Ebay/PayPal Fees & Sage Import

[OnlineSeller]

The Monthly Ebay Seller Fees that comes through on the paypal history download does that include both listing and final sale fees?

I can't see any other fees (other than paypal) listed so looks like it.

As regards the entry in Sage 50 If I sell stock through Ebay £100, £10 Ebay Fess, £10 PayPal Fees and all Fees Paid through PayPal and postage cost £5 the Entries would be

Debit PayPal Bank A/C (1205) £100
Credit Sales (4000) £100
Debit PayPal Fees (7909) £10
Credit PayPal Bank A/C (1205) £10
Deibt Ebay Fees (6204) £10
Credit PayPal Bank A/C (1205) £10
Debit Postage (7501) £5
Credit PayPal Bank A/C (1205) £5

I did a book keeping course about 15 years ago so pulling this out of the ether and it certainly didn't include computerised accounts. I found the Chart of Accounts interesting (not). Sage 50 and coming to it cold should make for interesting results or so a quick search reveals.

Does that look correct?

I'm trying to get this right in my head as my next task is to import the paypal history into Sage using CSV files.

I think so long as I set up the customers, products, bank accounts and the new nominal codes (all of which I have done bar customers though I'm in the process of gathering that from the paypal history by using the auction site filter in Excel so shouldn't be very difficult to set up).

Once I have that done I should be able import sales, purchases & bank transfers.

I have set at April 2010 so I believe I have to run certain perioditic processes to get to a final year end scenario.

Does that sound like a reasonable plan and any Gotchas to watch out for and I can do a quick read on those.

I'll definitely be more organised this year though I have nearly as much to bring this years uptodate. At least it will be a good learning experience if nothing else

 

[OnlineSeller]

Definitely something not right about those entries - looking again.

 

[OnlineSeller]

OK I could see immediately that I was left with balances and my Trial Balance would never add up so I had to try and work out in my head the double entries for PayPal Fees and Ebay Fees so I've come up with this.

OK so let's restate the scenario.

I sell goods valued at £100 plus £5 Postage to Mr Ebay. It is paid almost instantly via PayPal in full. There are £10 of PayPal Fees and £10 Ebay Fees.

So my double entries are:

Record initial Sale
Debit Mr Ebay Customer A/C - £100 Credit Sales £100
Debit Mr Ebay Postage £ 5 Credit Postage £ 5

Record Payment of Sale
Debit PayPal £105 Credit Mr Ebay £105

Record PayPal Fees
Debit Sales £ 10 Credit PayPal Fees £ 10
Debit PayPal Fees £ 10 Credit PayPal A/C £ 10

Record Ebay Fees
Debit Sales £ 10 Credit Ebay Fees £ 10
Debit Ebay Fees £ 10 Credit PayPal A/C £ 10

So I'm left with an £85 Credit Balance in Sales and £85 Debit Balance in PayPal.

Are those the correct double entries?

 

[talkinpeace]

Easier surely is to speak to John and buy Tradebox ?

 

[johndon68]

Just to confirm, for each sale are you looking to have a customer account in Sage with the sale showing as an invoice against that customer (bear in mind that, unless you get repeat customers you'll end up with loads of customer accounts with just a single sale against them) or do you just want entries in and out of the bank?

John

 

[OnlineSeller]

John I was planning on importing them all as I think the information could prove useful later on. I know from a bit of work I done last night on the email field of the paypal export that about 5% customers are return customers though the items I sell would be expected to last 1 to 2 years depending on use so it may be too soon yet to get any sort of idea on that and this is where I think it may become useful later on.

 

[OnlineSeller]

Easier surely is to speak to John and buy Tradebox ?

To be honest KashFlow didn't work out for me so went Sage yesterday and I hadn't looked at any other solutions. I'm here now so will get on with this now and look at my options afterwards but thanks for the heads up on that software. It certainly looks interesting from a quick scan.

 

[johndon68]

In which case, using your examples, if you were entering the sale manually you'd do the following:

1. Create the customer account.
2. Raise an invoice on the customer account for £100 to the sales nominal and £5 to the carriage nominal.
3. In the Bank screen, select your PayPal bank account, select Customer, select the customer and pay the invoice.
4. Staying in Bank, enter a bank payment for £10 from the PayPal bank account to the eBay Fees Nominal Code
5. Repeat step 4 for the PayPal fees.

If you are going to try and do this automatically as an import from the PayPal export, be aware of the following:

1. Before you can import the transaction details, you'll need to create the customer account (either manually or by separating the PayPal feed in to 2 files - one for the customer information, the other for the sale information)

2. When you import the transaction details you will have have to separate the sale, carriage, customer payment, PayPal fee and eBay Fee into 5 separate lines in the import file. You'll also need to add the relevant Sage transaction types, nominal codes and tax codes.

3. When the invoice and payment are imported, they will not automatically be allocated to one another, you would still need to do that.

As mentioned, Tradebox would be an alternative (I'm actually the principle developer of the Tradebox products ) The Finance Manager product would read your customer details, sale details, customer payment details directly from eBay with a single mouse click and can also handle the processing of your fees...

John

 

[OnlineSeller]

John,

That simple really. I thought it would be hard

Monthly totals it will be and I presume if I do that through Sage itself I will not have to worry about the sales invoices (for the total amount) not being allocated against the payment.

 

[johndon68]

If you are going to do a monthly summary entry there would be no need for customer accounts and invoices you'd replace entries 1 & 2 with a bank receipt.

John

 

[OnlineSeller]

If you are going to do a monthly summary entry there would be no need for customer accounts and invoices you'd replace entries 1 & 2 with a bank receipt.

John

Thanks John. I'll give that a bash.

 

[VIK007]

what nominal is best to post paypal fees? 6xxx or 7xxx

 

[johndon68]

I use 7907

John

 

[VIK007]

thanks john, the tax code?

 

[VIK007]

john i am trying to reconcile my paypal account and every month paypal hold / release customers payments.so one month i could have money they held from the previous month or hold for next month. these amounts vary from month to month.

what would you recommend i can account for these? i have a break down of these amounts? can i post these to a 'holding' account and at year end post to bad debt?

 

[johndon68]

thanks john, the tax code?

T9 as they are outside of the scope of VAT.

John

 

[VIK007]

thanks...any idea the the above post?


john i am trying to reconcile my paypal account and every month paypal hold / release customers payments.so one month i could have money they held from the previous month or hold for next month. these amounts vary from month to month.

what would you recommend i can account for these? i have a break down of these amounts? can i post these to a 'holding' account and at year end post to bad debt?

 

[johndon68]

I'm not an accountant so I'll be honest, I'm not entirely sure of the best way to account for moneys retained by PayPal.

I assume that, if you have PayPal set up as a bank account in Sage, it would be sufficient for the money to sit there until such time as you transfer it to your actual bank account as, ultimately, the customer has paid you...

John

 

[VIK007]

T9 as they are outside of the scope of VAT.

John

I think it should be T2 as Bank charges are exempt. i know it does not make a difference to the vat return. from an accounting view it should be t2

 

[johndon68]

It's T9 as they are outside of the of VAT which is not the same as exempt.

John

 

[VIK007]

i have got a article from Sage website "How to record paypal transactions"

it states "Paypal fees are VAT exempt. The default tax code for exempt transactions in sage is T2."

i know from the vat return it wont make no difference..but thought let you know?

 

[johndon68]

i have got a article from Sage website "How to record paypal transactions"

it states "Paypal fees are VAT exempt. The default tax code for exempt transactions in sage is T2."

If you've got that from Sage, why ask which code to use

i know from the vat return it wont make no difference..but thought let you know?

Technically, it does make a difference. If you use T2, the PayPal fees will appear in box 7 of the VAT Return whereas, with T9, they won't appear on the return at all...

My understanding of this has always been that PayPal fees are treat in the same way as Bank Charges and I was told way back when I worked for Sage that the relevant tax code would be T9.

Ultimately, I guess the thing is to be consistent - I've owned 2 businesses that have used PayPal, have always used T9 and have had both VAT Inspections and Audits with no problems.

John