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Hi - am hoping colleagues with paypal expertise can help.
Am working for a client who has a number of online businesses and receives payments via paypal. I am able to download regular summary reports as well as full transaction details. However, I am unable to tally the two (have a working hypothesis that some payments won't have cleared and that the timing of reversals and refunds is impacting the totals).
To complicate matters the business works in UD$, GB£ and Euros.
Does anyone know the best approach for getting the details of income/expenditure and should I be worrying too much about the variances (they are relatively small) between the full transaction downloads and the summary reports.
Please help so I can stop banging my head against the table!
Lou
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Hi Lou
A client of mine does a small amount of business (buying and selling, in GBP as well as EUR and USD) using paypal. I get sent the transaction report which details each transaction and the paypal charges (and balance in the paypal account).
My client is not overly fussed on each individual sale, just the monthly totals so i total up Sales, Refunds, Purchases, Paypal charges and post them to Sage. This allows me to reconcile the month end balance on the paypal bank account to the month end balance on the report.
How detailed you get will depend on what your client wants. Mine (and their Accountant) is happy as long as the sales, purchases and paypal charges in Sage all tally with the downloads.
Hope that helps
Helen x
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>
> Hi - I also have a client who deals with Paypal. I treat it like every
> other account - I set it up as a separate bank account, enter every
> transaction, then reconcile (same as I would with a credit card or any
> other account). Where there are EUR and US$ accounts, Paypal lists the
> equivalents very clearly, making the transactions easy to trace. Proper
> reconciliation should clarify any timing issues - the same as with your
> current account, you can see what transactions have been made but are not
> yet in the statement. I don't like working with summaries - it's too easy
> to miss things.
>
>
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Thanks both for your comments.
Can I just check - when you say you enter each transaction are you working on the daily transactions (from the monthly sales reports) or the individual sales?
I have to date been looking at the Financial Summary statement (which includes currency conversions/transfers in and out of the paypal account as well as the sales and fees) and then the individual sales transactions (based on what the client did previously rather than me selecting that approach).
My main headache has been with the numerous different transaction types (e.g. cancelled fee/paypal express checkout payment sent/subscription payment received) and their status (completed/refunded/returned/reversed).
Thanks.
Lou
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>
> I don't include the currency conversion lines (otherwise you would be
> working in two different currencies, which would be appalling!) Just UK
> equivalent in and out, with a note about what US$ or EUR equivalent was and
> exchange rate if given. Cancellations etc work the same as a bank account,
> where you can also get cancelled cheques, returned goods etc. Paypal
> statements are not easy to follow, but you get used to it after a bit.
>
> What volume of transactions are you talking about?
>
>
>
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Danyasaid:
“>
> What volume of transactions are you talking about?
>
>
>”
There are 6 companies in total with transactions in each ranging from 20 - 1000 and with difference currency mixes for each company.
I am trying to find the most efficient and accurate way of extracting and recording the transactions and then trying to work out the VAT on it all!
Lou
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>
> Was that 20 - 1,000 per day, per week, per month?
>
>
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Sorry, yes, per month. So overall, across all companies about 2000 transactions a month.
Lou
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>
> Hmmm. Okay, that probably is too many for individual entries unless you're
> working for them full time! You might have to take the more practical
> approach suggested earlier, and keep the transaction by transaction record
> elsewhere. Reconciliation is the key - make sure all those differences are
> accounted for somewhere. If it's to do with exchange rate differences, then
> this goes to exchange rate gains/losses account. It must add up. As with a
> regular bank statement, there are always going to be pending transactions
> at the end of the month.
>
> Personally, I loathe the way Paypal set out their statements and think
> it's massively unhelpful, but maybe that's just me!
>
>
>
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Hi Lou,
One possible source of discrepancies is refunds. Paypal used to credit back their charges if a refund was processed (through their systems, of course) within 60 days. More recently, they've changed the rules so that they keep 20p (or 20 cents or whatever) of the charges on the payment.
I only spotted this when reconciling an account with a refund that had been recorded on the old basis.
Cheers
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