I wanted to get a report of my transactions over the past few months, sorted and subtotaled by sender/receiver. To me, a basic requirement. Not met. But I can download CSV file of the transactions, and then massage it as needed in Excel. So I downloaded the "Past three months." I opened up the file in Excel and did my totals, but then noticed something missing: the current transactions! So here, "Past three months" means "Past three COMPLETED months."
So I had to then do a second download, choosing customized date range from 3/1 to 3/12 (today). Downloaded the CSV file, and I was going to insert it into the spreadsheet I created above. Here, I learned that the fields are not in the same sequence!
The first report started with these columns (no need to put all of them here):
| Date | Time | Time Zone | Description | Currency | Gross | Fee | Net |
The second download showed these fields:
| Date | Time | TimeZone | Name | Type | Status | Currency | Gross | Fee | Net |
Can anyone come up with a single reason why these would not be the same? I can't. I'm a data guy for 35 years. There's no reason for it, and no excuse for it.
I would have spared you all and simply reported this to PayPal, but where? How? There is no portal for that specific type of problem among the myriad but very specifically labeled contact reasons. So perhaps someone does have an explanation that I have missed. Or perhaps someone from PayPal will come around and say, hmmm, that's odd. Maybe we'll look into that.
Meanwhile, I'll go through the reports and get the columns to line up and produce the report I need.
