Connect PayPal
PayPal, read as earnings rather than as a second bank
Sales, refunds and payouts to your bank become ledger lines. What you spend from the same PayPal is left alone.
Your own REST app credentials, with Transaction Search switched on.
The PayPal card and its drawer: what Orla reads, what it never does, and the client id and secret of your own REST app it asks for. The credential is tried against PayPal before the connection exists, and encrypted once it is accepted, and never returned by the API again.
The credentials you give us
A REST app in your own PayPal, and one checkbox
No review queue and no waiting: the checkbox is a setting, not an application.
What lands, and what is ignored
An earnings mirror, not a full PayPal ledger
Reading it as both a till and a wallet would double count your spending.
- Counted: money in as daily sales, refunds against their day, transfers to your bank as payouts.
- Ignored on purpose: your spending, conversions and holds belong to the card or bank they touch.
- PayPal serves history in windows of at most a month, so the first backfill walks month-sized steps rather than asking for a year and being refused.
- What PayPal still holds becomes an account, so a payout moves between two accounts you own.
Questions
The questions people ask before they connect it
Why does it not import everything in my PayPal?
Because PayPal is often both a till and a wallet. This reads it as an earnings source: money in, refunds and payouts to your bank. What you spend from the same PayPal belongs to the card or bank it touches, so counting it here would double it.
What do I have to switch on?
Transaction Search, on the REST app you create in developer.paypal.com. It is a checkbox on the app itself, not a review and not a support request. Without that checkbox PayPal serves no history at all.
How far back does the first sync go?
PayPal serves history in windows of at most a month, so the backfill walks month-sized steps rather than asking for a year and being refused.
Other platforms
Connect PayPal, and stop counting the same euro twice
Platforms connect on the paid plans; the free plan keeps the book.
- Stripe →
- One restricted key, with the fees split out and the payouts matched.
- Shopify →
- Sales, Shopify Payments fees and refunds apart, plus the balance still held.
- Gumroad →
- Every sale with its price and Gumroad's cut as separate figures.
- Lemon Squeezy →
- A merchant of record: income from the subtotal, and the sales tax was never yours.
- Bandcamp →
- The partner sales report as rows, in the currency each sale happened in.
See it on your own books
Thirty minutes: we connect an account, drop a real bill in, and close a month together.