Paypal transaction split confusion

[Derek Atkins]

Hi,

trythis <grahamlane at gmail.com> writes:

> Dean Gibson-3 wrote
>> Part of the problem is that PayPal has the worst representation of a 
>> transaction log that the world has ever seen.  For years there have been 
>> complaints, and PayPal has ignored all requests to make it anything even 
>> REMOTELY resembling a reasonable ledger.
>> 
>> On 2016-04-16 16:22, Derek Atkins wrote:
>>> No, he has $4.59.  I use PayPal.  When someone sends in $5 my paypal
>>> account balance does not increase by $5
>>>
>
> I agree with that, although CSV downloads cover everything, they are 30
> columns wide and have some really useless junk piled in.
>
> I think I have it figured out>
>
> IN the paypal account the split reads:
>
> Assets:paypal 4.59 increase
> Expenses:bankfees* 0.41 increase
> temp account**: 5.00 decrease
>
> Then I apply the payment to an invoice, and this is what solved the problem;
> you can change the amount paid when selecting the customer and accounts
> payable account.  I changed it to $5.00 and poof, invoice works right,
> accounts payable works.
>
> The account Income:project:X increases $5.00, paypal account is increased by
> $4.59, and bank fees are increased by 0.41.  I can put the bank fees in a 
> sub account like Expenses:bank fees:project:X or Expenses:Project:X:bank
> fees  Either way is useful for reports.
>
> *the goes to imbalance and I have to return it to a bank fee after
> processing the payment.
> **This gets rewritten anyway  and converts to accounts receivable through
> the invoice system then the income account increases from accounts
> receivable.   
>
> This is a very complicated way to show that we received $5 but I can't see
> anyway better.

What I would recommend, if you insist on using the business features, is
using a Tax Tables to handle the Paypal fees and then set it to
"TaxIncluded".  So you would mark it "TaxIncluded" which is similar to
what you get in Europe, where what you see is what you pay, versus the
US where the Tax is added on in addition).  This changes the internal
math from the US-style "Subtotal + Tax = Total" to the Europen style of
"Total - Tax = Subtotal".

The hard work is going to be figuring out the proper Tax Table
configuration to get this to work.  I don't know Paypal's fee structure
sufficiently, and I do not believe the current tax tables can handle a
graduated tax structure.

> Thanks

> 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