CSV Reports containing confusing information - Reversal of General Account Hold

[johnq3]

I'm trying to setup importing of PayPal CSV Files into gnucash. I've managed to export the completed transactions into a CSV file, but are multiple line items for a single purchase which is confusing me (and the import program)

If I look at a line item for today, I purchased a post label from Royal Mail:

Date	Time	Time zone	Name	Type	Status	Currency	Gross
04/05/2023	17:12:58	BST	Royal Mail Group Limited	Express Checkout Payment	Completed	GBP	-5.75
04/05/2023	17:12:58	BST	PayPal	Reversal of General Account Hold	Completed	GBP	5.75
04/05/2023	17:12:58	BST	Royal Mail Group Limited	General Authorisation	Completed	GBP	-5.75

What's with the 3 line items? Post is purchased for 5.75, then reversed and then taken out again. This is not a once off and happens for every Royal Mail  purchase for as long as I can go back in my history. I don't see any issues like with with other purchases/payments. 

Is this some issue with RM?

[sharpiemarker]

@johnq3 

General Authorization - Starts the authorization process for a transaction
Account Hold for Open Authorization - Places a temporary hold on the account for the funds to be debited

General PayPal Debit Card Transaction - Performs the transaction with the debit from the vendor using the debit card

Reversal of General Account Hold - Reverses the hold and finalizes the transaction

as per PayPal Transaction Types.

[sharpiemarker]

@johnq3 

Also note that if you choose “Balance Affecting” in your report parameters/settings, PayPal will also import all balance affecting transactions, resulting in transactions which may appear to offset each other or be duplicate.

Experiment with choosing All transactions instead of Balance Affecting, etc when you make reports.

[johnq3 · Accepted solution]

Thanks for the info. 

Found a few posts where people have been complaining about PayPal filling the transactions with unwanted information and making it useless for accounting software.  (It gets worse when USD - GBP conversions take place) 

In the end I wrote a python script to strip out all this irrevant info  from the CSV file and it's working when importing into the software now. 

[coffeetreee]

@johnq3Can you post the python script here or somewhere on github? Would be much appreciated.