I hope the good folks at Wave will reconsider this move... seems like a backwards step to discontinue Paypal integration, and one that could result in Wave losing some customers.
That said, for those of us wiling to try out the Integromat "solution" - perhaps the Wave folks could provide some instructions or a template to get Paypal and Wave working together?
Well, I'm sad to say I'm in the middle of switching to a new accounting software because of this very reason. I really wish Wave didn't discontinue the connection with Paypal. Zapier doesn't appear to work in my situation where I make purchases with Paypal and I want the expense to import into Wave. I don't want to add another to do and manually import the transactions into my accounting software either, I'm a one-person business, and adding another thing is too much.
Hi @AlexL - having to do this manually has been pretty frustrating and cumbersome. Like @Scott_McCulloch mentioned earlier, I would also really appreciate if Wave could provide some step-by-step instructions or a template to get Paypal and Wave working together in an automated fashion as before. This feels like like an awful downgrade from my experience with the platform and I hope we can at least be provided with a working solution that really replaces the removed PayPal & Wave integration functionality.
Perhaps the retired PayPal integration wasn't perfect - but at least it was available to us as an option. I've tried the alternatives provided in this post but the only one that actually works for me is the manual import option - which is too much work when this can be automated and it was, before.
The PayPal integration met the needs of many of the disappointed users of Wave who are posting on this thread. Where are the "many" customers that say removing the PayPal Integration meets their needs? I don't see them here defending this decision.
I'm sorry to hear that this decision has affected your accounting workflow for both you and your business. At this time, your alternative options are importing CSV PayPal statements, Wave Connect, or Zapier. For the most automated method, I suggest checking out Zapier's Paypal integration.
Integration with the new API would be greatly appreciated.
I'm sorry to see this go. I am also not excited about giving yet another third-party access to my PayPal and Wave accounts.
Without PayPal the point of using wave for us vanishes.
I Hope the Wave team can find a solution for this. Every accounting app I know has Paypal integration (as with any other bank) I can't see the reason why it is not working with Wave.
Thanks for your reply. The only automated method provided is the Zapier PayPal integration. This would in fact require a Zapier premium subscription (for a feature that was available to us on Wave before). And even after paying for this premium subscription, this integration only seems to track sales but not purchases. We need an integration that imports all transactions from PayPal - we still don't have an alternative solution that appropriately replaces the discontinued Wave PayPal integration.
I'm sure many of us on this thread would appreciate a guide that will direct us to an automated alternative that really replaces the discontinued feature. Without one, I am struggling to find a way to find manual imports manageable and considering leaving Wave altogether as a service
Hi @twcmusic , I'm sorry to hear that you are having some trouble with the available Zapier integration. If the Zapier integration is not suitable for your business needs, an alternative is Integromat. Integromat can automatically import both expense and income transactions to Wave. I hope you are able to find some success with this alternative.
Hi @KristenV - I appreciate you trying to help but Integromat was the first alternative I tried. It never worked for me, the webhooks never fired, and after going over Integromat's own instruction I could not figure out how to get a PayPal automation to work with Wave. If you or anyone at Wave has tested that this really works and can provide us with a detailed step-by-step guideline on how to set this up, I would greatly appreciate it and I'm sure many here would as well.
Has anyone on this thread actually gotten Integromat to work for them?
PayPal has been removed? Instability seems to be a weak point to hold to. PayPal is a huge service relied on by others. I see the point about simply pulling transactions in from the PayPal as if it was a separate asset account, but that creates an undesired extra set of steps. It would be far easier to work on returning it to an option for us as many other competitive platforms do offer the integration. What if during the pursuit of returning integration, it is at least a checkout option on our websites since payments don't require invoices in the **checkout ** function? At least that would be a good start especially for those of us who have websites.
I'm sorry to hear that you were not successful with Integromat. Moving forward, since these integrations don't live with Wave, I suggest reaching out to Integromat's support team by opening a ticket for further assistance. I suggest reaching out to Zapier as well if you haven't already.
Thanks for your feedback. You can still integrate your PayPal account by using Zapier or Integromat. If these options don't suffice, you can import your PayPal data manually by using our CSV uploader as well.
Sounds like your developers have failed you. Hundreds of other apps integrate with PayPal flawlessly, so it appears the issue is with your developers and not PayPal
Getting back to you about reaching out to Integromat and Zapier - which I have now done. They were unable to help. I hope Wave can provide customers and users like myself some guidance, because I really don't know what my options are now for automating this besides using another service.
After asking for help with syncing PayPal transactions (both sales and purchases) with Wave. Here is what Integromat said:
"Right now, our Paypal modules rely on an IPN connection" ( which is limited to only reporting sales).
Zapier said the same about their integration:
"As of the moment, triggering from custom messages is not yet supported by our Paypal integrations. However, this is already being discussed, depending on user demand. While I cannot ensure that this could be a possibility, and I don't have an ETA on when this feature might be implemented, we will notify you via email if it is! Another thing to take note of is that Paypal is considered a Premium App. It means that it requires a paid plan to use."
What can a Wave user do as an alternative to automated syncing, since these appear to not be working?
Hey @twcmusic , I'm sorry to hear that these aren't functioning the way that they're supposed to. As we no longer provide an automatic PayPal import within the software, the next best bet for you here would be to upload your PayPal transactions or statements through Wave Connect. I understand that it isn't automated, but it will allow you to import both sales and purchases as well as save you time from entering in every transaction manually.
Hi @AlexL, thanks for your response. Unfortunately, I do require an automated solution for this. Is there a way to automate PayPal generating reports to Wave Connect and then having that trigger a scheduled import to Wave? If this would be possible with Wave Connect, then this could temporarily resolve the issue we are facing with lack of a complete alternative for this feature.
How can you just remove the integration like this and not think you'll lose customers? I just started using Waves and am now wondering if I made a bad decision. Some of my clients will only pay me via Paypal. Please bring back the integration! I'd even pay for it if need be.
Hey @twcmusic , I appreciate your need for this and you making sure to check all of your options, but in full transparency, the truth of the matter is that at the moment we just don't have a function that would automate this solution for you other than the options that were listed previously that you mentioned aren't functioning well for you. The only other alternative would be Wave Connect (which is completely manual) or manually adding these transactions into Wave.
This is an important issue. Paypal is one of the most popular payment options all around the world. I hope Wave can solve it in the near future. Thanks
Hi @AlexL , thanks for getting back to me. I appreciate that Wave Support team is actively checking these forums. The fact that there is no solution currently to this issue is quite disappointing but I hope the Wave team is developing a way to solve this and we can get an update here whenever that is implemented. Like many folks have mentioned on this thread, Wave should reconsider it's decision as it has negatively impacted the workflow of many clients.
Well this is quite disappointing. We just started taking website payments from PayPal and found out Wave doesn't integrate with it and worse, doesn't plan to. We were happy with Wave up to this point, but will definitely keep an eye out for alternatives going forward.
To add to how ridiculous this is, Plaid (which Wave uses to connect to bank accounts) has no problem connecting to PayPal accounts. I asked them why this isn't enabled, and Wave said they don't want to enable it.
It seems like they're trying to force users away from PayPal and convince them to use Wave payments instead, but the opposite is happening – people are leaving Wave.
That's very interesting. If activating PayPal transactions through Plaid is as easy as just enabling the feature, then it should get activated (since an alternative solution for this hasn't been offered yet).
Wave, can we please get PayPal linking through Plaid?
@dontoverthinkthis said:
To add to how ridiculous this is, Plaid (which Wave uses to connect to bank accounts) has no problem connecting to PayPal accounts. I asked them why this isn't enabled, and Wave said they don't want to enable it.
It seems like they're trying to force users away from PayPal and convince them to use Wave payments instead, but the opposite is happening – people are leaving Wave.
Smells like an anti-competitive violation ... shall be reported to FTC I believe. None of the provided reasoning/explanations by Wave found ground, at least here, amongst people participating in the discussion. None of the suggested workarounds seem to satisfy the need that could be relatively easily satisfied otherwise.
Coming from using Quickbooks about a year and a half ago I could not be happier with Wave and the value it provides for literally no cost so far. But the reactions from the staff here make me worrying.
@AlexL - allow me to point your attention that your business is far from being as sticky of ecosystem/religion as Apple for you to resort to narratives of being "sorry that YOU have a problem" or "we are sorry that YOU are experiencing problems" and redirecting the source of issue on your customers, partners, suppliers etc. , in other words to whoever except yourself. People here are not driven by consumer reasoning like love and affection. It is all matter of business justifiability.
@dontoverthinkthis said:
To add to how ridiculous this is, Plaid (which Wave uses to connect to bank accounts) has no problem connecting to PayPal accounts. I asked them why this isn't enabled, and Wave said they don't want to enable it.
It seems like they're trying to force users away from PayPal and convince them to use Wave payments instead, but the opposite is happening – people are leaving Wave.
Smells like an anti-competitive violation ... shall be reported to FTC I believe. None of the provided reasoning/explanations by Wave found ground, at least here, amongst people participating in the discussion. None of the suggested workarounds seem to satisfy the need that could be relatively easily satisfied otherwise.
Coming from using Quickbooks about a year and a half ago I could not be happier with Wave and the value it provides for literally no cost so far. But the reactions from the staff here make me worrying.
@AlexL - allow me to point your attention that your business is far from being as sticky of ecosystem/religion as Apple for you to resort to narratives of being "sorry that YOU have a problem" or "we are sorry that YOU are experiencing problems" and redirecting the source of issue on your customers, partners, suppliers etc. , in other words to whoever except yourself. People here are not driven by consumer reasoning like love and affection. It is all matter of business justifiability.
Not a bad idea. I have to say, I love the Wave product as well but seeing them shut down multiple features in recent times makes me worry the company is hurting for money... And if they are, should I jump ship now?
Just jumping in on the comments about Plaid supporting Paypal: Plaid do NOT provide a transaction feed from Paypal that would be usable to fill transactions in Wave. I have discussed this extensively with them, and they face the same problems that we do, including the structure of Paypal 'pseudo-accounts' for currencies, and movements between them.
To be absolutely clear: when we retired our old and unreliable Paypal integration, we had extensive conversations with Plaid to see if they had a solution for this, or could develop one. If there had been a solution, we would have enabled it. If at some time in the future Plaid becomes able to provide us access to Paypal transactions, we will surely use that.
Integration to Paypal for accounting transactions is very challenging, and I don't believe anyone does it well. Various commenters have fed back that Zapier and Integromat are also reporting they are unable to access the desired data from Paypal. Zapier's and Integromat's whole business is about building integrations, so it should tell you something if they can't offer a solution, either.
I do understand that manually bookkeeping your Paypal transactions is inconvenient. If integrated payments and bookkeeping is important to you, the best solutions I can suggest right now would be to either use Wave Payments, or lobby Paypal to build an integration to Wave - or any other accounting software - to make this easy. (Wave provides a free, public API that is ready to receive such an integration.)
Just jumping in on the comments about Plaid supporting Paypal: Plaid do NOT provide a transaction feed from Paypal that would be usable to fill transactions in Wave. I have discussed this extensively with them, and they face the same problems that we do, including the structure of Paypal 'pseudo-accounts' for currencies, and movements between them.
To be absolutely clear: when we retired our old and unreliable Paypal integration, we had extensive conversations with Plaid to see if they had a solution for this, or could develop one. If there had been a solution, we would have enabled it. If at some time in the future Plaid becomes able to provide us access to Paypal transactions, we will surely use that.
Integration to Paypal for accounting transactions is very challenging, and I don't believe anyone does it well. Various commenters have fed back that Zapier and Integromat are also reporting they are unable to access the desired data from Paypal. Zapier's and Integromat's whole business is about building integrations, so it should tell you something if they can't offer a solution, either.
I do understand that manually bookkeeping your Paypal transactions is inconvenient. If integrated payments and bookkeeping is important to you, the best solutions I can suggest right now would be to either use Wave Payments, or lobby Paypal to build an integration to Wave - or any other accounting software - to make this easy. (Wave provides a free, public API that is ready to receive such an integration.)
Sorry Paul, but I've gotta call you out on that flat out LIE.
YNAB uses Plaid to connect to PayPal. I've been using Plaid to connect to PayPal for ages, and it automatically imports my transactions. Here's a screenshot of Plaid showing the ability to connect to PayPal.
You guys can run your business the way you want, but don't think you can lie to customers and get away with it. We're not that stupid, even though you might think so. At least have the decency to tell us you don't want to integrate with PayPal, rather than saying you "can't".
Firstly, I do not appreciate being called a liar when trying to provide helpful information. Truthfulness is an important value at Wave, and for me personally. However, for the benefit of others who may be reading this thread, I will respond.
I previously stated "Plaid do NOT provide a transaction feed from Paypal that would be usable to fill transactions in Wave", and you pointed out that YNAB use Plaid to extract transactions from Plaid. So let's look at that.
To verify my past analysis and conversations with the Plaid team, I created a YNAB account, and connected my personal Paypal account via Plaid. (Yes, Plaid does connect.)
I then made three test transactions:
I sent GB£1.00 to a friend in the UK. Paypal added a fee of GB£0.38 for a total of £1.38, and settled this to my Paypal account (which is based in CA$) as CA$2.49.
I requested US$1.00 from myself, and paid this with a credit card. Paypal deducted a fee of US$0.33 and retained the net of US$0.67 in a US$ account balance.
I converted the US$0.67 balance to CA$0.80
Here's a copy of the transaction export:
After allowing some time for YNAB to update, here's what's showing in my YNAB account:
As you can see, there are some problems with this:
The GB£1.00 plus fees outflow is incorrectly shown as CA$1.38
The US$1.00 inflow less fees is incorrectly shown as CA$0.67
The inter-currency transfer is not represented at all
The balance is incorrectly shown as CA$47.57, compared with the correct balance of CA$46.59.
Comparing the YNAB data to the Paypal transaction export, it is clear that Plaid are accessing or receiving only rows marked as "General Payment", and are getting those without any consideration of the currency. This was a blocking issue that we found when we first considered using Plaid for Paypal integration, and is clearly unchanged.
Our research has identified 2 main reasons that a customer might use Paypal rather than Wave Payments (which automatically handles all associated accounting transactions):
To integrate with an ecommerce website, or
To handle receipts and payments in foreign currencies.
As a way of accounting ecommerce transactions, relying on Paypal data is a poor solution, because (as both the Paypal export and the YNAB screenshot show) charges are opaque. To account properly, it should be possible to see both the sale amount (Income) and the transaction charge (Expense). We believe that integrating from the ecommerce tool or platform is the better solution, and we provide a dedicated API and Zapier action for recording ecommerce sales, with associated charges.
For accounting transactions in foreign currencies, the examples given above demonstrate that Plaid integration is not a workable solution. (The issue is Paypal/Plaid; not YNAB in this case.)
While these issues remain unresolved, we continue to believe that the available Plaid integration is not usable to fill transactions in Wave. As stated previously, however, if at some time in the future Plaid becomes able to provide us a reliable data stream for Paypal transactions, we will certainly look at this again.
Firstly, I do not appreciate being called a liar when trying to provide helpful information. Truthfulness is an important value at Wave, and for me personally. However, for the benefit of others who may be reading this thread, I will respond.
I previously stated "Plaid do NOT provide a transaction feed from Paypal that would be usable to fill transactions in Wave", and you pointed out that YNAB use Plaid to extract transactions from Plaid. So let's look at that.
To verify my past analysis and conversations with the Plaid team, I created a YNAB account, and connected my personal Paypal account via Plaid. (Yes, Plaid does connect.)
I then made three test transactions:
I sent GB£1.00 to a friend in the UK. Paypal added a fee of GB£0.38 for a total of £1.38, and settled this to my Paypal account (which is based in CA$) as CA$2.49.
I requested US$1.00 from myself, and paid this with a credit card. Paypal deducted a fee of US$0.33 and retained the net of US$0.67 in a US$ account balance.
I converted the US$0.67 balance to CA$0.80
Here's a copy of the transaction export:
After allowing some time for YNAB to update, here's what's showing in my YNAB account:
As you can see, there are some problems with this:
The GB£1.00 plus fees outflow is incorrectly shown as CA$1.38
The US$1.00 inflow less fees is incorrectly shown as CA$0.67
The inter-currency transfer is not represented at all
The balance is incorrectly shown as CA$47.57, compared with the correct balance of CA$46.59.
Comparing the YNAB data to the Paypal transaction export, it is clear that Plaid are accessing or receiving only rows marked as "General Payment", and are getting those without any consideration of the currency. This was a blocking issue that we found when we first considered using Plaid for Paypal integration, and is clearly unchanged.
Our research has identified 2 main reasons that a customer might use Paypal rather than Wave Payments (which automatically handles all associated accounting transactions):
To integrate with an ecommerce website, or
To handle receipts and payments in foreign currencies.
As a way of accounting ecommerce transactions, relying on Paypal data is a poor solution, because (as both the Paypal export and the YNAB screenshot show) charges are opaque. To account properly, it should be possible to see both the sale amount (Income) and the transaction charge (Expense). We believe that integrating from the ecommerce tool or platform is the better solution, and we provide a dedicated API and Zapier action for recording ecommerce sales, with associated charges.
For accounting transactions in foreign currencies, the examples given above demonstrate that Plaid integration is not a workable solution. (The issue is Paypal/Plaid; not YNAB in this case.)
While these issues remain unresolved, we continue to believe that the available Plaid integration is not usable to fill transactions in Wave. As stated previously, however, if at some time in the future Plaid becomes able to provide us a reliable data stream for Paypal transactions, we will certainly look at this again.
Any connection is better than no connection. The fact is that it DOES connect, saying it doesn't is factually untrue. I'd rather have to manually adjust transactions than manually enter every single one – I'm sure most would agree!
@dontoverthinkthis I did not say that Plaid does not connect with Paypal. Please don't put words in my mouth.
I said "Plaid do NOT provide a transaction feed from Paypal that would be usable to fill transactions in Wave", and I stand by that, as demonstrated above.
I hear that you personally would prefer a connection that includes incorrect data which you need to adjust over no connection. That is noted, but we will not deliberately enable a connection that will routinely and by design bring incorrect data into customers' books when many will not be as alert as you to the errors.
If you wish to quickly achieve much the same result as YNAB are doing via Plaid, I suggest the following steps:
Export a CSV of your transactions (select "since last export" to avoid duplicates)
@PaulC said: @dontoverthinkthis I did not say that Plaid does not connect with Paypal. Please don't put words in my mouth.
I said "Plaid do NOT provide a transaction feed from Paypal that would be usable to fill transactions in Wave", and I stand by that, as demonstrated above.
I hear that you personally would prefer a connection that includes incorrect data which you need to adjust over no connection. That is noted, but we will not deliberately enable a connection that will routinely and by design bring incorrect data into customers' books when many will not be as alert as you to the errors.
If you wish to quickly achieve much the same result as YNAB are doing via Plaid, I suggest the following steps:
Export a CSV of your transactions (select "since last export" to avoid duplicates)
There's a quite simple solution there, which is to warn users that if they use the connection they need to manually review each one for accuracy. It's exhausting to hear "nah, we can't" when the reality is you can, but seemingly don't want to. Just read the other comments in this thread to see how frustrated people are by your lack of progress on this!
Comments
I hope the good folks at Wave will reconsider this move... seems like a backwards step to discontinue Paypal integration, and one that could result in Wave losing some customers.
That said, for those of us wiling to try out the Integromat "solution" - perhaps the Wave folks could provide some instructions or a template to get Paypal and Wave working together?
Well, I'm sad to say I'm in the middle of switching to a new accounting software because of this very reason. I really wish Wave didn't discontinue the connection with Paypal. Zapier doesn't appear to work in my situation where I make purchases with Paypal and I want the expense to import into Wave. I don't want to add another to do and manually import the transactions into my accounting software either, I'm a one-person business, and adding another thing is too much.
Super bummed.
Hi @AlexL - having to do this manually has been pretty frustrating and cumbersome. Like @Scott_McCulloch mentioned earlier, I would also really appreciate if Wave could provide some step-by-step instructions or a template to get Paypal and Wave working together in an automated fashion as before. This feels like like an awful downgrade from my experience with the platform and I hope we can at least be provided with a working solution that really replaces the removed PayPal & Wave integration functionality.
Perhaps the retired PayPal integration wasn't perfect - but at least it was available to us as an option. I've tried the alternatives provided in this post but the only one that actually works for me is the manual import option - which is too much work when this can be automated and it was, before.
The PayPal integration met the needs of many of the disappointed users of Wave who are posting on this thread. Where are the "many" customers that say removing the PayPal Integration meets their needs? I don't see them here defending this decision.
Hey @twcmusic !
I'm sorry to hear that this decision has affected your accounting workflow for both you and your business. At this time, your alternative options are importing CSV PayPal statements, Wave Connect, or Zapier. For the most automated method, I suggest checking out Zapier's Paypal integration.
Integration with the new API would be greatly appreciated.
I'm sorry to see this go. I am also not excited about giving yet another third-party access to my PayPal and Wave accounts.
Without PayPal the point of using wave for us vanishes.
I Hope the Wave team can find a solution for this. Every accounting app I know has Paypal integration (as with any other bank) I can't see the reason why it is not working with Wave.
Hi @JulianP
Thanks for your reply. The only automated method provided is the Zapier PayPal integration. This would in fact require a Zapier premium subscription (for a feature that was available to us on Wave before). And even after paying for this premium subscription, this integration only seems to track sales but not purchases. We need an integration that imports all transactions from PayPal - we still don't have an alternative solution that appropriately replaces the discontinued Wave PayPal integration.
I'm sure many of us on this thread would appreciate a guide that will direct us to an automated alternative that really replaces the discontinued feature. Without one, I am struggling to find a way to find manual imports manageable and considering leaving Wave altogether as a service
Hi @twcmusic , I'm sorry to hear that you are having some trouble with the available Zapier integration. If the Zapier integration is not suitable for your business needs, an alternative is Integromat. Integromat can automatically import both expense and income transactions to Wave. I hope you are able to find some success with this alternative.
Hi @KristenV - I appreciate you trying to help but Integromat was the first alternative I tried. It never worked for me, the webhooks never fired, and after going over Integromat's own instruction I could not figure out how to get a PayPal automation to work with Wave. If you or anyone at Wave has tested that this really works and can provide us with a detailed step-by-step guideline on how to set this up, I would greatly appreciate it and I'm sure many here would as well.
Has anyone on this thread actually gotten Integromat to work for them?
PayPal has been removed? Instability seems to be a weak point to hold to. PayPal is a huge service relied on by others. I see the point about simply pulling transactions in from the PayPal as if it was a separate asset account, but that creates an undesired extra set of steps. It would be far easier to work on returning it to an option for us as many other competitive platforms do offer the integration. What if during the pursuit of returning integration, it is at least a checkout option on our websites since payments don't require invoices in the **checkout ** function? At least that would be a good start especially for those of us who have websites.
Hey @twcmusic !
I'm sorry to hear that you were not successful with Integromat. Moving forward, since these integrations don't live with Wave, I suggest reaching out to Integromat's support team by opening a ticket for further assistance. I suggest reaching out to Zapier as well if you haven't already.
Hello @SPS_John !
Thanks for your feedback. You can still integrate your PayPal account by using Zapier or Integromat. If these options don't suffice, you can import your PayPal data manually by using our CSV uploader as well.
Sounds like your developers have failed you. Hundreds of other apps integrate with PayPal flawlessly, so it appears the issue is with your developers and not PayPal
Hi @JulianP
Getting back to you about reaching out to Integromat and Zapier - which I have now done. They were unable to help. I hope Wave can provide customers and users like myself some guidance, because I really don't know what my options are now for automating this besides using another service.
After asking for help with syncing PayPal transactions (both sales and purchases) with Wave. Here is what Integromat said:
"Right now, our Paypal modules rely on an IPN connection" ( which is limited to only reporting sales).
Zapier said the same about their integration:
"As of the moment, triggering from custom messages is not yet supported by our Paypal integrations. However, this is already being discussed, depending on user demand. While I cannot ensure that this could be a possibility, and I don't have an ETA on when this feature might be implemented, we will notify you via email if it is! Another thing to take note of is that Paypal is considered a Premium App. It means that it requires a paid plan to use."
What can a Wave user do as an alternative to automated syncing, since these appear to not be working?
Hey @twcmusic , I'm sorry to hear that these aren't functioning the way that they're supposed to. As we no longer provide an automatic PayPal import within the software, the next best bet for you here would be to upload your PayPal transactions or statements through Wave Connect. I understand that it isn't automated, but it will allow you to import both sales and purchases as well as save you time from entering in every transaction manually.
Hi @AlexL, thanks for your response. Unfortunately, I do require an automated solution for this. Is there a way to automate PayPal generating reports to Wave Connect and then having that trigger a scheduled import to Wave? If this would be possible with Wave Connect, then this could temporarily resolve the issue we are facing with lack of a complete alternative for this feature.
How can you just remove the integration like this and not think you'll lose customers? I just started using Waves and am now wondering if I made a bad decision. Some of my clients will only pay me via Paypal. Please bring back the integration! I'd even pay for it if need be.
Hey @twcmusic , I appreciate your need for this and you making sure to check all of your options, but in full transparency, the truth of the matter is that at the moment we just don't have a function that would automate this solution for you other than the options that were listed previously that you mentioned aren't functioning well for you. The only other alternative would be Wave Connect (which is completely manual) or manually adding these transactions into Wave.
This is an important issue. Paypal is one of the most popular payment options all around the world. I hope Wave can solve it in the near future. Thanks
Hi @AlexL , thanks for getting back to me. I appreciate that Wave Support team is actively checking these forums. The fact that there is no solution currently to this issue is quite disappointing but I hope the Wave team is developing a way to solve this and we can get an update here whenever that is implemented. Like many folks have mentioned on this thread, Wave should reconsider it's decision as it has negatively impacted the workflow of many clients.
Well this is quite disappointing. We just started taking website payments from PayPal and found out Wave doesn't integrate with it and worse, doesn't plan to. We were happy with Wave up to this point, but will definitely keep an eye out for alternatives going forward.
To add to how ridiculous this is, Plaid (which Wave uses to connect to bank accounts) has no problem connecting to PayPal accounts. I asked them why this isn't enabled, and Wave said they don't want to enable it.
It seems like they're trying to force users away from PayPal and convince them to use Wave payments instead, but the opposite is happening – people are leaving Wave.
That's very interesting. If activating PayPal transactions through Plaid is as easy as just enabling the feature, then it should get activated (since an alternative solution for this hasn't been offered yet).
Wave, can we please get PayPal linking through Plaid?
Smells like an anti-competitive violation ... shall be reported to FTC I believe. None of the provided reasoning/explanations by Wave found ground, at least here, amongst people participating in the discussion. None of the suggested workarounds seem to satisfy the need that could be relatively easily satisfied otherwise.
Coming from using Quickbooks about a year and a half ago I could not be happier with Wave and the value it provides for literally no cost so far. But the reactions from the staff here make me worrying.
@AlexL - allow me to point your attention that your business is far from being as sticky of ecosystem/religion as Apple for you to resort to narratives of being "sorry that YOU have a problem" or "we are sorry that YOU are experiencing problems" and redirecting the source of issue on your customers, partners, suppliers etc. , in other words to whoever except yourself. People here are not driven by consumer reasoning like love and affection. It is all matter of business justifiability.
Not a bad idea. I have to say, I love the Wave product as well but seeing them shut down multiple features in recent times makes me worry the company is hurting for money... And if they are, should I jump ship now?
How did you like QBO – what made you switch?
Hi @dontoverthinkthis @twcmusic @SashaTC,
Just jumping in on the comments about Plaid supporting Paypal: Plaid do NOT provide a transaction feed from Paypal that would be usable to fill transactions in Wave. I have discussed this extensively with them, and they face the same problems that we do, including the structure of Paypal 'pseudo-accounts' for currencies, and movements between them.
To be absolutely clear: when we retired our old and unreliable Paypal integration, we had extensive conversations with Plaid to see if they had a solution for this, or could develop one. If there had been a solution, we would have enabled it. If at some time in the future Plaid becomes able to provide us access to Paypal transactions, we will surely use that.
Integration to Paypal for accounting transactions is very challenging, and I don't believe anyone does it well. Various commenters have fed back that Zapier and Integromat are also reporting they are unable to access the desired data from Paypal. Zapier's and Integromat's whole business is about building integrations, so it should tell you something if they can't offer a solution, either.
I do understand that manually bookkeeping your Paypal transactions is inconvenient. If integrated payments and bookkeeping is important to you, the best solutions I can suggest right now would be to either use Wave Payments, or lobby Paypal to build an integration to Wave - or any other accounting software - to make this easy. (Wave provides a free, public API that is ready to receive such an integration.)
Sorry Paul, but I've gotta call you out on that flat out LIE.
YNAB uses Plaid to connect to PayPal. I've been using Plaid to connect to PayPal for ages, and it automatically imports my transactions. Here's a screenshot of Plaid showing the ability to connect to PayPal.
You guys can run your business the way you want, but don't think you can lie to customers and get away with it. We're not that stupid, even though you might think so. At least have the decency to tell us you don't want to integrate with PayPal, rather than saying you "can't".
Hello @dontoverthinkthis,
Firstly, I do not appreciate being called a liar when trying to provide helpful information. Truthfulness is an important value at Wave, and for me personally. However, for the benefit of others who may be reading this thread, I will respond.
I previously stated "Plaid do NOT provide a transaction feed from Paypal that would be usable to fill transactions in Wave", and you pointed out that YNAB use Plaid to extract transactions from Plaid. So let's look at that.
To verify my past analysis and conversations with the Plaid team, I created a YNAB account, and connected my personal Paypal account via Plaid. (Yes, Plaid does connect.)
I then made three test transactions:
Here's a copy of the transaction export:
After allowing some time for YNAB to update, here's what's showing in my YNAB account:
As you can see, there are some problems with this:
Comparing the YNAB data to the Paypal transaction export, it is clear that Plaid are accessing or receiving only rows marked as "General Payment", and are getting those without any consideration of the currency. This was a blocking issue that we found when we first considered using Plaid for Paypal integration, and is clearly unchanged.
Our research has identified 2 main reasons that a customer might use Paypal rather than Wave Payments (which automatically handles all associated accounting transactions):
As a way of accounting ecommerce transactions, relying on Paypal data is a poor solution, because (as both the Paypal export and the YNAB screenshot show) charges are opaque. To account properly, it should be possible to see both the sale amount (Income) and the transaction charge (Expense). We believe that integrating from the ecommerce tool or platform is the better solution, and we provide a dedicated API and Zapier action for recording ecommerce sales, with associated charges.
For accounting transactions in foreign currencies, the examples given above demonstrate that Plaid integration is not a workable solution. (The issue is Paypal/Plaid; not YNAB in this case.)
While these issues remain unresolved, we continue to believe that the available Plaid integration is not usable to fill transactions in Wave. As stated previously, however, if at some time in the future Plaid becomes able to provide us a reliable data stream for Paypal transactions, we will certainly look at this again.
Any connection is better than no connection. The fact is that it DOES connect, saying it doesn't is factually untrue. I'd rather have to manually adjust transactions than manually enter every single one – I'm sure most would agree!
@dontoverthinkthis I did not say that Plaid does not connect with Paypal. Please don't put words in my mouth.
I said "Plaid do NOT provide a transaction feed from Paypal that would be usable to fill transactions in Wave", and I stand by that, as demonstrated above.
I hear that you personally would prefer a connection that includes incorrect data which you need to adjust over no connection. That is noted, but we will not deliberately enable a connection that will routinely and by design bring incorrect data into customers' books when many will not be as alert as you to the errors.
If you wish to quickly achieve much the same result as YNAB are doing via Plaid, I suggest the following steps:
There's a quite simple solution there, which is to warn users that if they use the connection they need to manually review each one for accuracy. It's exhausting to hear "nah, we can't" when the reality is you can, but seemingly don't want to. Just read the other comments in this thread to see how frustrated people are by your lack of progress on this!