Hello,

I'd like to ask how adjustment fees are determined, and any tips to keep this as low as possible.

Also, is it better to initiate payouts less frequently in terms of minimizing costs, or does it make no difference if a payout is initiated, say, every two weeks or every two months?

Thanks.

Itch.io has a minimum payout of $5 after deductions.  It is better to ask for payouts less frequently, because you save on the payment processing fee - i.e. PayPal charges a fee for the payout, Itch.io does not.

The adjustments are:

• The tax clearance fee of $3.  Itch.io covers the cost if there are no sales on the account, but when the account does have sales, they recover it from those sales.  This is an once-off fee.
• Historically itch.io was covering some the payment processor fee to pay the funds out to the developer - but they decided to recover these from the developers as well.  There can also then be an adjustment for those fees if you had received a payment in the past, before itch.io implemented this rule.   

The comment above is correct, but there may also be adjustments for refunds or chargebacks for transactions that occur after we’ve paid out for the initial transaction, since we would have overpaid. You can learn about all the adjustments here: https://itch.io/docs/creators/payments#account-adjustments

As for minimizing adjustment fees for payout payments: For PayPal payouts, they have a cap on the transaction fee. So if you space your payouts out such that you collect enough to hit that cap then you can avoid fees from requesting those earnings on subsequent payouts.

For PayPal specifically, last I checked they charge up to 25 cents for US based transactions, but 2% of the payout amount up to 25 dollars for international transfers. You can see the most up-to-date fee info on this page: https://www.paypal.com/us/brc/article/paypal-mass-payments

Hope that helps