The situation
You send an invoice. The client pays in BTC to your Kraken account. Now the payment sits there until you find ten minutes to log in, sell, withdraw, and note it down next to the invoice. If you have a handful of clients, that's a few interruptions a month. They're small, but they're always at the wrong moment.
Many freelancers also keep some BTC on purpose, as savings. The tricky part is converting the income without touching the savings.
The problem and the decisions
- React to each payment, or batch them? Converting on arrival keeps your dollar income close to the invoice date. Batching weekly gives you one predictable moment.
- How do you keep savings out of it? Either a rule that only acts on new funds, or a reserve setting that protects a minimum BTC balance.
- What happens to the dollars? Withdraw right away to your bank, or leave a buffer on the exchange.
- Which country are you in? This article is written for US users of Kraken. Coinomatic works for US users and selected other countries.
Two illustrative setups
Illustrative example – made-up freelancer, not a real customer, not a recommendation.
Option A – react to client payments (24/7 Monitoring).
Mode: 24/7 Monitoring. New funds detected after saving are converted, and the USD is withdrawn immediately after each conversion. According to the app, deposits from before save are not replayed, so BTC already on the account (the savings) is not processed retroactively.
Monitoring watches every new deposit of your selected asset, and you can set the amount to everything or a percentage.
Option B – a weekly calendar routine (Scheduled).
Mode: Scheduled. Conversion: a fixed amount in BTC roughly matching typical weekly income, every Monday at 9:00 a.m. ET. Withdrawal: immediately, 100% of the USD. If there isn't enough BTC at run time, the run is skipped and logged rather than eating into anything else. Add Minimum balance to keep if you want an explicit floor for your savings.
Option A follows your clients. Option B follows your calendar. Both are valid; it comes down to which one matches how you think about your money.
How Coinomatic helps you set it up
- Connect Kraken via API key (Connection page). Kraken is the only supported exchange today; others are listed as "coming soon."
- Mode step: choose 24/7 Monitoring or Scheduled.
- Conversion step: for scheduled routines, a fixed amount (entered in BTC) or a percentage of the available balance, with optional cap and minimum balance.
- Withdrawal step: immediately after each conversion or on a schedule; 100% of available USD, a fixed amount, or everything above a minimum balance.
- Review: a plain-language summary plus two confirmations, including that Coinomatic "does not optimize execution or make financial decisions."
- Your BTC stays on your exchange account. Per the sign-in page, "Coinomatic never takes custody of your funds."
Time check: honest numbers
Model example, your numbers will differ.
Assumptions for a freelancer with about 4 BTC payments a month: a manual cash-out takes ≈20 minutes (17 for exchange work + 3 to match it to the invoice); checking an automated run takes ≈3 minutes; a monthly review ≈10 minutes; setup 20 minutes spread over 12 months (≈1.7 min/month).
4 × (20 − 3) − 10 − 1.7 ≈ 56 minutes a month, modeled. That's under an hour.
We'd rather say it plainly: for a freelancer with a few payments a month, time is not the main argument. The better arguments are:
- Consistency: every payment is handled the same way, on the rule you chose, even when you're busy.
- Fewer decisions: no "should I sell today?" with every invoice.
- A trail: Transactions and Logs show what happened and when, which makes matching payments to invoices easier (article 7).
Limits and how to check the result
- We haven't executed a Monitoring automation ourselves yet. Its behavior is described from the Knowledge Base and the app text.
- Dollar amounts vary with the BTC price at conversion time. No amount is guaranteed, and fees are set by the exchange.
- Small payments may be skipped if below the exchange minimum order (ORDER_SIZE_TOO_SMALL).
- A conversion is not a bank deposit. You need a verified withdrawal method at Kraken. Without one, the withdrawal is skipped (we saw this live). Coinomatic withdraws only to the bank account you've set up at Kraken.
- Taxes: converting crypto can have tax consequences. Coinomatic doesn't give tax advice. The export in Transactions includes all your conversions, which helps your accountant. Talk to a tax professional.
After the first payment is processed, check Logs (conversion and withdrawal entries) and Transactions (amount and fee), then your bank.
Next step
Read the Knowledge Base guide Monitoring automation mode and article 5 (Scheduled vs. Monitoring). Then run a small one-time test before your next client pays. A free trial is advertised on coinomatic.io. When the trial ends, your automations are paused and your data is kept. The trial includes Scheduled automations only (24/7 Monitoring is not part of it) and allows 1 automation.
Coinomatic is software that triggers actions on your connected exchange account (today: Kraken) based on rules you set. It is not a financial advisor, broker, or money transmitter, and it does not take custody of your funds. Nothing in this article is financial, tax, or legal advice.