Automatic Paypal Import Tool

• Tim Fouracre
• Thursday, 5 August 2010
• Bank Import Tool Integrations, Plugins & Add-ons

This tool automatically imports transactions and entities from your Paypal merchant account (i.e. this will not work for personal Paypal accounts).

1. Login and set up your Paypal account

1.1 Login to your Paypal business account.

1.2 Navigate to the “Profile” page.

1.3 Click on the “My Selling Preferences”.

1.4 Next to API access click on “update”.

1.5 Click on ”Add” or edit API permissions.

1.6 Add “tim_api1.clearbooks.co.uk”as the third party permission user name.

1.7 Set the Third Party Permissions -

Obtain your PayPal account balance.

Obtain information about a single transaction.

Search your transactions for items that match specific criteria and display the results.

2. Setup a Paypal internet payment bank account in your Clear Books account

2.1 After you are logged into Clear Books navigate to “Money ->Banking” and click on the “New Account” button.

2.2 Click the plus icon next to “Internet payments” to create a Paypal account in Clear Books.

2.3 Configure the bank account as shown below. Select payment provider as “Paypal”, bank group to “New Bank”, set the default currency to your Paypal account’s currency. IMPORTANT the Email Account must be set to the email address of the Paypal account you intend to import from. Once this has been done hit the “Confirm Changes” button and navigate to “Money->Banking”.

3. Import your Paypal transactions

3.1 Click the “Import” link for your Paypal account.

3.2 Notice that there is an ”Import directly from Paypal” section.  There is a short help area next to the “Import directly from Paypal” section that describes what the checkboxes are for.

3.3 If this is your initial import then you must set a start date for your import. You can do so manually or using the popup calendar that appears when you select the field. When ready, click the “Import” button.

3.4 On successful import you are redirected to the management page for that particular import set.

3.5 If the selected transaction from the import set has a Paypal fee attached to it then the fee will get automatically explained, as show below.

Congratulations setup is complete.

Notes

A limitation of the Paypal API means that this tool does not match the original description for a currency conversion which has occurred in your paypal account. e.g. if you have a GBP Paypal account and make a payment in USD, then the description of the Paypal transaction will be “Conversion from USD to GBP” rather than the original description ‘Purchase of xyz’.