Are you having trouble understanding transaction types in Paypal reports? Are you like me, confused by all the different payment in and out transaction types you see in your Paypal Reports (I will deal with the different methods you can setup to get paid to send or receive on Paypal in another article). For instance.. did you know that a recurring Payment Received is NOT the same as a Subscription Payment? One would assume they were but no they are not – and I didn’t know that either.
The latter for example (Subscription Payment) involves creating a ‘Plan’ – whereas the former can simply be where a buyer goes to make a 1-off payment on your site – then at the last minute decides to click the Make this donation recurring [x] checkbox.
I got to writing this because I have been trying to do my Paypal accounts and I have to say it’s an absolute nightmare as the payments I receive are a combination of micro-payments and most of these are donations – but teasing the different types apart is worse than pulling teeth. Of course if you are a seasoned Pay-paler – I’ve no doubt it’s like all things if you know how – easy.
OK – so let’s do this and finally get to grips with all the different Paypal payment and transaction types in and out listed on Paypal Activity Summary…
| Payments Received | (note: making a Payment ‘Recurring’ by ticking the checkbox [x] is NOT same as Subscription (which are plans) |
| Payments Sent | To buy products and services |
| Withdrawals & Debits | Money Paypal user transfers to their bank and/or REFUNDS to customer. |
| Deposits & Credits | When Paypal user transfers money from external bank/source to their Paypal, or receives a refund(credit) from a seller |
| Transferred | Out to somewhere such as a bank account |
| OTHER TRANSACTION TYPES (you see in your Paypal account in ‘All Transactions‘ > under ‘Transaction Type‘ dropdown). | |
| Money Added | From Paypal user adds to their Paypal from an external source like another bank account or a credit from someone else |
| Billing Agreements & Profiles | Details of customers that agreed to be billed for a recurring product or service Paypal user set up. |
| Subscription Payments (plans) | NOTE: all my donations are Payments (see above) set to ‘recurring’ (ie not Subscriptions) |
| Refunds | When Seller decides to refund customer |
| Reversals | When Paypal decide to refund customer |
PayPal me
While we are here – though this isn’t strictly about the different transaction types in Paypal Reports – what about Paypal.me? What is is and what’s the difference between PayPal and PayPal me?
PayPal.Me is a feature on the PayPal payment platform that allows you to receive money from other people quickly. Crucially – it allows other people to be able to send money to PayPal users WITHOUT having to know their email address or mobile phone number.
Also – rather than the sender or buyer having to go to a site or some special place online – the can simply give out their unique secure Paypal.me link (they’ve created and customised at Paypal) rather like picking a totally unique domain name (once you pick yours nobody else can have the same link) so that other people can send money to their PayPal account without having others know your email address or phone number. An example the link could be like; Paypal.me/mycooluniquelink
Question: What is the difference between a PayPal subscription and a recurring payment?
Answer: they’re almost the same when you look at the end result. A PayPal subscription takes money out of your account every month, and a recurring payment takes money out of your account every month. However – they are implemented using different methods.
PayPal subscriptions require you to accept subscription as a separate step. eg – if you know you want to pay for a service and you’re logged into your PayPal account, PayPal will ask you to explicitly approve the subscription.
In other cases the seller will let you know you’ll be billed monthly after you enter your payment info, without the step asking you to approve a subscription.
Also as a seller – beware people can cancel PayPal subscriptions any time – so they are not suitable for many types of recurring payments where this is not something the sellers wants to make optional.
