The virtual bookkeeper's guide to understanding PayPal 

Very well explained which gives full clarity. Really appreciate your efforts.

This solved a very annoying problem I had in my own books! And I am in a much better position after watching this video.

This was so tremendously helpful. I feel like I have a much better understanding and you're so right, PayPal is very convoluted. I took your advice and downloaded the CVS file as the statement isn't helpful at all. Thank you again.

Thank you Veronica! This was perfect.

So helpful! Thank you so much!

Awesome vid, everything was discussed clearly!

Great and educational video.

Fantastic. Thank you.

Thank you - this was so helpful to me!!! :)

great video - thanks!

thank you so much it really is helpful.

thank you

Great video! love how easy it is to understand. One question though, say my business deals with micro transactions and there's 100s if not 1000s of incoming small payments, do I need to categorize every single one of those or can they be batched on daily or weekly bases and recorded as a single income? thanks!

Great tips 👍🏽

Hi, Thanks for the very helpful info. I’m new to QBO and I’m trying to match my Credit Card feed to my PayPal feed. My transactions aren’t finding a match. They don’t have the exact same date. They are off by one day. You mentioned if the dates aren't the same they not find the match....Where/ How do I edit the date so I can Match them? Right now the transactions are in the REVIEW section. Thanks.

Thank you, it really is helpful. Quick question. The PayPal account connected to QBO pulled some 250 transactions. All the withdrawals to bank account were transfers to the business owner's personal bank account because they just got a business checking account so no money was transferred to the new business checking account that's linked to QBO, and of course, the personal bank account is not linked to QBO. So I'm guessing I wouldn't mark withdrawals as transfers but categorize them, correct?

Thanks for the video. Is it possible to set up separate paypal accounts for the same business?

Hi Veronica! Can you please explain exactly how you connect the clients PayPal accounts using QBOA? Thanks!

Thank you for this!!! Now my problem is that it doesn't get the feed for the other currency transactions in my Paypal (same Paypal with USD)

I wish you could explain more when there is a sales receipt vs a deposit for PayPal. It looks like my transactions went to undeposited funds as well, and I cannot match them there. Also, it looks like they duplicated, I see them as transfers posted to the bank account which is good, but then they are pending as deposits for the full invoice amount under bank deposit. Wondering if I just have to clear them.

This video came up on a search for how to understand Venmo recording in Quickbooks Online. Since there is no sync for Venmo, everything needs to be manually added. Is there a video for this?

Thank you so much for this video. I am dealing with Paypal statements right now and it is quite a struggle.

When using Shopify & A2X, do you recommend connecting the Paypal account to QBO or not? If so, would any of the information in this video change?

Hi, thank you for sharing! My client uses A2X (yah!) with shopify for shopify payments and I was wondering how this process would change (or if this process would change) because we use A2X? My client just started accepting paypal as a form of payment on her website and it's already getting messy. I have setup a clearing account for paypal payments in QBO (Shopify Clearing Account - Paypal) and mapped it accordingly in shopify.

You should show us the big window, full screen in QBO, so we can know where that small windows come from. Right? Thank you

This is awesome. My prospect isn't official yet and I'm not exactly what her situation with PayPal but this is going to be a big help to me. Is it possible to get a written transcript of the video? Thanks for 5MB, it has been wonderful to have everybody's experience and knowledge available to me!

I have my first client also using PayPal credit along with his paypal account. Any advice or suggestions to help make that flow into this mix of paypal bank easier? It definitely adds to the pain of paypal!

Thank you that was really helpful. You mentioned that sometimes "Paypal doesn't always bring in all the data into QBO" - do you know why this is or if there is a workaround for this please?

This is great and all of your videos are very helpful. However I cannot find anything relating to managing multi currency PayPal in QBO. Is this something you could cover?

Hi Veronica, do you have a video explaining how to reconcile your Paypal account when you have part payment from your checking account and part payment from your paypal balance?! Currently trying to reconcile a month with this and very confused! Thanks very much, Sarah

Good Morning, First THANK YOU for your video training, it's been so helpful!! I need a bit more help. I have followed all the correct steps of connecting PayPal to my QB online account. When my transactions pulled in, I have transactions which are "Account Hold For Authorization" and "Reversal of General Account Hold" How do I post these?? Also, just to make sure, most of my transactions come into the feed with the Description showing the "Customer or Vendor's Name"....These would be showing the transactions which went straight through PayPal ONLY, is that correct? Hope you can help me a bit further. Thank You, Blessings, Tammi

What do I do when I have already reconciled my bank account for months January-April but am just now starting on entering and reconciling my PayPal account? Do I need to undo the recs on my bank account AND put all the bank account transactions back into the bank feed instead of in the register? I only did a handful of PayPal transactions for the first quarter of 2021 and after that I rarely use it so I just need a solution for the first few months. :(

Do you know what are all the reversals? or credits? There are a lot of transactions that cancel each other. What is "Account Hold" HELP PLEASE!

Very helpful. Another idea just occurred to me. I think I will get my company a second paypal account and use one account for purchases only - and always via credit card, never from balances. Balances will probably only accumulate from refunds. I will let them sit there until EOY and then transfer any refund balances to bank to zero out the paypal account if required. Then my second paypal account will be used strictly for collecting money from sales, paypal Here point of sale activity, invoicing, collecting tips and donations, etc. Then I can ignore all paypal purchases and just go by my credit card transactions. What do you think? By the way, I am not using quickbooks or any other software, I simply use a spreadsheet to prepare my taxes. Thanks! ~Howard. Buffalo, NY

What about if you sell something through ebay and they collect sales tax on that transaction. Paypal will add the sales tax to your transaction as income. Then there will be a separate paypal transaction as an expense for ebay taking that sales tax money. Would the best thing to do is make an expense account for the salestax that ebay is collecting? Or is there a way to separate the sales tax from the initial transaction so it doesn't count as income?

Thank you for this video! I have a specific workflow question for you. My client invoices her customers in QBO. The customer then pays that invoice through PayPal. My client goes into the invoice and receives the payment putting PayPal as the payment method and undeposited funds to the deposit account. Then, my job as the bookkeeper is to go into the bank feed and match when the PayPal transaction posts to the bank feed. I go into the PayPal bank feed and match the transaction to the one she deposited into undeposited funds. Then when she transfers the income from PP to her bank account, I transfer from the PP bank feed to the bank account bank feed. I then go into the bank feed and match that transfer. Is this the proper workflow? Because when I go into undeposited funds, it shows the deposit as a lesser balance and as soon as I match the PP bank feed transaction, it shows as a more balance in undeposited funds, thus resulting in a higher undeposited funds account situation. I hope this makes sense. I have been trying to figure out the proper workflow for this client for months and I just can't seem to get it right on the books. However, my reconciliation are all perfect. Thanks!

Do you have any tips to get rid of duplicates? I found your video too late and I have many duplicates.

Hi Veronica! I am a follower. I have a question. I am helping a friend out with his books and I was looking to clean up his accounts when I found a PayPal fee in his QBO category, Meals and Entertainment. How would that happen? This is a mystery for me (and probably others)so if anyone can answer it, I would appreciate it.

I use Quickbooks desktop and have an issue with paypal for that I couldn't figure it out. We have some customers payment in paypal and since we usually transfer the money to the bank then if there's a purchase made through paypal then paypal will reach out to our credit card company since we usually don't have much money left in paypal account. Then there were months that we did not transfer the money right away and a purchase was made and used the balance in paypal. Now my issue is, the payments of customer seating in the undeposited funds in Quickbooks I cannot deposit as there's no more to deposit, only a few left on the paypal account. The purchase made was enter as a bill in Quickbooks and it's seating at the Pay Bill window. We do not have Paypal Account entered in Quickbooks. Everytime we have to receive a payment from customer that pays through Paypal, we will choose payment method "direct payment" and when we want to deposit this payment to the bank account, from "make deposit" window in Quickbooks, we will choose deposit to "bank" and enter the paypal merchant fees on the line after the customer payment. As much as possible we don't want to create a Paypal Account added in our Chart of Account as we do not want this showing in our Balance Sheet as we really don't maintain balance in Paypal Account. Is there a way I deposit the payment to the bank without creating a Paypal Account in Quickbooks and also how I can pay the purchase that seating in the Pay Bill window as there is no option for Paypal Account. I am glad that I found your youtube video and I'm hoping I can find solution to this issue :(

Thank you for your video. I am still very confused why Paypal only brings in, what they call, gross income less paypal fee when the transaction goes back further than that. The gross is actually the purchase less sales tax plus shipping and maybe a discount. The paypal deposits what they call gross less paypal fee. What about sales tax and possibly a discount? I'm confused by what paypal considers gross sales.

How do you do it without Quickbooks... I am using EXCEL

separate paypal accounts for each website I use? that's ridiculous I would have 14. Im using quickbooks to make it easier not harder lol

NONE of this is up to date any longer as of 2022 QBO does not work this way,

I still can’t understand why PayPal doesn’t just have a statement that looks like a bank statement. I want to beginning and ending balance, and some sections on deposits, withdrawals, etc. I am a very small one person, a Single proprietor biz, and I use Quicken and have since DOS. I have worked this business numbers in many jobs, and I’m very competent on computers. I’m pretty sure I understand where to do things on Quicken instead of QuickBooks, including the transfer and matching line items. I just can’t figure out how they handle when funds come in from other countries in different currencies, and what the heck it means when they say a line item is pending. I am sitting here right now looking at my downloaded CSV document, and I cannot figure out how the Euro and Great Britain Pounds have affected my balance. It shows conversion of currency unrelated to that money’s arrival in my account. It seems to let me take money out the account then later at Trents late just some of the money that came in from Great Britain. I just don’t understand. I know the rate changes every day. Thank you for letting me know that there is an automatic setting to transfer money to my account every day. I had no idea. I’m stunned to find that you have separate PayPal accounts for incoming and outgoing and a free incoming source. With one of my income sources, we’re talking less than $100 in a year. That seems crazy. I’m less confused now, although still plenty befuddled. I do really appreciate that you let us know that it’s even difficult for a professional. I’m going to look into separating the account at least into incoming and outgoing.