PayPal to QuickBooks Tutorial

Import PayPal transactions into QuickBooks Desktop

• Do you use PayPal for your business and need to load your PayPal transactions into QuickBooks?
• Do you need to match PayPal incoming payments up to customer invoices?
• Would you like be able to track customer payments in an income account and PayPal transaction fees in an expense account?
• Would you like to leverage QuickBooks bank feeds to automatically assign transactions to accounts?

Improved PayPal import with MoneyThumb

You can import an unlimited history of PayPal transactions into QuickBooks quickly and easily using either of our converters for QuickBooks, csv2qbo Convert and 2qbo Convert Pro. And unlike the IIF files provided by PayPal, you can import customer payments into QuickBooks in a way that makes accounting sense. You can utilize bank feed rules assign transactions to accounts. You import a gross amount that you can match against customer invoices, and a transaction fee that is accounted for in an expense account.csv2qbo Convert and 2qbo Convert Pro accomplish this by generating two QuickBooks transactions for PayPal payments, one for the gross payment, and one for the transaction fee. This allows you to match payments with customer invoices, and keep transaction fees as an expense.

Step I -Download your PayPal transactions to a .csv file on your computer

1. Login into your PayPal account. Note that this procedure is written for the ‘new PayPal experience’ user interface on the PayPal web site, not the ‘classic’.
2. Select Reports from the top menu bar
3. Select Activity Download from the left menu, as seen below:

4. Choose the Transaction type download type as either Balance affecting or Completed payments . Balance Affecting Payments will include refunds and disputed payments in addition to Completed Payments.
5. Select Create Report on the right side.  When the report is reading, save the file on your computer, for example as paypal download.csv.

In our example the downloaded .csv file looks like this when viewed in Excel (there are many more columns to the right, which are not visible here)

Step II - Create a .qbo file

1. Run either MoneyThumb's csv2qbo Convert or 2qbo Pro Convert
   
2. Select the Settings button to bring up the setting dialog
3. Set the account options on the left as follows:
   1. Select an account type of Bank
   2. Set the QuickBooks FID to a bank that you can remember. Use Lookup… to bring up a list of all available bank names. Because QuickBooks does not support PayPal, you will not find PayPal in the list of supported banks. One alternative is to use Payne County Bank, since it also begins with the letters 'p-a-y', but you can select any bank name in the list.
   3. The QuickBooks account number is not required, but if you have more than one PayPal account you will want to put in something to distinguish them. We suggest using your PayPal email address.
4. Specify the csv column names on the right hand side as follows:
   1. Select Load Preset (below Assigned Column Names) and then in the File Open dialog open the preset file PayPal.csv. This will load the preset names into the Assigned Column Names
   2. Make sure that the check-boxes for Use Column Names and for Separate splits in output transactions are both selected.
5. Select the program Convert button. This will bring up a file chooser.
6. Browse to the downloaded PayPal file from Step I, i.e. paypal download.csv, and select the file.
7. Select the Open button . This will run the csv2qbo converter, and create a .qbo file, in this example called paypal download.qbo.

The converter log shows that the PayPal transactions were converted, and that the payments were split into two transactions.

Step III - Import the .qbo file into QuickBooks Desktop

Note that this procedure is for QuickBooks Desktop. For QuickBooks Online please click the other tab above.

1. Open the .qbo file in QuickBooks.
   For QuickBooks desktop, you can do this either by double-clicking the .qbo file in a folder listing, or from within QuickBooks, select Banking menu, Bank Feed, and Import Web Connect File.
2. The first time you import a .qbo file from PayPal, QuickBooks will offer to create new account. QuickBooks will identify the .qbo file as being from Payne County Bank (or whatever other bank you chose) but you can still name the account PayPal or whatever else you want. Enter a name for the account and create the account.
3. After importing, QuickBooks will show a message that there are transactions are waiting to be added into QuickBooks.Select the Transaction List button which will bring up a list of the transactions such as below. The column labeled Downloaded As is the payer name from PayPal.
4. For each transaction you will need to assign a QuickBooks Payee and a QuickBooks Account. This process is simplified as QuickBooks can automatically create rules as you make these assignments. In the example, click in the Payee column on the first transaction, and enter a payee of PayPal. Then click in the Account column column on that transaction and select an account such as Merchant Account Fees. Next select the transaction checkbox, click Batch Actions and Accept/Add to accept that transaction. Depending on your setup, QuickBooks may prompt you to create a rule, or create a rule automatically. Once a rule has been created, QuickBooks will correctly set Payee and Account for all the transaction fees.
5. For the other transactions, assign QuickBooks payees if desired and select an appropriate account . In the example, the payment from Explorer LLC matched an existing invoice, so QuickBooks has automatically recognized that and assigned the correct Payee to that transaction. Now all the transactions are ready to be accepted.
6. Finally select the checkbox for all the transactions, and click Batch Actions and Accept/Add to add all the transactions to the PayPal account register.

You can now display the PayPal account register for and view the transactions assigned to the correct accounts. Notice that the memo for each transaction has the payment email and the PayPal transaction number, as specified in the PayPal preset file.

You can also modify the column setup depending on whether you use the PayPal payee name. For example if you want to have all payments automatically assigned to a QuickBooks income account, you could use Excel Column E rather than Column D as the payee name in the csv2qbo Convert column setup, and then allow a rule for Shopping Cart Payment Received going to Sales

Import PayPal transactions into QuickBooks Online

• Do you use PayPal for your business and need to load your PayPal transactions into QuickBooks?
• Do you need to match PayPal incoming payments up to customer invoices?
• Would you like be able to track customer payments in an income account and PayPal transaction fees in an expense account?
• Would you like to leverage QuickBooks bank feeds to automatically assign transactions to accounts?

Improved PayPal import with MoneyThumb

You can import an unlimited history of PayPal transactions into QuickBooks quickly and easily using either of our converters for QuickBooks, csv2qbo Convert and 2qbo Convert Pro. And unlike the IIF files provided by PayPal, you can import customer payments into QuickBooks in a way that makes accounting sense. You can utilize bank feed rules assign transactions to accounts. You import a gross amount that you can match against customer invoices, and a transaction fee that is accounted for in an expense account.csv2qbo Convert and 2qbo Convert Pro accomplish this by generating two QuickBooks transactions for PayPal payments, one for the gross payment, and one for the transaction fee. This allows you to match payments with customer invoices, and keep transaction fees as an expense.

Step I -Download your PayPal transactions to a .csv file on your computer

1. Login into your PayPal account. Note that this procedure is written for the ‘new PayPal experience’ user interface on the PayPal web site, not the ‘classic’.
2. Select Reports from the top menu bar
3. Select Activity Download from the left menu, as seen below:

4. Choose the Transaction type download type as either Balance affecting or Completed payments . Balance Affecting Payments will include refunds and disputed payments in addition to Completed Payments.
5. Select Create Report on the right side. When the report is reading, save the file on your computer, for example as paypal download.csv.

In our example the downloaded .csv file looks like this when viewed in Excel (there are many more columns to the right, which are not visible here)

Step II - Create a .qbo file

1. Run either MoneyThumb's csv2qbo Convert or 2qbo Pro Convert
   
2. Select the Settings button to bring up the setting dialog
3. Set the account options on the left as follows:
   1. Select an account type of Bank
   2. Set the QuickBooks FID to a bank that you can remember. Use Lookup… to bring up a list of all available bank names. Because QuickBooks does not support PayPal, you will not find PayPal in the list of supported banks. One alternative is to use Payne County Bank, since it also begins with the letters 'p-a-y', but you can select any bank name in the list.
   3. The QuickBooks account number is not required, but if you have more than one PayPal account you will want to put in something to distinguish them. We suggest using your PayPal email address.
4. Specify the csv column names on the right hand side as follows:
   1. Select Load Preset (below Assigned Column Names) and then in the File Open dialog open the preset file PayPal.csv. This will load the preset names into the Assigned Column Names
   2. Make sure that the check-boxes for Use Column Names and for Separate splits in output transactions are both selected.
5. Select the program Convert button. This will bring up a file chooser.
6. Browse to the downloaded PayPal file from Step I, i.e. paypal download.csv, and select the file.
7. Select the Open button . This will run the csv2qbo converter, and create a .qbo file, in this example called paypal download.qbo.

The converter log shows that the PayPal transactions were converted, and that the payments were split into two transactions.

Step III - Import the .qbo file into QuickBooks Online

For QuickBooks Online

1. Import the .qbo into QuickBooks Online. When logged in,
   select Transactions from the main menu, and under that Banking. On the right hand side of the page select File Upload. This bring up an Upload File page. Browse to the the .qbo file created in Step II, select the file, and then at the bottom of the page click Next.
2. QuickBooks Online will then bring up the Select an account screen for you to select a QuickBooks account for the upload. The first time this will most likely be a new account, so under QuickBooks Account select Add New. Specify the account name and select Save the new account and then select Next , and then Finish
3. In the Select an account screen select Next and then when you get the message that the file was successfully uploaded select Finish and QuickBooks Online will bring up the list of transactions that can be accepted. The column labeled Description is the payer name from PayPal.
4. For each transaction you will need to assign a QuickBooks Payee and a QuickBooks Account. This process is simplified by QuickBooks Online automatically creating rules as you make these assignments. For example, the second transaction in the list is a transaction fee. To classify it correctly, click the transaction to bring up the editing dialog. Select a suitable category such as Commissions and Fees. Note that QuickBooks online will immediately change the category for all Transaction fees to that category. You can also create a new Payee of Payee and assign it to the transaction. Also note that the PayPal email and transaction number are displayed in the Bank Detail.You should make sure that under Settings (the gear icon on the right site) that Copy Description is on so that the memo is copied in. Select Add to accept that transaction. QuickBooks will automatically create a rule and correctly set the payee and category for all the transaction fees.
5. For the other transactions, assign QuickBooks payees if desired and select an appropriate account . In the example, the payment from Explorer LLC matched an existing invoice, so QuickBooks Online has automatically recognized that and assigned the correct Payee to that transaction. Now all the transactions are ready to be accepted.
6. Finally select the checkbox for all the transaction, and click Batch Actions and Accept Selected to add all the transactions to the PayPal account register.

You can now display the PayPal account register and view the transactions assigned to the correct accounts. Notice that the memo for each transaction has the payment email and the PayPal transaction number, as specified in the PayPal preset file.