Paypal Quickbooks File missing several transactions

[mesko]

I am trying to import my paypal transactions into Quickbooks and like many of you here, have gotten frustrated by the fact that iif file generated by Paypal is minimal and requires that I manually adjust transaction categories in Quickbooks.

Now, I could potentially "live with that inconvenience," however, I was shocked to see that the iif file generated by Quickbooks was missing several transactions, which means that I cannot trust it. For example, I noticed that if a customer purchases 2 items from us in one day and makes two separate payments, only one of those transactions appears in the Quickbooks file!! Second, if I give a customer a partial refund, that information also doesn't appear in the iif file, nor does any sales tax info. That makes the file essentially useless in my view.

Has anyone encountered similar problems or know how to fix this (other than buying a third party software)? If Paypal indicates that it offers .iif file downloads, it should at least ensure that the files are correct. Imagine a bank providing you with faulty information! Try explaining that to the IRS!

Thanks. 

[skier]

Unfortunately PayPal does not play well with Quickbooks Pro. This has been a known issue for quite some time.

Suggest not relying on PayPal's Transactions History Reporting for your main records as the reporting functions are a bit lame too.

You are much better off to simply input all of your transaction information directly into Quickbooks Pro and only rely on your PayPal Account Transaction History as a reference.   We have worked this way for years and the small amount of time it takes to enter the data well worth it.  We have all the info we need whenever we need it and can generate any type of report when we need it.   This is a especially great at tax time.

Perhaps some day PayPal and Quickbooks will resolve this issue but, at the present time, neither one seems to want to go there.   As for trying to tell the IRS that your isssue is PayPal's fault, they will simply tell you it's your responsibility to maintain your own records which indeed it is.

Regards,

skier

[jdq]

We've recently started allowing customers to our subscripton site pay with paypal, which they are now starting to do daily. This is causing me a nitemere with book keeping. I too am finding that the iif files are missing transactions, usually ones that were eventually refunded -- but in one case at least a regular old transaction who's status is "completed."

When a transaction of current Payment Status "Refunded" fails to be recorded in the IIF file, but IS recorded in the balance activity the Paypal shows me  and is factored into PayPal's daily and current balance, how am I supposed to reconcile my records in QB with that shown me by Paypal?

What am doing right now is finding the missing transactions and manually entering them.

I now want to drop Paypal as a payment option as this is an incredible pain in the **bleep** and can take hours a day.

And, as someone said the need to go into QB and change the type of debit or credit manually is incredibly tedious.

Is there some good answer to this misery?

The two issues are:

1) Transactions are missing.

2) Lack of QB "web connect" feature.

Is there a way my developer can query a  transaction "report" from Paypal that is

more complete and that we can format ourselves in the "web connect" format?

Thanks,

john

[jdq]

What about Simpleport?

SimplePort Simplifies PayPal-QuickBooks Data Importing

Has anyone tried it? Does it solve the problems we've been discussing?

[importhelp]

Yes, SimplePort works and it brings in all available PayPal transactions.

[lstandish]

I found that the problem of missing transactions in history downloads presists, and affects QIF (Quicken) format transaction downloads as well as Quickbooks format.

If a transaction is partially-refunded, it will be completely omitted from the download - probably because the Status is "Partially Refunded" instead of  "Completed."

This is an extremely serious error in the PayPal service, and I am amazed that it has persisted for so long.  I too will have to look for a way to convert the comma-delimeted history download file (which appears to be complete) into QIF format.

[jdq]

I find that downloading IIF files results in "missing" transcations but downloading to a tab deliminated format results in all balance affecting transactions, including refunds as well as transactions that were later (Payment Status = Refunded).

With this date your daily ending balance should match that of quickbooks.

So the the next step is to have a developer convert the tab liminated file to a "QB Web Connect" file (QBO format)  -- (as is avaialbe from our bank (Chase) for both business checking and credit card transaction downlaods)

Or build something convert it to IIF and also allow you to edit the "account type fields" (e.g. income type, expense type) -quickly and easily (build an IIF editor too) before the iif file is imported into Quickbooks... this could even be faster and less tedious than bringing in the "web connect" transactions -- which you do one by one (as you probably know), which can be very tedious indeed.