[GNC] How to import PayPal transactions in to GC

[David Carlson]

If you make the effort to match the correct accounts to the transactions
while importing them, GnuCash tries to "learn" from that history and try to
do better next time.  Unfortunately,  with some banks, they don't provide
good descriptions and results are sometimes disappointing.

I  not sure where PayPal falls in that spectrum,  but I know that my bank's
electronic payments are very poorly described in their imports, so I need
to do a lot editing.

Good luck.

On Mon, Apr 10, 2023, 5:10 PM Michael or Penny Novack <
stepbystepfarm at comcast.net> wrote:

>
> >
> > On match transactions I then get a lot of errors about new, unbalanced
> > need acct to transfer.
> >
> > Example:
> > Date 6/4/2023
> > Amount 2.34
> > Description: Sale 001
> >
> > Comments: New, UNBALANCED (need acct to transfer -2.34)
> >
> >
> > What is this error all about? I have to right click on and select a
> > transfer account for all of the transactions. Does this have to be
> > done every time for each transaction?
> >
> > On the import I chose Account = Assets:Current Assets:PayPal, so am a
> > bit confused what transfer account it's referring to.
> >
> >
> > New to GC, so don't fully understand all the concepts.
>
> No, the problem isn't so much being new to gnucash but new to double
> entry bookkeeping. I'm going to use the formal terms, because the
> supposedly "user friendly" ones depend on account(and so not so friendly
> if we are talking about all account).
>
> EVERY transaction will have at least TWO accounts associated with it, at
> least one debit and one credit (left side, right side). If you don't
> inform gnucash (or any other bookkeeping app) what the accounts are, how
> can it know.
>
> OK, your transaction. ONE side is PayPal (the PayPal account in your
> ledger). Was the money going into PayPal (debit) or coming out of PayPal
> (credit). In the first case, from what account was the money coming? In
> the other case, where was it going? For example, if that transaction
> were money coming from PayPal and going into your bank account the the
> bank account would be the account debited and the PayPal account the one
> credited. Remember, you could have six bank accounts. How could gnucash
> know which was the right one unless you provided that information.
>
> Michael D Novack
>
>
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