About 4 years ago Phabguy posted the following concise and correct critique of the absurdly poor system Paypal uses for accounting to its customers for their transactions. I have to account precisely for what I spend (to allow me to deduct expenses where appropriate) so I rely on the ability to download data and process it simply. Every single bank and credit card company I deal with gives me a simple ability to do this. Only Apple and Paypal don't. Why both are so awful is puzzling. Maybe the millennials driving down 280 in their Teslas don't think anyone really needs a simple ability to account for anything. Whatever, I spend ENDLESS time trying to reconcile Paypal transactions, and now have resolved to avoid any Paypal related transaction whenever I can. I need to keep the account because it is often the easiest way to send money. But I will not use it in any transaction where I am not forced to.
Here, with respect, is what Phabguy posted:
Does anyone else agree with me that the PayPal account statements are practically useless? I must agree with a previous poster (from 2013) that the PayPal "statements" are not statements at all. For comparison, just look at any statement produced by any major bank or credit card company to see how it's done. A statement would have, at a minimum, the following characteristics:
- represents all transactions for a specific period of time, usually a month
- show opening and closing balances, in the account's native currency
- show all deposit transactions (sales, transfers of money into the account)
- show all withdrawal transactions (refunds, transfers of money out of the account)
- for transactions in a currency other than the account's native currency, show the transaction currency and the converted amount in the account's native currency.
- provide a sum of all deposit transactions and sum of all withdrawal transactions for ease in doing reconciliations
As just one example of the problem with these "statements", they do not show transfers from my bank account as separate line items. These should be shown as separate line items because they represent a separate movement of money between PayPal and an external bank, and because they appear on my bank statement as a line item. It is therefore unnecessarily difficult and confusing to reconcile the PayPal activity each month against my accounting software.
PayPal, please, take a look at this issue and design a truly business-friendly, useful account statement mechanism, like all the other banks and credit card companies.
Thanks!
