I am not sure how many entries it makes for one transaction. You have the original purchase, so money in, then if it is held it shows as a negative, so money out, so then back to being even. Then I assume that if the payment is released it will just show as a new money in again, if that is the case why would the hold need tagging at all?
It doesn’t, if it goes out then back in it’s largely irrelevant from an accounting perspective, so just delete the two entries.
The only exception to this I guess is if PayPal hold the funds then rule against you and issue a refund. I don’t know if that’s a common occurrence but if it did happen I suspect there would be a refund on the feed anyway.
Unfortunately is is a very common situation. I assume it works like this. Money in from sale. Money on hold so shows as negative, effectively cancelling out the transaction. But if it then shows a refund if they decide against you are not negative what ever amount the refund is for, which surely then would make your figures wrong?
I can’t get me head around how it really works and will have to take a real good look at it.
Marcus, Paypal produces a 1 or 2 page financial report of the total sales etc for every month end.
I use that monthly report for the entries into the accounts and it includes Disputed activity section, here is an example of that section:
Dispute Activity -79.00 DR
consisting of:
Chargebacks & Disputes -236.78 DR
Dispute Reimbursements +157.78 CR
All you need enter is the “£79 Debit” above as a sales refund
If the total Disputed is a “credit” amount it is already included it the total
Sales Activity on that same monthly report
2 Likes
Yes I see how that would work if you don’t use the PayPal feed, but I do use it and it does not seem to be that simple. I will show you what I have found out regarding this when using the feed.
Here is an example of a transaction involving a hold in my PayPal Feed.
14/10/2014 - Dario Deter Deppe (81N45463F3375452J) -36.90
03/10/2014 - TEMPORARY HOLD: 2UC17204S8337821M -36.90
28/08/2014 - Dario Deter Deppe (4V985739NW8271815) 36.90
So as you can see the feed imports the sale of 36.90, then there is a eBay dispute or what ever and the feed imports the hold on the funds as a negative figure. At this point the transaction is cancelled out so effectively 0, but then eBay decide as always that the buyer should receive a refund and the feed imports the refund as a negative. The end result seems to be that my PayPal is now going to be down 36.90 and will not balance with my actual PayPal account balance because the feed shows 2 negatives of 36.90.
I assume it will do the same if eBay sides with the seller and releases the funds then the feed will import another 36.90 and now you would be over 36.90 instead.
If anyone can confirm I am right on this then please let me know, and is there any way to fix this issue?
The HOLD is irrelevant for accounting purposes it’s only there for the benefit of PayPal to stop you withdrawing any disputed funds.
In the above example this could be solved by just deleting the entry on the 3rd October for the actual hold. In future we could look at adding an optional setting to not import HOLDs.
Glen is correct, if you look at paypal ‘All activity (with balance)’ you will see one of the -36.90’s has no effect on papals balance, its totally ignored so the imported Temporary Hold’s need deleting in quickfile
You will also notice other transactions that do not effect the balance as they are only for information.
Thats why I do not use imported transactions and use the monthly financial report for its totals.
I totally understand this now. i have now also decided to use the reports like you and add just the bulk figures for the particular month rather than using the feed, as it’s much neater and guaranteed accurate.
That’s great! I would personally do the same, the feed can be a bit of a minefield to reconcile in some cases.
I have to agree, the temporary holds are a bit of a pain.
For example, I recently had a sale of £53.99 and it subsequently went into hold - both transactions shown OK.
However, when the payment was eventually released to me, it appeared in paypal but not in quickfile, In the past, I’ve just made a transaction to balance the books, because I didn’t know what was causing it. It’s not like it’s an uncommon scenario though, is there any way of importing these ‘released’ temporary holds?.
If you want to PM me the exact dates upon which the holds were applied and then reversed, I am more than happy to discuss this with a developer. Having actual working data will help us to devise a better long term solution.
Hi,
I do use the paypal feed as 99% of my business is through eBay/Paypal.
I find that it runs quite smoothly but over the months, I have noticed slippage in the amount reported by QF as my PayPal total and my actual PayPal total.
I have been just accepting this as until recently the difference was always 34 pounds and a few pence.
I think the slippage is most likely caused by TEMPORARY HOLDS but I am not certain and I have no idea how to fix it.
A couple of days ago I had a payment put on hold so I deleted the on hold entry from QF as I had refunded the purchase and both the original payment and the refund were imported into QF as expected.
the problem is that since then the slippage has grown and now my slippage is around 50 pounds… strange seeing as the on hold payment was for 15 pounds and some pence…
any advice please?
I can give dates for my most recent problem transaction.
the original transaction was for #15.96 on 2/3/2015 . placed on hold on 24/3/2015 . purchase refunded 28/3/2015
many thanks
Matt
One thing you could do is adjust out the difference by entering a new transaction on the account. If it’s a debit post as a PayPal supplier expense, or a credit post as generic income.
Temporary Holds and subsequent releases in PayPal can be very time consuming to isolate on more complex accounts. If the amount is trivial the above may be a good option. If you have any doubts it’s always worth checking with your accountant.
well I was planning on using QF themselves to do my accounts next month so I guess it can wait til then 
Hi there,
Just a quick word on PayPal “slippage”. We have a client who has up to 1,000 PP transactions a month. Without the autofeed entering these transactions would take forever and a day, so we have to make sure that we reconcile the account monthly to avoid any slippage from one month to the other. It can be caused by many different things, like different fees charged in PP and logged in QF (we usually just enter a balancing figure at the end of the month), or the temporary hold as discussed above (some of these do not change the balance on the PP statement but will in QF).
My best advice is to enter the transactions manually if there are not too many of them or you will have to be very careful and make sure that at the end of the month you “weed out” any unwanted entries and correct the fees.
Best of luck with finding the entries that do not correspond!
RESERVE HOLD/RELEASE TRANSACTIONS
Can anyone tell me:
- Why Paypal Withhold “Reserve Hold” large amounts (hundreds of dollars) each time I make a PayPal Here Merchant Reader deposit into PayPal account?
- Is it possible to generate a statement showing these Reserve Hold Amounts being Released
- How can we track whether the Released amounts are the same as the Reserve Hold Amounts?
- How can we track that all the Reserved amounts are actually Released accurately?
- Why are these Reserve Holds and Releases not showing up in Xero?
Hope to understand why these amounts are held in the first place, as none of my Stripe transactions are ever held?
Looking forward to some clarification around all of this : )
This is the forum for QuickFile - if you want to know about Xero you’ll have to ask them.
thank you very much. Nice answer have a nice day