Payouts are sent out, the issue is I use free transactions so no one has to pay for them.
Thus only our work actually has the payout transactions in them, no one else will confirm our free transactions, thus they wont confirm until we find a block after I create the free transactions, which is just after the blocks mature.
The payout transactions are in the work the pool sends to all miners.
Maybe I don't get it then. So shouldn't I see the last few payouts from the payouts page in my wallet?
I think I may be more confused now then when I started.... I have a bit more reading to do. I can understand all types of advanced systems and what not, but this how bitcoin mining works really stumps me.... I hope i am not being too much of a pain in the ass, I just really want to learn. Something about minting my own money really grabbed me. Even though there is no way I am making bank on this its the doing it part....
The simple way to think about it is the pool will confirm the payouts with the future blocks that the pool finds. Basically, when new blocks are found, those blocks are used to confirm the payouts for previously found blocks.
Technically, this is because as Kano was saying they are free transactions so no one else will confirm them. However, they are the pools transactions, so the pool will confirm them. The pool will do this whenever it finds a new block.
There are a few *'s to the above with blocks needing 100 confirmations before being spent, dust transactions (I assume your first few payments are dust as your 5N ramps up and this isn't a huge issue), etc, but the above will get you close to answering your question quickly and somewhat painlessly
If all else fails, just watch the payments come in and after awhile I am sure the pattern will make sense with a little more exposure to it.