Paypal transactions

[jgombos]

There are a couple ways to account for paypal purchases.  I'd like to know
what folks prefer, and what the accounting lawyers consider proper.

At the moment, I start in the paypal register (which I created as an "asset"
account; is that correct?).  

I create a transaction with an "increase" of zero.  Then I split the
transaction, and enter a line to transfer to an expense account, and another
line to transfer from the liabilities account (credit card).  There's less
clutter with this approach, because there is one line per purchase in the
paypal register.  However, every transaction has a total value of zero, so
when the splits are all collapsed it's not convenient to see the size of
transactions.  Another shortcoming is that from the standpoint of the credit
card account, it almost gives the appearance that the purchase was direct. 
Paypal shows up in the splits, but the amount going to paypal shows up as
zero, which isn't exactly true.  

Alternatively, a transfer from the credit card to the paypal acct could be
one transaction, and a completely separate transaction going from paypal to
the expense account.  One of the problems here is that when looking at the
liability account register, the expense account involved is totally masked. 
It requires a jump to the paypal account to see what the expense was.  
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