I was surprised when I learned this year that PayPal's QIF history download does not contain all balance-affecting transactions. This is because it only includes transactions with payment status of "completed." For example, if you make a partial refund to a customer, the entire transaction disappears from the QIF download, because its status is now "partially refunded."
This glaring error in the PayPal QIF history download makes it unusable, as far as I'm concerned, for importing PayPal transactions into accounting software. If you use it you can miss both sales and expense entries.
Fortunately, PayPal's CSV "balance-affecting transaction" download DOES contain all balance-affecting transactions. However, my accounting software (Gnucash) does not import CSV, as least not easily.
To fix this problem, I wrote a free PayPal CSV to QIF online converter that you can use to easily convert PayPal CSV history files to QIF format which you can import into your accounting software.
In addition, I optimized the generated QIF files for Gnucash by adjusting the 'name' and 'type' QIF fields for the following PayPal transaction types: Shopping Cart Payment Received, Website Payments Pro, Refund, Withdraw Funds, Virtual Terminal and Temporary Hold. The adjustment is to allow Gnucash to correctly "remember" the transaction type to make QIF import faster and easier.
I took steps to make this online converter secure.
Read more or convert your PayPal CSV files
