[asterisk-biz] OT: Correlation of Paypal transactions

[Nitzan Kon]

Treat PayPal like a bank account and record the payments
when you receive them in PayPal - not when you withdraw
them. (aside from being more easy - you should probably
do it like that anyway from a legal/accounting perspective)

On your bank account treat paypal withdrawals like
transfers between bank accounts.


--- On Fri, 11/12/10, Alex Balashov <abalashov at evaristesys.com> wrote:

> From: Alex Balashov <abalashov at evaristesys.com>
> Subject: [asterisk-biz] OT: Correlation of Paypal transactions
> To: "Commercial and Business-Oriented Asterisk Discussion" <asterisk-biz at lists.digium.com>
> Date: Friday, November 12, 2010, 8:16 PM
> 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/
> 
> -- 
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