What's the best way to handle PayPal?

Dr. David Kirkby (Kirkby Microwave Ltd) drkirkby at kirkbymicrowave.co.uk
Sat Dec 3 09:14:47 EST 2016


If I sell something for £100 and someone pays £100 into the bank
account, then its fairly easy to reconcile that, as one can import the
bank transactions.

When PayPal get involved, I'm not sure how to handle this. In the
simplest possible case

* Balance of PayPal is £0.00
* Balance of bank is £2000.
* Someone buys something for £100
* PayPal take £5 commission
* £95 is in my PayPal account
* I transfer the £95 to the company bank account, bringing it up to
£2000+£95=£2095

I can import the bank transactions, but are unsure how to handle the
PayPal side of it. Should I set up a separate account for PayPal?
Should the transaction be split? What the best way to handle this,
which is least subject to human error.

Although I'm in the UK, very often I buy items from the USA, and so
pay USD. PayPal does the conversion from USD to GBP.

Just to add one more complication, there's a good chance I will want
to sell more on eBay in USD. I've sold the odd few things there before
in USD. Despite charging more, some people would rather payin their
own currency.

One further problem is that the Import of QIF files from PayPal seems
to crash GnuCash

https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=775567

but the bug is not my biggest problem. My real problem is knowing how
best to handle the use of another account (PayPal) in addition to a
normal company bank account.

Dr. David Kirkby Ph.D CEng MIET
Kirkby Microwave Ltd
Registered office: Stokes Hall Lodge, Burnham Rd, Althorne, Essex, CM3 6DT, UK.
Registered in England and Wales, company number 08914892.
http://www.kirkbymicrowave.co.uk/
Tel: 07910 441670 / +44 7910 441670 (0900 to 2100 GMT only please)



More information about the gnucash-user mailing list