balance points to a missing or duplicated settlement detail report.

Common pitfalls

• Booking the bank line directly to debtors. First split the batch into individual transactions; only then do debtors stay correct.
• Overlooking reserves. Adyen can temporarily withhold part of the revenue as a reserve. That line belongs on the clearing account, not on revenue.
• Leaving fees in revenue. Book fees to a separate general ledger account; that keeps your revenue figure clean for VAT and reporting.
• Mixing multiple merchant accounts. Use a separate bank account with a clearing/intermediate account and fictitious IBAN per account.

File not accepted by SnelStart?

Do you get an error message such as File cannot be read or Bank account not known? With StatementBridge you can still convert the Adyen report to a SnelStart-friendly MT940 file with the correct IBAN.