What does `balance.available` event in Stripe mean?

Question

Can anybody explain to me what balance.available event in Stripe means. We are receiving this event to our webhook and our application is not configured to handle such event.

I have searched around Stripe documentation but cannot find a clear explanation of what this event is for. Here's an example:

{
    "object":
    {
        "object": "balance",
        "available": [
        {
            "currency": "gbp",
            "amount": 1999,
            "source_types":
            {
                "card": 1999
            }
        }],
        "livemode": false,
        "pending": [
        {
            "currency": "gbp",
            "amount": 0,
            "source_types":
            {
                "card": 0
            }
        }]
    },
    "previous_attributes": null
}

Answer 1

According to the documentation for the Stripe API's full list of event types:

balance.available is a Balance [object]

Occurs whenever your Stripe balance has been updated (e.g., when a charge is available to be paid out). By default, Stripe automatically transfers funds in your balance to your bank account on a daily basis.

In turn, the documentation on the balance object states that it refers to:

Funds that are available to be transferred or paid out, whether automatically by Stripe or explicitly via the Transfers API or Payouts API. The available balance for each currency and payment type can be found in the source_types property.

Therefore, balance.available is a webhook event that notifies you when you have funds in your Stripe merchant account ready to be paid out, and you can expect it to trigger either once a day or however often you've set your payout schedule to in your Stripe account. In other words, it's the webhook event that makes everything else worth it. ;) Presumably the event exists to make it possible for developers to query and log their Stripe earnings.