How do I record Pay Pal transactions?

Jeanne Houghton

Should I create a separate account for PayPal? Or should I enter each transaction paid for thru Pay Pal in the credit account connected to Pay Pal?

Chris_QPW

I suppose that depends on how you use the PayPal account.

I could see how one might not maintain any cash in the account therefore every purchase would be a transfer from the credit card account. But this wouldn't work if you purchase something using the cash balance or if you use it for a business and get payments. And since the transfers would all probably have the same payee it would be hard to categorize payments.

So setting up the PayPal account in Quicken and setting up for download would probably be best. Note though this is a Express Web Connect type of connection, and at times PayPal doesn't "play nice". It "mostly works" though.

Chris_QPW

I suppose that depends on how you use the PayPal account.

I could see how one might not maintain any cash in the account therefore every purchase would be a transfer from the credit card account. But this wouldn't work if you purchase something using the cash balance or if you use it for a business and get payments. And since the transfers would all probably have the same payee it would be hard to categorize payments.

So setting up the PayPal account in Quicken and setting up for download would probably be best. Note though this is a Express Web Connect type of connection, and at times PayPal doesn't "play nice". It "mostly works" though.

Jeanne Houghton

I don't keep any cash in my paypal account, so it turns out all purchases show up on my credit account. ((Every time I have a problem it turns out I wasn't paying close attention and could have figured out the answer myself by looking more closely. Sigh.))