I'm looking for any ideas on the best way of recording paypal transactions. Specifically reports to allow me to reconcile the paypal account month to month. Anyone on here use it ?
Along with Streamline, Paypal is my next biggest PTA. It does not give an easily read statement, and each process reruns a report, so it takes ages, and runs over several pages.
What I have found to be the easiest (for me), is to run the financial report for the month in question, which gives the account opening and closing balance, plus a summary of the money in/ out, on hold. I print that off.
In the online version of the report you can drill down to the actual transactions (money in, Payments made, transfers to bank, and funds held in dispute). If you click on the links The values underlined) for the main entries you can print off a list for individual transactions, for each transaction type. Problem with those is that each line on the report also has other info on it so it takes up loads of space, and prints in landscape, so it runs over a lot of pages. It also reruns the rportso takes ages.
I would be interested to hear if any one has found a way of producing a more conventional statement
Cheers Bill, I had a look today and yes they do take a mahoosive amount of paper. I managed to use the monthly reports you mentioned plus I have a copy of each transaction, and finally, (after discovering an error with the till) I managed to reconcile everything.
Our accountant agrees with you in that they are a PITA.
When its just sales and transfers using the monthly report is great. Single entry for sales for the month, single entry for paypal charges, and single transation for transfer to bank account! It when payments are made in several currencies it can be a PITA. Especially if some are also paid via the bank because the client had already transfers the balance.
It is possible to create a CSV file and import it into software. I have a client who has hundreds of small transactions a day, from all over the world. We download the monthly sales report and labouriously move the amounts into EU & non EU columns to work out which transaction have VAT and which don't - but work out the VAT on the monthly totals rather than per transaction as it would take too long. Fortunetely its all B2C. I do have one client who does quite a bit of B2B in the EU. He keeps a seperate list of the EU nonVAT sales and I just deduct the total from the monthly sales total before I work out the VAT on the balance.
When its just sales and transfers using the monthly report is great. Single entry for sales for the month, single entry for paypal charges, and single transation for transfer to bank account! It when payments are made in several currencies it can be a PITA. Especially if some are also paid via the bank because the client had already transfers the balance.
It is possible to create a CSV file and import it into software. I have a client who has hundreds of small transactions a day, from all over the world. We download the monthly sales report and labouriously move the amounts into EU & non EU columns to work out which transaction have VAT and which don't - but work out the VAT on the monthly totals rather than per transaction as it would take too long. Fortunetely its all B2C. I do have one client who does quite a bit of B2B in the EU. He keeps a seperate list of the EU nonVAT sales and I just deduct the total from the monthly sales total before I work out the VAT on the balance.
Wow, and I thought I had it bad , fortunately all mine is in pounds.
Steve, at least you are posting the paypal account.
I accepted a new client with a e-bay shop a few years ago from a multi-partner firm of Chartered Accounts who was paying substancial fees for having their VAT returns done (about £1000k a quarter). The Accountants ignored the paypal account completely and just accounted for VAT on the Paypal transfers into the company bank account! They treated them as the actual sales for turnover purposes. All other VAT was not done on the cash accounting basis. I wonder what the HMRC VAT would have made of it if they had inspected the records?
-- Edited by YLB-HO on Sunday 8th of July 2012 12:48:14 PM
, fortunately all mine is in pounds.
