Paypal Accounting Automation

This article will detail the our Paypal integration and the posting we offer.

 

Paypal can serve as a credit card processor, sales system, bank account, loan provider, and money transfer tool.  This versatility can lead to complex data flowing through to accounting systems.

Paypal generally has reporting on Pacific Standard time. If you have changed this setting, we recommend updating your connection timezone setting to reflect what Paypal has.

For our Paypal templates, we post separate entries when there are multiple currencies for a day. For example, if you received payments in CAD and USD on 1 day, you would see 2 separate entries reflecting each currency.

For Paypal, every entry impacts the Paypal balance by either an increase or decrease. For example, a payment received increases the balance and a payment sent decreases the balance (same for a transfer from your Paypal account to your bank account).

For this reason, Bookkeep creates daily summaries to account for all of Paypal's many transaction types.  The following describes each Paypal template to help you understand how it ties out to your Paypal statements.

The following templates are offered for Paypal:

1. Paypal Withdrawals and Deposits - at a high level this template captures transfers in and out of your account. Bank deposits and withdrawals post on separate lines with this template to ensure deposits and withdrawals can be easily matched in accounting.

 Items covered by this template include:

  • Bank transfers
  • Credit card transfers
  • Debit card transfers
  • Payment refunds
  • Receivables financing
  • Charge-off Adjustment
  • General Account Adjustment
  • Incentive Adjustment
  • Balance Manager Account Bonus
  • BillPay transaction
  • BML Credit - Transfer from BML
  • BML Withdrawal - Transfer to BML
  • Buyer Credit Payment Withdrawal - Transfer To BML
  • Bonus for First ACH Use
  • General Account Correction
  • Coupon Redemption
  • Credit Card Cash Back Bonus
  • Credit Card Deposit for Negative PayPal Account Balance
  • CC Security Charge Refund
  • Debit Card Cash Back Bonus
  • Hidden Virtual PayPal Debit Card Transaction
  • Reversal of Debit Card Transaction
  • Electronic Funds Transfer Funding
  • General Bonus
  • General Credit Card Deposit
  • General Credit Card Withdrawal
  • General Dividend
  • General Incentive/Certificate Redemption
  • General Reversal
  • General withdrawal to not bank entity
  • General GI/Open wallet Transaction
  • Gift Certificate Redemption
  • Instant Payment Review (IPR)reversal
  • Merchant Referral Account Bonus
  • MSB Redemption
  • General PayPal Debit Card Transaction
  • PayPal Debit Authorization
  • PayPal Debit Card Cash Advance
  • Virtual PayPal Debit Card Transaction
  • Mass Pay Refund
  • Payment Refund
  • Generic Instrument/Open wallet Reversals (Buyer side)
  • Mass Pay Reversal
  • PayPal Buyer Warranty Bonus
  • PayPal Debit Card Withdrawal to ATM
  • PayPal Protection Bonus, Payout for PayPal Buyer Protection, Payout for Full Protection with PayPal Buyer Credit
  • Points Incentive Redemption
  • Reversal of ACH Deposit
  • Reversal of ACH Withdrawal Transaction
  • Reversal of Points Usage
  • Generic Instrument/Open wallet Reversals (Seller side)
  • Reward Voucher Redemption
  • Consolidation Transfer
  • ACH funding for Funds Recovery from Account balance
  • Bank Deposit to PP Account
  • PayPal Balance Manager Funding of PayPal Account
  • Auto-sweep
  • General Withdrawal - Bank Account
  • World Link withdrawal
2. Paypal Chargebacks - this template covers chargeback activity and chargeback adjustments. Based on our experience, this is generally not very common.

3. Paypal Payables and Receivables
- this template covers funds payable as well as funds receivable. Based on our experience, this is generally not very common.

4. Paypal Payments Sent
This template captures any payment sent to another entity. Each payment sent is shown on a separate journal entry line to allow you to see each expense. This template does not capture any fees tied to those payments as all fees are found in the Account Fees’ template. 

A list of payment sent capture include the following:

  • 3rd Party Auction Payment
  • Chained Payment/Refund
  • Direct Credit Card Payment
  • Donation Payment
  • eBay Auction Payment
  • Express Checkout Payment
  • General Buyer Credit Payment
  • General payment
  • Generic Instrument funded Payment
  • Gift Certificate Purchase
  • MAM Reversal
  • Mass Pay payment
  • Mobile Payment
  • Payment Bill User Payment
  • PayPal Buyer Credit Payment Funding
  • PayPal Here Payment
  • Postage Payment
  • Rebate Payment/Cash Back
  • Rebate/Cashback reversal
  • Subscription Payment
  • Tax collected by Partner
  • Third Party Payout
  • Third Party Recoupment
  • Virtual Terminal Payment
  • Website Payment
  • Cryptocurrency
5. Paypal Payments ReceivedThis template captures any payments received from another person or entity. This template does not capture any fees tied to those payments as all fees are found in the Account Fees’ template. 

  • For example, if you have a Shopify store using Paypal to process payments, those order payments would appear in this template.
  • It is recommended that if you use Shopify from Bookkeep that you map the Paypal balance to a clearing or balance account that is netted against the specific payments received from Shopify from the Payments Received template.
      • Not directly to the Paypal balance but another clearing account e.g. Shopify - Paypal clearing account
  • Items covered by this template include:
    • 3rd Party Auction Payment
    • Chained Payment/Refund
    • Direct Credit Card Payment
    • Donation Payment
    • eBay Auction Payment
    • Express Checkout Payment
    • General Buyer Credit Payment
    • General payment
    • Generic Instrument funded Payment
    • Gift Certificate Purchase
    • MAM Reversal
    • Mass Pay payment
    • Mobile Payment
    • Payment Bill User Payment
    • Payments received
    • PayPal Buyer Credit Payment Funding
    • PayPal Here Payment
    • Postage Payment
    • Rebate Payment/Cash Back
    • Rebate/Cash back reversal
    • Subscription Payment
    • Tax collected by Partner
    • Third Party Payout
    • Third Party Recoupment
    • Virtual Terminal Payment
    • Website Payment
    • Cryptocurrency
6. Paypal Account FeesThis template captures all fees from Paypal. This could include product fees, chargeback fees, conversion fees, service fees, or payment processing fees.


Please note that all of the templates above require you to map your Paypal Balance account.  This account allows you to hold a balance, and use this balance to send or receive money, purchase goods online, and make payments.

Finally, we do not post or capture currency conversions done within Paypal and do not capture any holds or releases of funds done by Paypal.