Paypal feed description field

[shaun.g]

So, currently my feed just displays this:

CURRENCY CONVERSION (CREDIT): 525803867D8729059

This makes it near impossible to tag items without trawling through paypal also, which to me kind of defeats the point of the feed. Is there any way to change what field it takes as the description?

[QFMathew]

Hi @shaun.g

The description you’ve highlighted is unfortunately what PayPal sends to us. No further information is supplied apart from something like “From U.S. Dollar”.

You could set QuickFile to convert the non-GBP values to GBP using the current xe.com rate if you wish, although this would be only for guidance as the rates are likely to vary from the PayPal values as they use a different exchange rate (which isn’t supplied to us).

[shaun.g]

Hi, thanks for the reply.

In my activity feed and transaction details it says “Payment from”, and also there is an Item field with what is being transacted.

What type of feed are you using, this information is available via API but i guess you aren’t using that?

[QFMathew]

If you make a payment in USD on your PayPal account and have it converted from USD, and you have multicurrency switched off in your settings on QuickFile, then we’ll only take the GBP transaction.

You may find that turning on the multicurrency support would help. However, this doesn’t use the PayPal conversion rate as it’s not supplied to us. The feed uses the daily xe.com rates instead.

There’s more info on this option in the thread below:

PayPal Multi-Currency Support

We have just recently completed a number of enhancements to the PayPal feed that will allow us to handle foreign currency payments. Previously the feed would skip over any non-GBP entries which would leave gaps in your PayPal statement and involve manual reconciliation. As discussed in other threads, PayPal unfortunately only update the exchange rate several days after the transaction is processed. This has always made it difficult to handle foreign currency activity for accounting purposes via…

@shaun.g

What type of feed are you using, this information is available via API but i guess you aren’t using that?

I’m not sure what type of feed it is I’m sorry. However, the currency conversion issue is a common problem across various accounting software packages. The xe.com workaround was implemented in QuickFile as a workaround, based on user feedback.