I'm looking at paypal as identical to venmo. If I do not pull payments out immediately, venmo will use the balance to pay anyone I owe.
That said, I continue to use venmo as a method of payment or cost in the checking account which pays the bills. I see no reason to treat paypal differently. If I pay someone using venmo, I go to the checking account and use venmo as the "check number" , enter the debit and I'm done. If someone pays me on venmo I use venmo as the "check number" and enter the credit in the checking account that accepts the deposit. Voila. KISS! On Sat, Dec 10, 2022 at 7:29 PM David Cousens <davidcousen...@gmail.com> wrote: > > Dave, > > The different approaches with this mainly reflect different circumstances. > > PayPal to some extent acts a bit like a bank so my first thought would be > to > treat them the same as you would treat a bank account, but the appropriate > way > to treat it depends on how you actually use your account with them. > > If you maintain a positive balance in the Paypal account from which > payments are > made to vendors then it is reasonable to treat a PayPal account as an asset > account of type bank as they are not extending credit to you. > > If they extend credit to you, i.e. they pay the vendors immediately and > then you > pay out the balance owing to them at the end of the month, i.e. the account > balance is negative the majority of the time, then they are functioning > more as > a credit provider and a Liability account is a more appropriate way to > treat the > account. > > I chose to treat my Paypal account as a liability account, more for > historical > reasons than the current use of the account, but I could equally have > treated it > as an asset account for my purposes ( All that does is reverse the debit > and > credit entries to the relevant accounts), as I indicate in my reply to > Michael. > The function for me is primarily to make reconciliation and matching to > receipts > simpler. > > You wouldn't necessarily need to raise an invoice to cover a payment to > PayPal > just as you wouldn't when you pay off your credit card with a bank. > > The main purpose of Customers and Vendors and the business features around > them > is to avoid having to maintain individual accounts receivable and accounts > payable accounts for each customer or vendor you interact with and to > provide > the information to manage the credit that is extended to you by vendors > and the > credit you extend to your customers and the effect it has on cash flow. > > Hope this clarifies things a bit. > > David > > > > > On Sat, 2022-12-10 at 18:25 +0000, Dr. David Kirkby wrote: > > On Sat, 10 Dec 2022 at 17:09, Chris Skudder <cskud...@earthlink.net> > wrote: > > > > > When you BUY something using paypal, the SELLER pays their fees, not > > > you. > > > So recording a purchase for which you paid using paypal is no > different > > > than any other purchase: > > > Debit: expense (or asset, if you're buying something that you'll > > > recognize as an asset on your balance sheet) > > > Credit: your paypal asset account if you carry a balance in it; or > > > credit a credit card account if your paypal purchases pull money > > > directly from a credit card. > > > Chris > > > > > > > I'm intending to use the Vendors and Customers under the Business menu. > Do > > I need to make two totally separate transactions (one bill, one invoice) > to > > fund the PayPal account from the bank account, and the other for PayPal > to > > pay the vendor? In which case, does PayPal need to be entered as a vendor > > so I can pay PayPal? > > > > Sorry, I'm really confused, and it seems multiple people have different > > ways of doing this - most not using the Customer/Vendor facility. > > > > Dave > > _______________________________________________ > > gnucash-user mailing list > > gnucash-user@gnucash.org > > To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe: > > https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user > > ----- > > Please remember to CC this list on all your replies. > > You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All. > > _______________________________________________ > gnucash-user mailing list > gnucash-user@gnucash.org > To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe: > https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user > ----- > Please remember to CC this list on all your replies. > You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All. > _______________________________________________ gnucash-user mailing list gnucash-user@gnucash.org To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe: https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user ----- Please remember to CC this list on all your replies. You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
