PayPal Overview

September 8, 2008

We’re going to pick up with our discussion of the overview screen. We left off with the status section in our last chapter. Under status you will see a box that says “PayPal Account Balance.” In that box you will see the currency that you are being paid in, what your balance is and what you are currently earning on your account. Yes, if you keep money in your PayPal account, you will earn interest on it, just like with a bank. The difference is, the interest here is a lot higher. Currently it is 2.35% My bank is paying about 1%. This is another advantage of keeping your money with PayPal.

Personally, I don’t mind carrying a few thousand dollar ballance in PayPal. You will find some guids that tell you not to keep more than a few hundred in your account. Why? If you ever do anything with PayPal that is against their terms of service, they can freeze your account until the situation is resolved. This could be a major inconvenience if you have a large balance. Use your best judgement when it come to how much money to keep in your account.

Under that box, you will find what the main part of the overview page. This section shows you your recent activity. If you just opened up your account, there won’t be any activity listed yet. This activity shows all payments you have received as well as payments that you have made.

If you take a good look at this section, you will find that it gives you quite a bit of information for each transaction.

Type – This tells you the type of transaction it is. There are several types such as payment, credit, subscription and so on.
To/From – This tells you if it was a payment you made to somebody or a payment that was received from somebody. This also applies toother transaction types as well.
Name/Email/Phone – Usually all you will see in this box is the person’s name. This box tells who the payment went to or who the payment came from. Again, this applies to other transaction types as
well.
Date – This box tells you the date of the transaction.
Status – This tells you the status of the transaction. Most transactions are completed right away, but some are pending. If somebody sends you an echeck, for example, these echecks take time to clear. So in the case of an echeck sent to you, the status box will say that the transaction is pending. Other status messages are refunded, active, for subscriptions, cleared, once an echeck has cleared, and a few others. It is very important that you check your status for each transaction. Thinking that you actually have money, when it is
actually pending, can lead to problems if you try to purchase things with your PayPal balance and don’t really have the money to cover the transaction.
Details – The next box will give you a link where you can click to get the details of the transaction. The screen this will take you to will actually give you quite a bit of information about the transaction including the ID # of the transaction, the person the transaction dealt with, including their email address, which is important if you want to contact the person should there be a problem, the amount of the transaction, date, time and any messages that were sent along with the transaction. In most cases, you will only really need to check on details if you want to contact the person this transaction applied to.
Action – This column gives you options to do certain actions based on the transaction type. For example, if somebody buys something from you that is a physical product, you will be given the option to print a shipping label if shipping is required.
Amount – This column shows the amount of the transaction, whether it was a purchase you made or a sale credited to you. Purchases are proceeded by a minus sign.
Fee – The final column is the fee associated with the transaction. Personal accounts do not have fees.