How mass payouts work in inflow: import, review, finalise

Paying one person is easy. Paying four hundred — research participants, contractors, community members — is where spreadsheets, bank portals, and follow-up emails start eating whole days. Here’s how the same job looks in inflow.

Step 1: Import

Start with the spreadsheet you already have. An email address and an amount per row is enough; payout codes and extra details are optional. inflow matches rows to existing payees automatically and prepares accounts for people you’ve never paid before.

Large files are processed in the background — upload a two-thousand-row sheet and keep working while it imports.

Step 2: Review

Nothing moves until you say so. The review step shows every payment exactly as it will happen: who’s being paid, how much, by which method, and what it costs. Spot a problem? Cancel the import and it’s as if it never happened — no half-created payees, no stray records.

Step 3: Finalise

When you finalise, inflow takes over:

• Payments to payees with payout methods on file start processing immediately.
• Payees without payment details don’t block anything. Their payments are held safely, they get a welcome email with a secure sign-in link, and the moment they choose how they want to be paid, their payment releases automatically.
• Every payment moves through clear states you can watch in the portal, so “did everyone get paid?” has an answer at a glance.

The part you don’t do anymore

The real cost of mass payouts was never the bank transfer — it was the chasing: collecting bank details, resending forms, reconciling who’s still owed. inflow does that part. You send once, and the system finishes the job.

Want to see it with your own payout list? Get in touch.