For PayPal experts - regarding a simultaneous ebay auction payment and SmartConnect payment?

Mark - Home Office

So, say I have paid an ebay vendor 11.33 for an item. Quicken correctly categorized that payment as an "eBay auction payment" with the proper vendor name as payee when I downloaded my Paypal file.

To cover this payment, I utilized my PayPal SmartConnect credit card. Quicken categorized it as an 11.33 "PayPal Buyer Credit Payment Funding" with a blank payee field.

Two questions - one, what payee should I put in the blank field?

Two - can I recategorize the Category as my "[PayPal Smart Connect xxxx Credit Card]"?

Thanks so much, kind people.

Quicken Francisco

Hello @Mark - Home Office

Thank you for reaching out to the Community regarding your issue. I was taking a look at the situation you have here. I was thinking for the payee you could either label it as ebay or you could also put the vendors name as well and if you use memos you can fill in extra information if you'd like with ebay vendor or the vendors name depending how you would like to input it into Quicken.

For your second question you could put in the category as that but you have no linking account from my understanding so it doesn't categorize what it was for. I could be wrong with this one but I'd suggest keeping it the same.

If you have any questions or if I may be misunderstanding the situation please let me know and we'll see what else we might be able to do.

Thanks,

Quicken Francisco

Tom Young

"So, say I have paid an ebay vendor 11.33 for an item. Quicken correctly categorized that payment as an 'eBay auction payment' with the proper vendor name as payee when I downloaded my Paypal file."

Unless you want every single purchase from PayPal categorized as "eBay auction payment", I question if the Category "eBay auction payment" is meaningful and "correct."  If you buy a gift for someone off eBay it seems a Category along the lines of "Gifts Given" would be more informative.  Likewise if you buy an article of clothing or shoes for yourself a Category of "Clothes" might be a better categorization.  The point is that if you purchase a lot of stuff of eBay an expense line item on a yearly Income and Expense report reading "eBay auction payment" with maybe several thousand dollars attached to it doesn't really communicate how you spent your money (for what purpose) as opposed to where you spent your money.

If you think that "eBay auction payment" is sufficient for your purposes that's fine, they are your financial statements, I'm just pointing out the possible information loss with that kind of Category.

"To cover this payment, I utilized my PayPal SmartConnect credit card. Quicken categorized it as an 11.33 'PayPal Buyer Credit Payment Funding' with a blank payee field."

Now here the use of a Category just isn't appropriate.  You've already categorized the first transaction as a form of "expense" by using the Category of "eBay auction payment" and if you categorize the transfer of the liability (i.e., the obligation as some point to pull real cash out of your pocket) in another Category like "PayPal Buyer Credit Payment Funding", you've counted the expense twice.  The proper entry in the Category box with this transaction would be [Name of PayPal Account].  The square brackets around the name of the PayPal Account in your file tells Quicken this is a transfer, not an expense.  That is, you've settled your obligation to PayPal by moving the obligation to the credit card. 

"Two questions - one, what payee should I put in the blank field?""

Looking at purchases I've made through my own PayPal account the download from PayPal creates a payee along the lines of "PAYPAL *Seller's Name" so over in the credit card you could simply insert the seller's name again or, maybe more properly, insert "PayPal" as the payee because after all that money is going to PayPal.  (If you are using the Category "eBay auction payment" because you want to keep track of how much money you spend through eBay, you could even put "eBay" as the payee here.  That would allow you to keep track of your spending through eBay.  In truth the payee's name here is pretty irrelevant since the money is really going to PayPal and that bit of information is captured in the transfers.)

"Two - can I recategorize the Category as my '[PayPal Smart Connect xxxx Credit Card]'?"

That is the correct categorization in this case.