How do I account for crypto my business gets paid in?

A crypto payment goes into the books the same way any payment does, in your normal accounting currency. You record the sale at the value of the coin at the moment it arrives, write down which rate you used and where it came from, and book the fees as fees. From that moment the coin is an asset of the business, not cash, until you convert or withdraw it, and each of those steps is an entry of its own.

That is crypto accounting for a business in a nutshell. Below, each of those entries is taken apart step by step, together with the paper a bookkeeper should keep behind it. The article is for owners and bookkeepers of businesses that sell goods or services for crypto, not for investors or traders.

What crypto accounting covers when your business takes payments

A business that gets paid in cryptocurrency meets the same few events again and again. Each one is a separate record in the books:

• The payment arrives. This is the sale, or the settlement of an invoice, and it sets the value everything else is measured from.
• Someone takes a fee. A payment processor keeps a share of each payment, and the blockchain network charges a fee to move coins.
• The month ends while you still hold coins. Their price has moved since they arrived, and the balance sheet has to show a value for them.
• You convert crypto into dollars or another currency. That is a sale of an asset, with a gain or a loss against what you recorded it at.
• You withdraw money to the bank. Money moves from one account of yours to another, and a fee usually goes with it.

Everything else in crypto bookkeeping hangs on these five. Taxes on each of them are a separate subject with its own rules in every country; this article is about getting the records right, which is what any tax return is later built from.

Before the bookkeeper can record anything, someone on the operations side has to know which order a payment belongs to and what to do when a customer sends too little. That work comes first, and it is covered in how a CFO keeps control of USDT payments, conversion and withdrawals.

Your own wallet or a processor: what changes in the books

A business can take crypto in two ways, and the choice decides how busy the bookkeeper will be:

• Straight to your own wallet. The customer sends coins to an address the business controls, with no one in between. You receive exactly the coin the customer chose and hold it until you decide to sell. Every coin type is its own asset with its own price history, and every sale of it is an entry with a gain or a loss.
• Through a crypto payment processor. A processor is a service that issues the payment request, watches the blockchain and credits your merchant account. Payment links, a checkout button and an API are all ways of working with a processor. Many processors can convert what the customer paid into one coin, often a stablecoin (a coin pegged to the US dollar), so the business ends up holding one asset instead of five.

With your own wallet the price keeps moving from the minute the coin arrives until you sell it, and the books will show that movement as gains and losses. If that sounds like more risk than the business wants, there are ways to protect crypto takings from price swings.

Local law comes before any of this. In Russia, Federal Law No. 282-FZ of 4 August 2026 bans accepting digital currency as payment for goods and services inside the country from 1 September 2026, with an exception for foreign-trade contracts between a Russian resident and a non-resident. Check that taking crypto is allowed where your business operates before you set up the accounts.

How to record a crypto payment when it arrives

The key question for revenue recognition is when the sale happened and what it was worth. Revenue is recognised when you deliver what was sold, and it is measured at what you received for it. When you are paid in crypto, "what you received" is the value of the coins in your accounting currency.

How the entry looks depends on when the money comes compared with the delivery:

• Paid at checkout. The customer pays and gets the goods at once, as in an online shop. Record the revenue and the crypto asset on the day the payment arrives, at the coin's value at that moment.
• Invoice first, paid later. You delivered and invoiced $2,000, so the revenue and a receivable are already in the books in dollars. When the crypto arrives, record the coins at their value at that moment and clear the receivable. If the coins were worth $1,990 on arrival, the $10 difference is a loss, not a cut in revenue.
• Paid in advance. The customer pays now for work you do next month. Record the coins at their value on arrival against an advance received, which is a liability, and move it to revenue when the work is done.

Here is the first case with numbers. A studio sells a $1,000 logo package, and the customer pays in Bitcoin to the studio's own wallet. The coins are worth $1,000 at the moment they arrive:

• On arrival: debit Crypto assets, Bitcoin, $1,000; credit Revenue $1,000. The quantity of Bitcoin goes in the memo line.
• Two weeks later the studio sells the Bitcoin for $960: debit Cash $960; debit Loss on crypto $40; credit Crypto assets, Bitcoin, $1,000.

The price drop does not touch revenue. The studio earned $1,000 for the logo and then lost $40 by holding Bitcoin for two weeks, and the books show those as two separate facts.

Which rate to use and how to write it down

No rulebook names one exchange rate for everyone, so the business picks a method and uses it every time. What matters is that anyone can trace the number back:

• One source. Choose where the rate comes from: the processor's own rate at the moment of payment, or a named exchange where you would actually sell. Don't switch sources from payment to payment.
• The exact moment. Crypto prices move by the minute, so the rate belongs to the time the payment was confirmed, not to the end of the day.
• A saved record. Keep the rate, its source and the timestamp with the entry. A screenshot or an exported price line is enough for a small business; a processor record that already shows the rate is better.

Write these choices down in a short accounting policy note. Auditors and tax advisers ask for exactly this, and one page is plenty if it covers:

• The rate. Its source and the moment it is taken, as described above.
• The fees. Where each kind of fee is booked, as described in the next section.
• The order of sale. Which coins count as sold first when the business sells only part of what it holds, since coins bought at different prices give different gains.

Where the fees go

Fees are a cost of doing business, the same as card processing fees. The usual accounting treatment is to record the full sale as revenue and each fee as an expense, rather than booking only what was left:

• Processing fee. A processor charges a percentage of each payment. Record revenue at the full price and the processor's share as a payment processing expense.
• Network fee. Moving coins on a blockchain costs a fee, paid in the network's own coin. Record it as an expense when you move funds, for example on withdrawal.
• Exchange fee. Converting crypto on an exchange costs a trading fee. Record it as an expense or include it in the result of the sale, whichever your policy note says, and keep to it.

Booking the full price and the fee separately keeps revenue comparable with your card and bank sales, and it shows what accepting crypto actually costs the business.

What happens in the books when you convert or withdraw

Converting crypto into dollars, or into euros through an exchange, is a sale of an asset. The entry removes the coins at the value they sit in the books and records the money received:

• Proceeds higher than the book value: the difference is a gain.
• Proceeds lower than the book value: the difference is a loss, like the studio's $40 above.

Swapping one coin for another, say Bitcoin for USDT, is also a sale of the first coin and a purchase of the second, so it produces a gain or a loss too.

A withdrawal of dollars from an exchange or a processor to the company's bank account is not income or expense at all. It is a transfer between two accounts of the business: one balance goes down, the bank balance goes up, and the fee is booked as an expense. The bank statement on the other side closes the loop.

What your crypto is worth on the balance sheet at month end

Whatever coins the business still holds on the last day of the period need a value on the balance sheet. The two big accounting frameworks answer differently, and the answer below applies as of September 2026:

• IFRS. Under the IFRS Interpretations Committee agenda decision of June 2019, a coin held by a business is not cash. Most businesses measure it at cost and write it down if its value falls below cost. Under this cost model the coin is never carried above what it cost; if the price recovers after a write-down, the write-down is reversed, but only up to the original cost. A revaluation model exists for coins with an active market. A business that buys and sells crypto as its trade holds it as inventory instead.
• US GAAP. ASU 2023-08 from the FASB, in force for fiscal years that began after 15 December 2024, requires crypto assets in its scope to be measured at fair value every reporting period, with the change going into net income. So a US company holding Bitcoin at month end shows it at that day's price, up or down.

Stablecoins sit in a grey zone under both. Under US GAAP, stablecoins backed by dollars that give the holder a claim on the issuer's reserves are generally outside ASU 2023-08, and practice varies for them. On 18 August 2026 the FASB proposed guidance on when certain stablecoins can count as cash equivalents; comments close on 19 November 2026, and the proposal is not final. Under IFRS, the 2019 decision was written for coins that give their holder no claim on anyone, so how a redeemable stablecoin is treated is a question to settle with your auditor.

Which documents back each crypto entry

A crypto payment has no bank statement behind it, so the bookkeeper builds the paper trail from several pieces. For each payment, keep:

• The invoice or order. It names the price in your currency, the buyer and what was sold. It is the first paper in the file, so it pays to know what a crypto invoice must say and what to do when the amount is off.
• The processor's record. If you use a processor, its payment record shows the amount received, the time, the status and the fee.
• The transaction hash. The hash is the transaction's unique ID on the blockchain, and it links your record to the public ledger.
• The rate record. The rate, its source and the timestamp you used to value the payment.
• Conversion and withdrawal statements. Exchange or processor statements for each conversion, and the bank statement for each withdrawal.
• A list of the company's wallet addresses. If you take payments to your own wallet, this list shows that the address belongs to the business and not to an employee.

The hash is what lets anyone, including an auditor, see the payment for themselves, and it helps to know how to read a crypto transaction in a blockchain explorer. Whether an explorer page counts as a supporting document on its own depends on the rules of your country, so keep it next to the invoice and the processor record rather than instead of them, and ask your accountant what your jurisdiction accepts.

What this looks like with CryptumPay

When you compare processors, the bookkeeper's side of the choice comes down to a few questions worth asking any of them:

• Does it convert on arrival? Conversion decides whether you hold a coin whose price moves or one that stays near the dollar.
• Into which coin? One settlement coin means one asset account instead of many.
• What does it charge? The fee becomes an expense line on every payment.
• Does it keep a record of every payment? That record is the document your bookkeeper files behind each entry.

Here is how that works at CryptumPay, as a consequence for the books.

CryptumPay converts each payment as soon as it arrives, so the balance never sits in a volatile coin. Whatever coin the customer pays with, settlement is always in USDT. For the bookkeeper that means one asset to track instead of one per coin, and no Bitcoin sitting on the balance sheet between payment and withdrawal.

The CryptumPay service fee is 1% per successful payment, down to 0.5% at higher volumes. Besides it, CryptumPay charges a fixed transfer fee for the one-time deposit address in the network the customer pays on. On a $1,000 sale at 1%, the entry would be:

• Revenue: $1,000, the full price.
• Payment processing expense: $10, the 1% service fee.
• Crypto assets, USDT: the amount actually credited to the merchant account, valued at the rate at that moment. The bookkeeper takes it from the account's history of operations; if a transfer fee was deducted from it, that fee goes in as its own expense line.

A business can also pass the fee on to the customer, and the bookkeeper needs to know when that setting is on, because it changes what the customer paid. The CryptumPay merchant account keeps a history of operations and statuses, which is the processor record from the documents list above.

What it comes down to

A crypto payment is recorded at the coin's value in your currency at the moment it arrives. Whether it goes against revenue, a receivable or an advance depends on when you delivered. After that, each event has its own place in the books:

• Fees are expenses, booked separately from the full sale.
• A conversion is a sale of the coin, with a gain or a loss.
• A withdrawal is a transfer between the company's own accounts.
• Month end under IFRS keeps most coins at cost less write-downs; under US GAAP, ASU 2023-08 marks the coins in its scope to fair value.

Behind every entry sit the invoice, the processor record, the transaction hash and the rate you used, and a one-page policy note explains how you chose them.

Questions businesses ask about crypto accounting

How do you record cryptocurrency in QuickBooks?

Accounting programs such as QuickBooks keep ledgers in ordinary currencies, so you record crypto in dollar amounts. Set up a separate asset account for each coin you hold, record each payment at its dollar value on arrival and put the coin quantity and the transaction hash in the memo. Conversions and withdrawals then go through that account like any other asset.

Is crypto an intangible asset?

Under IFRS, yes for most businesses: the 2019 agenda decision placed held cryptocurrency under IAS 38 as an intangible asset, because it can be sold on its own and gives no right to a fixed amount of money. The exception is a business that holds crypto for sale in the ordinary course of its trade, which treats it as inventory under IAS 2. Under US GAAP crypto assets are also intangible, but those in the scope of ASU 2023-08 are measured at fair value, as of September 2026.

Is there crypto accounting software a business can use?

Yes. Specialised crypto accounting tools connect to wallets and exchanges and turn each transaction into an entry valued at a market rate. They are worth it when a business holds several coins or makes many payments a month. A business that is paid through a processor converting everything into one coin often manages with its ordinary bookkeeping software.

Should a business hire a crypto accounting firm?

It pays off once the stakes grow, for example when the company needs an audit or holds coins for months. A firm that already works with crypto will set up the policy note, the rate method and the chart of accounts once, and your own bookkeeper can run it from there. For a small business with a few payments a month, a general accountant who has read the relevant standard is usually enough.

What do crypto bookkeeping services actually do?

They take over the monthly routine of turning raw crypto payments into finished entries, valued and matched to invoices. At month end they reconcile wallet and account balances with the ledger, and many also prepare the valuation under your framework. What they need from you is access to the processor or wallet records and the list of your wallet addresses.

This article is general information and is not legal, tax or accounting advice. Check the treatment for your business with a qualified accountant in your jurisdiction.