Accounting for paypal

Pebble Communications · Feb 27, 2006

Hi,

There are millions of us using Paypal so there has to be a simple answer to this. How do you account for these transactions in your book keeping?

I'm in dispute with my accountant over how it should be treated...do you treat it like another bank account or do you treat them as a supplier?

Joyous · Feb 27, 2006

Treat them as another bank account with paypal charges going under "bank charges and similar items"

Regards

Joy

dcaccounting · Feb 27, 2006

Yes, they should be treated like any other business bank account.

Regards

Dean

multilingual · Feb 27, 2006

That's exactly what I do, just print off their statements each month and file them with the other bank accounts.

JB

Toon · Feb 27, 2006

And the end of each month I calculate their charges and just file it under merchant fees.

Rob · Feb 27, 2006

If your accountant is still not convinced point out to him the following which features on the PP web site:

"authorised and regulated by the Financial Services Authority in the United Kingdom as an electronic money institution."

That says 'bank' to me!

Pebble Communications · Feb 27, 2006

OK thanks everyone!

He wanted to treat it as a bank account and I was arguing that he was just making it more complicated than it was and the commissions should just go out as payments to a supplier.

The problem only came up as he is not familiar with internet transactions/paypal/worldpay etc so I had to explain who they were and what they did. Then I decided to tell him how to do his job.

Note to self: stop being a clever-clogs about things someone else is the expert in!

DarrenC · Feb 27, 2006

I use KashFlow, and add PayPal as a method of payment and when a payment comes through add it to my sales and send invoice.

For services and products I record this too.

Darren

wsi · Feb 28, 2009

Presumably this is the same for Google Checkout and other merchant accounts/gateways?

If I invoice a customer for £100 and Google take £1.65 off that (1.5% + 15p) I put that £1.65 down as a business expense?

Tom McClelland · Feb 28, 2009

wsi said:
Presumably this is the same for Google Checkout and other merchant accounts/gateways?

If I invoice a customer for £100 and Google take £1.65 off that (1.5% + 15p) I put that £1.65 down as a business expense?

Yep, treat their fee just like bank charges. Same with Paypal.

hlsps · Mar 3, 2009

I noticed that on the Microsoft Accounting Express package they have an add on for paypal that integrates with Paypal if this is of any help.

David Griffiths · Mar 4, 2009

hlsps said:
I noticed that on the Microsoft Accounting Express package they have an add on for paypal that integrates with Paypal if this is of any help.

So does Kashflow, I believe

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Accounting for paypal

Pebble Communications

Joyous

dcaccounting

multilingual

Toon

Rob

Pebble Communications

DarrenC

wsi

Tom McClelland

hlsps

David Griffiths

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