[asterisk-biz] OT: Correlation of Paypal transactions

[Alex Balashov]

Greetings,

I apologise in advance that this is a bit off-topic.  However, I know 
that many of you who run service providers take a high volume of 
individual Paypal payments, many of them recurring.

My question is this:  When withdrawing Paypal payments into a bank 
account, how do you correlate them on the bank statement to the relevant 
Paypal payment activity, and therefore the right customer/invoice/etc, 
from an accounting perspective?

When there is a manageably small number of payments involved, it can be 
done chronologically.  And likewise, if the amounts are highly specific 
to each customer, that is also useful as a correlator.  However, I have 
found nothing embedded in the transaction ID or other identifiers that 
show up in the online banking interface from which a reference to an 
original Paypal transaction can be reconstructed.  It seems to me that 
the process of withdrawing money to a bank is a separate transaction 
from receiving payment via Paypal anyway, since Paypal gives you the 
ability to specify how much of your balance in its account you want to 
withdraw.

I suppose the easiest thing to do - and I imagine, the norm - is to just 
record the incoming payments against open invoices at the moment they 
are received, and put them in an asset account, less the transaction 
fees.  When Paypal payments clear into the bank, just move the funds 
from one asset account to the other and be done with it, without 
attempting to establish whose payment it was that cleared.  The invoices 
are paid either way, and the ultimate deposit destination of that money 
is just an asset transfer technicality.

Still, I am curious if there are any more advanced options available or 
other handy tricks of the trade that anyone would be willing to share on 
how to reconcile high volumes of individual Paypal transactions.

Thanks!

-- Alex

P.S.  I am referring to plain old Paypal here, not Paypal web payments,
       merchant account services, etc.

-- 
Alex Balashov - Principal
Evariste Systems LLC
1170 Peachtree Street NE
12th Floor, Suite 1200
Atlanta, GA 30309
Tel: +1-678-954-0670
Fax: +1-404-961-1892
Web: http://www.evaristesys.com/