PayPal Statements made simple .... how?!

Positivity
Contributor
Contributor

Is it possible to achieve what appears to me to be the most basic of actions on PayPal....

 

All I want to be able to do is view my PayPal Statement as I would for any other bank:

 

(a) In forward dated order (not in reverse)

(b) including a running balance as default (not having to click the 'All activity with balance' each time).

(c) excluding any 'ghost' transactions (such as those that are for information only and do not affect the balance - such as some refunds.

(d) with as many transactions per screen as I wish (not just limited to a few per page

 

..and ideally, a simple way to download this data to a single file that I can import into a financial programme.

 

At present, I can check/download my statements for other banks within seconds but with PayPal it can take a hour or more as have to hunt through for transactions that should have been excluded (i.e. ghost ones) which put the balance out, and performing multiple on-line searches for transactions because I can't just get a simple listing of all the transactions I'm interested in.

 

If anyone can help, I'd really appeciate it!

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5 REPLIES 5

PayPal_Siobhán
Moderator
Moderator

Hi there Positivity,

 

Thanks for the feedback and I will pass it onto the relevant department.

 

In case you do not have this information already- you can download your transaction history into Quicken, QuickBooks, or into a spreadsheet application. From the 'History' page, you can download your account's History log:

 

  1. Click 'Download History,' which appears in the 'More' drop-down list.
  2. Choose the date range of transactions you'd like to download and select the file type you want to save your History as.
  3. Click 'Download History.'

Premier and Business account holders can customise their History before downloading it from the 'History' page, here's how:

 

  1. Click 'Download History,' which appears in the 'More' drop-down list.
  2. Click 'Customise Download Fields (not available for PDF)'
  3. Click the information you want to download and click 'Save.'

Siobhan

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Positivity
Contributor
Contributor

Thanks for that, Siobhan.

 

Unfortunately, the 'Download History' option doesn't work well as it includes as:

 

...in the comma-delimited version includes ALL currencies mixed together (you can't select GBP or USD) so one has to dump the data and then manually remove all but the currency required - this is our only apparently option at the moment and it takes a lot of manual processing .. especially as the dumped data also incudes transactions that do NOT affect the balance so they have to be found and deleted too.

 

...in the QIF format, it defaults to USD ONLY as a most of our transactions are in GB, this is useless!

 

There has to be an easier way!

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bodyworkzone
Contributor
Contributor

Paypal is a member of the Society for the Redefintion of the English Language. Redefinition means that words don't mean what they mean in the English dictionary, they mean anything that the user wants them to mean. So, the "Balance Affecting Payments" log that you can download, well, although Paypal calls it "Balance Affecting Payments," it doesn't actually mean "Balance Affecting Payments." Translated into normal dictionary English it means "Balance Affecting Payments Plus Anything Else That Paypal Chooses to Throw in There Report." Paypal is also a committed member of the Society for the Propagation of Headaches. They demonstrate this committment by adding to the report memo lines that don't affect the balance and currency conversion lines that don't affect the balance, and , thinking this an insufficient demonstration of their committment to this worthy cause, they have also recently added cancelled fee lines, even though the cancelled fee is present on the previous line as a plus (where normally a fee is negative). What all this means is a big headache, because, when you put it into a spreadsheet and separate it into incoming and outgoing, none of the columns add up correctly because of all the duplicated stuff.

 

You may be thinking there's something very familiar about this, and of course you're right. That renowned institution, famous for **bleep**ing up every IT project that comes its way - the government, and of course, political interviews, where the modus operandi is never give a straight answer to a question that anybody might want to know the answer to. Many believe that the Society for the Redefintion of the English Language was founded by politicians and lawyers, but is now being opened up to large internet businesses that can demonstrate that their use of language can only be understood by them, and will cause total confusion and headaches for anybody else. Paypal's Ask Louise is believed to be one of the Society's flagship projects.

 

So Paypal, what would it take to get you to rejoin the Society of People Who Use Language in a Way Where What It Says is What It Means, and present normal statements containing only real transactions, without mixing all the currencies together, and that show credits and debits in a normal way (separate columns).

 

PAYPAL TIP: Paypal is a member of the Society for the Avoidance of Complaints and Meaningful Comment Through the Use of Timeouts (SACMCTUT). So always copy what you've typed before clicking the submit or post button, otherwise you'll find that you've been logged out and everthing you've just typed has been lost. Of course, they could detect when you're typing and keep you logged in as long as you're writing, but then they'd get more complaints and meaningful comment which would be counterproductive and probably cost them their membership of SACMCTUT.

 

Please copy this and attach it to the bottom of all communication with large internet companies, such as Paypal, eBay, Amazon

AN APPEAL: As large internet marketplaces are fond of telling us, feedback helps to improve customer service. We are surprised that you know this but haven't implemented feedback on your own services. Please make this a priority.

 

 

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popalock
New Community Member

this STILL isn't fixed.  The history section is a complete shambles.  The default report viewed in history is more or less ok. But you can't download this report!  What you actually get is 30+ columns of non-sensical information.

 

Can we please have an update to Positivity's query?  i need this fixed too!!

 

if I can't get usable reports off paypal, I'll kiss goodbye the service on my site's checkout and accept only credit card payments directly

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gspotprod
New Community Member

The only way you can do it properly is to pdf each page in your date range using All  Payments  if you want your total income.  Then etiher on the PC or printout, Add only the Payments.  As you know, there are no totals so you have to 10 key them yourself. 

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