PayPal gross/net problems

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I have Quicken 6.5.2 downloading transactions from PayPal. I just noticed that my balances are way off, and after diagnosing this, it's due to the fact that Quicken only sees the gross amount of incoming transactions, and is not noticing the fees that PayPal takes from incoming money. Why is this and how do I fix it?

jacobs

Quicken imports whatever PayPal is transmitting. Quicken doesn't know transaction fees even exist, and it has no way to show them other than if you split your transactions to reflect the gross amount and the fee on separate split lines. So if the dollar amounts you're receiving from PayPal are the gross amount instead of the net amount, it sure sounds like an error on PayPal's end.

Hopefully some other PayPal users will jump in here if there's any additional information known about this.

Andy-Geneva

I am having the same issue. However, in the past (I've been doing it for years) BOTH the gross and the fee were downloaded automatically as separate transactions. This gross only downloads started occurring in early Jan 2022 and it seems around the same time I upgraded to Quicken 6.5.3 (MAC) . I called Quicken about it but got disconnected while they were researching it. I have 3 PayPal accounts in three different Quicken account files and it is happening on all three. Not sure if it is a a PayPal issue or not but I would think Quicken should reach out to them and find out. At the same time, I also have had issues with missing transactions from a PayPal download. This especially occurs when there are several transaction on the same day. Really need Quicken to look into this and respond.

westmorelandplayers

I have the same issues as above. It started with missing the transaction fee. Now, the import is missing dozens of transactions.

Chris_QPW

For what it is worth, this has been reported on the Window side too.  This is clearly a change in the downloading of PayPal.  Here is an announcement on it:
NEW 3/1/22 PayPal Transaction Fees Are Not Downloading — Quicken

rpbale99

This is a many month old problem. Quicken blames Paypal and Paypal blames Quicken. It didn't used to be that way. After 30 years of using Quicken for Windows, I've lost all confidence in Quicken. It's a Quicken feature, Quicken should solve it.

jacobs

rpbale99 said:

This is a many month old problem. Quicken blames Paypal and Paypal blames Quicken. It didn't used to be that way. After 30 years of using Quicken for Windows, I've lost all confidence in Quicken. It's a Quicken feature, Quicken should solve it.

Quicken downloads the data provided by financial institutions, using an industry standard file format. What information do you have to support your statement that it's unquestionably a Quicken problem and not a problem caused by a change at PayPal? My guess —and it's only a guess — is that PayPal changed something resulting in downloading gross instead of net amounts. Should Quicken be pursuing this with PAyPal to get it fixed? Sure. But why is it their fault if PayPal created the problem?

dondgc

> @jacobs said:
> Quicken downloads the data provided by financial institutions, using an industry standard file format. What information do you have to support your statement that it's unquestionably a Quicken problem and not a problem caused by a change at PayPal? My guess —and it's only a guess — is that PayPal changed something resulting in downloading gross instead of net amounts. Should Quicken be pursuing this with Pay Pal to get it fixed? Sure. But why is it their fault if PayPal created the problem?

This issue has been widely discussed in these forums and there is lots of information to support his statement.

This all happened simultaneously with the January update. PayPal didn't make any changes. Quicken pushed out an update. Simultaneously with that update going live Quicken began mishandling PayPal transactions.

There is absolutely no reason to think this is a PayPal issue and every reason to think its a Quicken issue.

jacobs

@dondgc How do you know PayPal didn't make any changes in what they export?

Quicken Mac 6.5 was released in December and version 6.6 was released in February, so I'm not sure how the PayPal issue "happened simultaneously with the January update"?

Since an OFQ/QFX transaction from a financial institution can only have one Amount, and doesn't have a way to represent both a gross and a net amount, how could it be that Quicken is importing the wrong amount? Unless Quicken (Intuit) have a unique and custom way of logging into PayPal and extracting data, it would be on PayPal to provide the correct amount. 

Chris_QPW

dondgc said:

There is absolutely no reason to think this is a PayPal issue and every reason to think its a Quicken issue.

There is every reason to believe that it is a PayPal or Intuit change, and not a "Quicken change".

The very fact that both Quicken Mac and Quicken Windows got hit at the same time means that it is something "upstream" from Quicken (the program).

jacobs said:

@dondgc How do you know PayPal didn't make any changes in what they export?

Quicken Mac 6.5 was released in December and version 6.6 was released in February, so I'm not sure how the PayPal issue "happened simultaneously with the January update"?

Since an OFQ/QFX transaction from a financial institution can only have one Amount, and doesn't have a way to represent both a gross and a net amount, how could it be that Quicken is importing the wrong amount? Unless Quicken (Intuit) have a unique and custom way of logging into PayPal and extracting data, it would be on PayPal to provide the correct amount. 

There isn't doubt in my mind at all that PayPal isn't providing their data in OFX/QFX format.

But one has to understand that is true of tons of financial institutions.  What happens is that Intuit makes an agreement with the financial institution on how to get the data and in what format.  And then if needed it translates it into the format that Quicken needs, which is QFX format.

When you are talking about Quicken Connect (Express Web Connect on Windows) there isn't any telling whether such problems are with Intuit or the financial institution.  That is why your best bet is to report it to Quicken Support and have them escalate the problem.

jacobs

@Chris_QPW Just to be clear, though, if it is an Intuit problem, it is technically a Quicken problem. Although it's not a problem in the code of the Quicken desktop software, the service providers Quicken employs are, from a customer standpoint, Quicken's responsibility.

Normally, inertia suggests that Intuit doesn't change things on its own; it reacts only when financial institutions make changes. But with the changes to Intuit's aggregation systems (FDS to FDP), it's possible it's a problem on Intuit's end. But there's no way for a customer to know whether the issue is at the financial institution end or at the Intuit end. So as you suggest, the customer's only option is to report is to Quicken Support to get them to sort it out.

Chris_QPW

@jacobs My statement wasn't very clear.  It probably should have been:

The problems isn't with Quicken (the program), and there is no telling if it is an Intuit problem or a PayPal problem without contacting Quicken Support to look into it.

Note though, to me it is far from clear which changed.  It is possible that that come customers have complained that they want the gross amount and convinced Quicken support/Intuit to change.

I'm not willing to bet either way.

jacobs

Chris_QPW said:

It is possible that that come customers have complained that they want the gross amount and convinced Quicken support/Intuit to change.

Downloading the gross amount from PayPal would only make sense if it also created a second transaction for the fee deduction. Otherwise, no one could ever balance their PayPal account. This would be as useful as downloading the gross amount of a paycheck instead of the net amount!  

Otherwise, we're in agreement: it's either an Intuit back-end problem (which is ultimately a Quicken problem since Quicken pays Intuit for their services) or a PayPal problem, not a problem with the Quicken application. 

Chris_QPW

jacobs said:

Chris_QPW said:

It is possible that that come customers have complained that they want the gross amount and convinced Quicken support/Intuit to change.

Downloading the gross amount from PayPal would only make sense if it also created a second transaction for the fee deduction. Otherwise, no one could ever balance their PayPal account. This would be as useful as downloading the gross amount of a paycheck instead of the net amount!  

That is exactly what use to happen when I used it in the past.

When I was selling my program and using PayPal as a payment Quicken would download two transactions for each purchase.  One was the gross amount, and the second was the fee.

EDIT:  I haven't sold anything on PayPal in over a year now, and as such I don't keep any balance on PayPal or download anymore, so I haven't tracked what they are doing lately.

Andy-Geneva

I have been using PayPal downloading for years and continue to do so. PayPal always provided two separate transactions in the download, one for the gross amount and one for the fee. Only since early january 2022 did the fee transaction not download. And on days were several transactions are involved, the download process misses many of them. I've reported this to Quicken by phone in January but got disconnected. They did however get my log. I have not heard anything back from Quicken. Very disappointed.

Andy-Geneva

> @Chris_QPW said:
> That is exactly what use to happen when I used it in the past.
>
> When I was selling my program and using PayPal as a payment Quicken would download two transactions for each purchase.  One was the gross amount, and the second was the fee.
>
> EDIT:  I haven't sold anything on PayPal in over a year now, and as such I don't keep any balance on PayPal or download anymore, so I haven't tracked what they are doing lately.

Andy-Geneva Member ✭
1:52PM
I have been using PayPal downloading for years and continue to do so. PayPal always provided two separate transactions in the download, one for the gross amount and one for the fee. Only since early january 2022 did the fee transaction not download. And on days were several transactions are involved, the download process misses many of them. I've reported this to Quicken by phone in January but got disconnected. They did however get my log. I have not heard anything back from Quicken. Very disappointed.

Chris_QPW

BTW I was looking at my history of payments with PayPal and back in 2011 they were sending the net amount.