Processing Payments with transaction fees (like credit card processing, or PayPal)

[Derek Atkins]

Hi,

Buddha Buck <blaisepascal at gmail.com> writes:

> I receive payments for invoices via PayPal.  PayPal takes a
> transaction fee when this happens.
>
> My current procedure (if Bob buys $20 of services) is as follows:
>
> 1. Create an invoice to Bob for $20 of services.
> 2. Wait for Bob to pay $20 via PayPal
> 3. Use "Process payment" to process the payment.  This creates a
> transaction in my PayPal account for $20.
> 4a. Add a "Transaction Fees" transaction to the PayPal account of
> "credit PayPal $0.88 debit Expense:Bank Fees $0.88"; OR
> 4b. Manually edit the splits for this transaction so that instead of
> "debit PayPal $20 credit A/R $20" it becomes "debit PayPal $19.12
> debit Expense:Bank Fees $0.88 credit A/R $20.
>
> I like the 4b approach because it more closely resembles what I see on
> my statements from PayPal, and because it clearly ties the transaction
> fee to the payment in the register.
>
> But I don't like doing it.  Is there a better way?  Is there a way to
> get the "Process Payment" dialog to ask about transaction fees when
> processing the payment?  Better still, is there a way to enter the
> transaction fee formula somewhere so that all payments processed using
> the PayPal account automatically get the proper split?

Sorry, no, there is no better way to create the Splits.  But I agree
that 4b is the better way.

Note that you CAN enter a formula by hand as you enter the split itself.
E.g. you can type: 20*.044 to have GnuCash auto-compute 4.4% of $20 to
come to .88.

Hope this helps.

> Please remember to CC this list on all your replies.
> You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.

-derek

-- 
       Derek Atkins, SB '93 MIT EE, SM '95 MIT Media Laboratory
       Member, MIT Student Information Processing Board  (SIPB)
       URL: http://web.mit.edu/warlord/    PP-ASEL-IA     N1NWH
       warlord at MIT.EDU                        PGP key available