PayPal Integration

m1cr0ch1p

I setup PayPal integration so transactions are automatically imported into wave. Could you please clarify how this works?

1. Once integration is setup, the transactions are imported. However, the system does not keep on importing any PayPal transactions created after this date. One needs to go to integrations, edit the date and try again. Is this normal behaviour?

2. Sometimes PayPal transactions do not seem to be imported. Is there are cache or time limit on how often Wave checks for new transactions from PayPal?

Thanks

Alexia

Hi @m1cr0ch1p!

Your new PayPal transactions can take a few days before they show up. Anything recent might just still be processing.

For your missing other missing transactions, there's a few possibilities:

• Paypal operates like many other major financial institutions, and only allows for transactions of the past 30-90 days to be imported. If you set up your Paypal integration recently, transactions older than 90 days won't appear.
• Recurring payments, like subscriptions, won't be imported into wave. This is due to how Wave's integration system works.
• You can only ever import a Paypal transaction once. If, for example, all your Paypal transactions were deleted manually, and you disabled your Paypal integration, past transactions would not be re-imported if you reactivated your Paypal integration.

If you do end up having to enter your transactions manually, you can easily export your Paypal transactions as a CSV file and upload that file to Wave. You can find out how to do that here. If you decide to go that route, be mindful of the guidelines posted here.

Note that you will have to remove any column other than Date, Description and Amount, as Wave cannot read those. Having those columns remain in the file will stop you from importing it.

JSC

I'm also experiencing an issue with PayPal transactions not importing. I've previously connected/disconnected PayPal a few weeks ago and reconnected PayPal today so wondering if that's the issue. Should I give it a few days before trying to upload CSV just in case the import is due to a time delay?

The majority of my income transactions are via PayPal so this is significant for me!

Also, I noticed PayPal does not appear under "Bank Connections". However, my business bank account and credit card do display properly. Is this normal?

Thanks!

Alexia

Hi @JSC.

You'll have to upload a CSV file. As I mentioned in the above post, there are a few reasons why your PayPal transactions might not be uploading. If you've uploaded them before and then removed them, you wouldn't be able to re-upload them automatically. You also won't be able to upload recurring transactions from PayPal. If you give me a bit more information about those transactions, I might be able to give you a better idea as to why your transactions won't upload.

Wave doesn't see PayPal as a bank account for the purpose of connections (but it's pretty close). The short version as to why is that we go a different route to extract that data.

You can see it if you click on Integrations, in the menu on the left.

Let me know if you have more questions, or if you need help formatting your CSV!

JSC

@Alexia said:
Hi @JSC.

You'll have to upload a CSV file. As I mentioned in the above post, there are a few reasons why your PayPal transactions might not be uploading. If you've uploaded them before and then removed them, you wouldn't be able to re-upload them automatically. You also won't be able to upload recurring transactions from PayPal. If you give me a bit more information about those transactions, I might be able to give you a better idea as to why your transactions won't upload.

Wave doesn't see PayPal as a bank account for the purpose of connections (but it's pretty close). The short version as to why is that we go a different route to extract that data.

You can see it if you click on Integrations, in the menu on the left.

Let me know if you have more questions, or if you need help formatting your CSV!

Hi @Alexia,

Since I've previously disconnected/reconnected the PayPal integration, is there no other option now but to manually upload all future PayPal transactions moving forward?

I was able to successfully import PayPal transactions via .csv file upload for Jan/Feb 2018 so now I'm current up until this month (March 2018).

It seems like a huge hassle to have to manually important all PayPal transactions moving forward. Will there be a better solution for this in the near future?

PayPal handles the majority of my business transactions so it's important that I get this data into Wave as fast/often as possible. At this rate, I'll probably aim to do a manual .csv upload at the end of each month.

Thanks!

JSC

@Alexia said:
Hi @JSC.

You'll have to upload a CSV file. As I mentioned in the above post, there are a few reasons why your PayPal transactions might not be uploading. If you've uploaded them before and then removed them, you wouldn't be able to re-upload them automatically. You also won't be able to upload recurring transactions from PayPal. If you give me a bit more information about those transactions, I might be able to give you a better idea as to why your transactions won't upload.

Wave doesn't see PayPal as a bank account for the purpose of connections (but it's pretty close). The short version as to why is that we go a different route to extract that data.

You can see it if you click on Integrations, in the menu on the left.

Let me know if you have more questions, or if you need help formatting your CSV!

Hi @Alexia,

Since I've previously disconnected/reconnected my PayPal account, are manual PayPal transactions imports/uploads my only option moving forward? Is there a solution for this on the horizon?

As the majority of my transactions come through PayPal, this seems like quite a hassle to keep transactions current. I will likely be doing the manual imports at the end of each month to account for the previous month's transactions.

I was able to successfully import PayPal transactions via .csv for Jan/Feb 2018 so I'm current up to March 2018.

Thanks!

Alexia

No @JSC, it should just be your old transactions, new transactions should come in fine. They can take a couple of days to be exported, however, so if you're just missing the most recent ones, that might be the issue.

Are you missing all of March? When you set your PayPal integration, Wave asks you for a starting date to upload transactions. Could you have entered something more recent?

We are working on better integrations across the board, so I would expect interesting features to be added, and current features to be improved, but I don't have specifics or timelines to give at this moment.

jbernthold

@Alexia I have a question about the integration. If needs to be on another thread I can do so. What about the PayPal fees? How should we go about accounting for that in Wave? I saw there was another thread but looks like it was moved.

Does Wave account for fees from new transactions? I am guessing we would have to go back manually on past ones but still curious as to what the best way to put them in the system?

JSC

@Alexia said:
No @JSC, it should just be your old transactions, new transactions should come in fine. They can take a couple of days to be exported, however, so if you're just missing the most recent ones, that might be the issue.

Are you missing all of March? When you set your PayPal integration, Wave asks you for a starting date to upload transactions. Could you have entered something more recent?

We are working on better integrations across the board, so I would expect interesting features to be added, and current features to be improved, but I don't have specifics or timelines to give at this moment.

I believe that when I originally connected PayPal, I entered a date as far back as possible.

I'm not seeing any new transactions coming in for PayPal. I did not see any new transactions come in for March for PayPal. I had to manually import March. Would it help to disconnect and reconnect once again?

I'm also curious about the questioned asked by @jbernthold on categorizing PayPal fees.

m1cr0ch1p

I can confirm that PayPal integration didnt work for me either. It didnt continue to import automatically. I eventually gave up on trying to get it to work, and manually import the transactions on a monthly basis through a CSV upload.

Alexia

Hi everyone!

@jbernthold, if your PayPal connection works, Wave will take everything into account automatically. Otherwise, here's a workflow to account for merchant fees from third-party payment processors:

1. Create a special holding account to record full invoice payments.  Head over to the "Chart of Accounts" in the Accounting tab. Click "Add an Account" and choose "Money in Transit" as the account type under the "Asset" header.

2. When an invoice is paid, add an income transaction to this account for the full amount of the invoice before fees, and categorize this transaction to "Payment for an invoice in Wave" to mark the invoice as paid.

3. Add an expense transaction to the holding account for the amount of the merchant fees, categorized to "Merchant Account Fees."

4. When the invoice deposit is pulled in from a bank connection (this should be the invoice amount less the merchant fees) categorize this transaction as a "Transfer from.." and select the holding account.  

We're building out a way to cut down the steps above, so this workflow is only temporary! For now, this will allow you to account for merchant fees as a separate expense without throwing off your ability to perform Reconciliation.

If you don't use invoices and only use Wave for your accounting, you can just record two transactions: an income for the total value of your sale and an expense for the merchant fees incurred.

@JSC, if it still isn't bringing in new transactions, and those transactions are recurring income/expenses, then I think you're right. Re-connecting might work.

@m1cr0ch1p, that's understandable. Hopefully, the process isn't too time-consuming. We are working on improving our integrations quite a lot in the future, so I would expect better options to be available to you soon.

JSC

@Alexia said:
Hi everyone!

@jbernthold, if your PayPal connection works, Wave will take everything into account automatically. Otherwise, here's a workflow to account for merchant fees from third-party payment processors:

1. Create a special holding account to record full invoice payments.  Head over to the "Chart of Accounts" in the Accounting tab. Click "Add an Account" and choose "Money in Transit" as the account type under the "Asset" header.

2. When an invoice is paid, add an income transaction to this account for the full amount of the invoice before fees, and categorize this transaction to "Payment for an invoice in Wave" to mark the invoice as paid.

3. Add an expense transaction to the holding account for the amount of the merchant fees, categorized to "Merchant Account Fees."

4. When the invoice deposit is pulled in from a bank connection (this should be the invoice amount less the merchant fees) categorize this transaction as a "Transfer from.." and select the holding account.  

We're building out a way to cut down the steps above, so this workflow is only temporary! For now, this will allow you to account for merchant fees as a separate expense without throwing off your ability to perform Reconciliation.

If you don't use invoices and only use Wave for your accounting, you can just record two transactions: an income for the total value of your sale and an expense for the merchant fees incurred.

@JSC, if it still isn't bringing in new transactions, and those transactions are recurring income/expenses, then I think you're right. Re-connecting might work.

@m1cr0ch1p, that's understandable. Hopefully, the process isn't too time-consuming. We are working on improving our integrations quite a lot in the future, so I would expect better options to be available to you soon.

Would it be better to 1) change the date and save or 2) completely delete and re-connect the PayPal account?

Alexia

Hi @JSC.

The second choice, delete it entirely and add it again. Since PayPal won't upload transactions that already have been uploaded, you don't risk getting any duplicates from doing this.

juz23

Hi I am having similar problems with paypal in that it wont import everything it seems to stop importing on a regular basis. When i reconnect it imports the paypal transactions OK however it then creates a new paypal account in the assets and it gives a new paypal starting balance in the owners equity for the year. So we now have about 8 paypal accounts in the 'bank accounts' section of the assets category and a whole lot of incorrect owners equity amounts as well. Any Ideas please

Alexia

Hi, @juz23.

As mentioned earlier in this discussion, there are several limitations to our PayPal integration. We are working on improving our integrations in the near future, but I don't have specific information to reveal at this time.

Given how convoluted your own situation has become, I would recommend deleting the entirety of your PayPal transaction history, archiving your old PayPal accounts and starting fresh.

I would also recommend uploading your PayPal statements manually as CSVs, instead of using the integration. You can easily export your Paypal transactions as a CSV file and upload that file to Wave. You can find out how to do that here. If you decide to go that route, you'll have to do some reformatting to make this CSV comply with our own requirements. Here's how to upload a CSV statement to Wave..

I hope this helps!

juz23

thank you i will give it a go

hannahro

Having some of the same issues...wondering if anything is new since July re: paypal integration? I have downloaded transactions since August 1, but had multiple paypal accounts and so disconnected the account as advised. Now if I reconnect, is it going to create a second account? Is the choice then between having two accounts ongoing in the list, or deleting all these transactions in the first account and then reconnecting and doing a manual upload of the transactions that already downloaded?

Alexia

Hi, @hannahro,

You're very likely dealing with a similar situation. The PayPal integration has a few issues that can often cause more trouble than it's worth. I really do recommend disabling your PayPal integration entirely and using the CSV upload feature to upload a copy of your PayPal history that has been modified to fit our bank statement format instead. It's a bit of work, but it's much more reliable and won't cause this doubling of accounts.

You'll either have to move all of your transactions from one account to the other or delete the transactions in one of the accounts and re-upload them to the right account as mentioned about. Renaming both PayPal accounts to tell them apart might also be a good idea.

I know this is inconvenient, but if you run into any issues or need help with any part of this process, let me know and I'll be glad to help.

JSC

@Alexia Any update on ETA for improvements to the PayPal integration? I've been doing the manual imports as you suggested for months now (which works fine) but still holding my breathe, anxiously waiting for a better solution! Thanks!

melphd

I am planning on discontinuing Waveapps in 2019 because of the PayPal integration problem. I would stay if transactions would automatically import.

Alexia

Hi, @JSC and @melphd,

I don't have any additional information to share on this for the time being. I understand that the situation is frustrating, but I can't guarantee a timeline for when this integration will work more reliably. I can tell you that we are aware of the kind of impact that a better PayPal integration would have on the day-to-day work of our Wavers and that we are listening to your feedback.

With that said, I'm happy to pass your comment along to our developers. I can't make any promises, but I can make sure your feedback is heard.

DrYou

Bummer that this doesn't work. I'm an eBay seller so this is pretty rough. Manual imports are rough as well from PayPal, I have to edit the CSV it exports to have less columns and also manually rename a couple columns. As far as removing and re-adding the account, or even changing the date and saving, it does Import duplicates for me.

Alexia

Hi, @DrYou,

I completely understand how frustrating this can be. My recommendation would be to clear everything uploaded from the PayPal integration and start fresh. Turning a PayPal history CSV into one that will upload to Wave should only take a few minutes. Here's a step-by-step breakdown of how to do it quickly:

• Copy the Amount, Description and Date columns into a new spreadsheet.
• Copy the merchant fee column at the bottom of the Amount.
• Copy the Date column again and paste it again at the bottom of the Date column. The order of your merchant fee column should match the order of the dates already if nothing was moved around.
• As a description for your merchant fee transactions, just put in "PayPal Fee", and copy it next to every merchant fee transaction.

I hope this helps!

Dan

Hey Alexia, just going through this thread for the first time. Thanks for your help. Are you able to give any indication of whether Paypal integration is being developed or improved? And any idea of timeline? I have more paypal transactions now too.

SFLWebDesign

@Alexia said:
Hi, @JSC and @melphd,

I don't have any additional information to share on this for the time being. I understand that the situation is frustrating, but I can't guarantee a timeline for when this integration will work more reliably. I can tell you that we are aware of the kind of impact that a better PayPal integration would have on the day-to-day work of our Wavers and that we are listening to your feedback.

With that said, I'm happy to pass your comment along to our developers. I can't make any promises, but I can make sure your feedback is heard.

I'll jump in to plus one the PayPal integration improvements, adding recurring payments by hand every month is quite a hassle, particularly when it's one of those slow loading days that occasionally happen on wave. It likely adds an hour to my accounting if not more. Once that particular PayPal integration upgrade is finally implemented by the developers I think that Wave App will see a huge wave of new small business users!

TylerK

Hey @Dan and @SFLWebDesign! We are planning to open up access to our API for interested users later this year. You can read more about applying to become a Wave Integration Partner on our Partner Page and sign up directly on our developer page. Applicants will be notified when the API is ready. This will allow for us to learn even more about integrations as a whole - a knowledge we can then apply to revamping our PayPal integration.

mrl14

Oh boy - this is a terrible integration and one that should be removed or better documented within the application setup process itself. I just went through migrating my existing business into Wave. I added PayPal integration and immediately noticed some issues:

• I am forced to create a new account for these transactions..WHY?? This creates additional work where I now have to manually edit each imported transaction, each time, to my actual PayPal account that I created in the chart of accounts.
• I had no idea that we are limited to 90 days of txn. Why isn't this specified on the integration page?
• PayPal supports multiple currencies, yet there is no indication on the setup page on how this will be handled
• I'm glad to see that you don't reimport txns again once imported, but that should also be stated on the setup page
• Continuous import of new txn again, should also be stated somewhere - it is a guessing game right now on how that is handled.

Edit: Importing bank transactions allowed me to select an existing account - as I expected...so I'm not sure why PayPal doesn't allow for this.

Thanks

JordanD

Hi @mrl14 ,

Thanks for your feedback on the PayPal integration within Wave. I understand that this integration leaves some room to be desired and your feedback is greatly appreciated.

Effectively, the bank connection and bank integration tools within Wave are two different integration types, which means that they cannot be treated the same. This means that unlike the bank connection, where you can choose a pre-existing payment account from your Chart of Accounts, the PayPal integration will automatically create one. I understand that this is far from ideal, however, moving forward, I would recommend refreshing the connection rather than disconnecting and reconnecting it. If you have other transactions from within your transactions page already with a created PayPal account, I would recommend moving them into the newly created one. This means filtering your transactions page and editing the transactions, moving them to the new PayPal account.

Ultimately, PayPal is a stand alone product and while we can work to some degree on some of the visibility and support items related to using the connection, the way the product functions is somewhat out of our control. If you are finding the process of using the integration itself arduous, or far from ideal, I would recommend uploading a CSV of the transactions into your Wave account instead. This will allow for more control of how the data looks, can be manipulated, and the reliability of how it is imported.

ericpoppleton

Yikes! Just read through this thread, and have been having a support chat related to this. My business had only a few PayPal transactions per month, can't imagine how the rest that rely on PayPal more heavily can deal with this. The integration clearly needs a lot of work.

Camander

Trying to clean up my books... I have 2 paypal accounts in my "chart of accounts" both have balances - (one positive, one negative). I am trying to merge or cancel, or something to get my accounting straight. I can not do a journal entry as the negative account will not pull up in journal, I can't seem to do it one-by-one because again the negative account does not pull up in the transactional pull down, I can't do a transfer because I can't get the negative account to pull up... Any ideas?

Erik

Hey @Camander, I sent you an email so that we can further troubleshoot the issue you are experiencing. Please let me know if you don't receive this email shortly!