What is recommended in linking accounts such as bank and paypal

JHK

I can download transaction into my paypal account.  Funds are immediately drawn from bank  account.  The paypal download does not link with bank account.  My work around is to use  paypal as the payee in the bank register and use [paypal accpimt]  as a category.  Is there a better way?

Frankx

Hi @JHK,

I think a lot of PayPal users are like you. Basically, PayPal is only an intermediary, and the payment for something they purchase using their PayPal account actually comes from their bank or perhaps a credit card account.  Their Paypal account shows debits and credits for identical amounts within days of each other, and therefore almost always has a zero balance.

Since there is no allocation to an expense, income or asset account being made by the PayPal account, a lot of folks don't even post entries to it.

There really isn't a "recommended" way to "account for", or "link to" or "don't link to" a Paypal account when your use is limited to it serving as a middleman - so I would suggest that you do whatever you feel most comfortable with.

Hope this helps.

Frankx

Chris_QPW

Personally I have used PayPal as a way for customers to pay me and in that regard I would definitely link the PayPal account.  

But I've recently stopped that business and as such the PayPal is just an intermediate and I don't maintain any balance in there.  So in that case I purposely do not link or even look at the PayPal account in Quicken.  Now in this mode people could maintain a balance and then you would probably need to link the PayPal account to get all the accounting.  But I personally wouldn't recommend it because I've seen that PayPal doesn't put in the right transactions to keep everything balanced properly.

The other motivation was that I want to eliminate all my Express web connect accounts.

I do not trust the new connection method which syncs transactions to the Quicken cloud account.

Ps56k2

JHK said:  My work around is to use  paypal as the payee in the bank register and use [paypal accpimt]  as a category.  Is there a better way?

I use PayPal for a lot of purchases - especially with eBay - and for when I sell things on eBay.  I have it linked, and download all transactions.  Like you, they flow thru to my CC account, when the CC actually pays... I then modify the CC transaction Category, and enter the [PayPal Acct] as a transfer - and the desc is left blank.... and over on the PayPal acct, I enter the actual Desc of what was purchased... or sold - so I keep everything over there.

JHK

Thanks to those that responded. There seems to be no best way other than understanding the process and using what works for me.