Integrate with QuickBooks

QuickBooks Online is a cloud accounting software that makes it easy to manage your books anytime on multiple devices. For more information, please visit QuickBooks.

How to connect your PayPal Point of Sale account with QuickBooks?

Using Zettle with your PayPal Business account? Please consider:
To avoid duplicated bookkeeping, it’s important that you only choose one source to integrate with accountancy platforms such as QuickBooks.

If your business accepts most payments in-store through Zettle POS, consider integrating from my.zettle.com.

If your business tends to use more products offered by PayPal, such as the PayPal Business Mastercard, or takes mostly online transactions with few payments accepted in-store through Zettle, consider integrating from PayPal.com.

We’d always recommend chatting with your accountant if you’re unsure how to proceed.

1. Sign in to your PayPal Point of Sale account at my.zettle.com
2. Go to your Integrations page and find the Quickbooks integration
3. Click Connect.
4. Enter your Quickbooks login details, then select which QuickBooks organisation PayPal Point of Sale can access and click "Authorise". You can connect only one PayPal Point of Sale account to one QuickBooks organisation.
5. Map the PayPal Point of Sale Accounts to your QuickBooks Accounts. 
6. Choose a start date for when you want to retroactively export data. 
7. Click Save.

Done! If everything is set up correctly, you will see your PayPal Point of Sale data in QuickBooks the following day.   

Unsupported plans

Certain QuickBooks plans are not supported on PayPal Point of Sale because of their limited functionalities. Check if you need to change your plan before connecting to PayPal Point of Sale.

Not supported on PayPal Point of Sale:

• QuickBooks Self-Employed for sole traders
• QuickBooks Simple Start for sole traders
• QuickBooks Simple Start for limited companies

Only QuickBooks Essentials and QuickBooks Plus are supported. Make sure you’re on one of the supported plans in order to connect to PayPal Point of Sale.

How does the integration work?

PayPal Point of Sale lets you import your sales and payments data daily into your QuickBooks account. The integration is easy and simple to set up, and once you've connected your QuickBooks account, PayPal Point of Sale will automatically import your data into the bookkeeping accounts of your choice.

In order to get a better understanding of your PayPal Point of Sale payments and fees, we suggest that you create separate bookkeeping accounts for each set of data, making it easier to get a clear overview of transactions going in and out of your PayPal Point of Sale account and your bank account.

The guide below is a suggestion on how to set up your connection with QuickBooks in the most straightforward way.

QuickBooks account type mapping

In order for the data to import, specify which PayPal Point of Sale data goes into which QuickBooks account. Each transaction type can have a dedicated account in QuickBooks.

QuickBooks Customers and Suppliers

PayPal Point of Sale will create a customer "PayPal Point of Sale" and supplier "PayPal Point of Sale (Supplier)" that will be used to book all transactions related to the integration.  

If you have previously used a PayPal Point of Sale integration you may need to ensure these customers and suppliers are not archived within QBO before successfully setting up the configuration. To do this navigate to the Customers to Supplier sections in QBO, in the list view select the settings cog and check the box to "include inactive". For an inactive you will be given the option to "Make active". Select before attempting to setup your integration again.  

Frequently asked questions

Can I connect multiple PayPal Point of Sale accounts to QuickBooks?

You can only connect one PayPal Point of Sale business account to one QuickBooks organisation. 

When does the import happen?

When you set up the integration, you can select any date in the past to start the import. This will retroactively import data from PayPal Point of Sale to QuickBooks for each day since the date selected. We recommend selecting a date within your current fiscal year in order to not alter any data in the period before the last closing of your books.

PayPal Point of Sale automatically imports data to QuickBooks once every night. Once you set up the integration, the first PayPal Point of Sale data will appear in QuickBooks the next day. 

Can I change the start date after setting up the integration?

After the first successful data import between PayPal Point of Sale and QuickBooks, you cannot change the start date, as it would result in duplicated data for overlapping days.

What data is shared between PayPal Point of Sale and QuickBooks?

When you authorise the connection between PayPal Point of Sale and QuickBooks you give permission to QuickBooks to read your PayPal Point of Sale sales and financial data. You also give permission to PayPal Point of Sale to read your QuickBooks company, accounts, tax rates, customers, suppliers, invoices, bills, payments, balance sheets and bank statements.

How can I avoid double-counting purchases if I am using a POS other than PayPal Point of Sale and have already integrated with QuickBooks?

If you are using a point of sale other than PayPal Point of Sale that is already connected to QuickBooks, switch off the “‘Synchronise sales data” option in order to avoid double-counting. In this case, you only need to sync PayPal Point of Sale fee data to QuickBooks. You can do this by selecting an account for “PayPal Point of Sale fees” to record fees as an expense (bill), and you should also select an account for “PayPal Point of Sale Card Payments” to record payments for the expense. The PayPal Point of Sale fees are subtracted from card payments upon payout from PayPal Point of Sale to your bank account.

The data sync has stopped and I’m missing PayPal Point of Sale data in QuickBooks. What can I do?

Log in to my.zettle.com and navigate to "Integrations". Verify that your connection to QuickBooks is still active, if not, your connection to QuickBooks has been deauthorised – usually due to password or permission change – and you have to connect again.

If your connection is active, navigate to the QuickBooks settings page and verify that you have a valid account selected for each required field. If an account is missing or has become archived in QuickBooks, you will see an error message on the field. Make sure to select a new account and save the new settings. The integration will automatically backfill data for the missing period with the new settings from the next day. 

If all settings look good on the QuickBooks page in PayPal Point of Sale, please check your QuickBooks account and make sure that your subscription is active.

In case all of the above checks up, but the issue persists, please contact our support.

PayPal Point of Sale

Account mapping

Switch on to sync PayPal Point of Sale sales data in QuickBooks if you are using PayPal Point of Sale as your point of sale. Switch off if you are using another point-of-sale system (e.g. Lightspeed, The Good Till, Revel) that already syncs sales data in QuickBooks to prevent double counting. With the daily sales recording switched off, the PayPal Point of Sale integration needs only to record the fees and fee refunds (see below). Sales are booked on a nominal account in the “Income or Other Income” category. You can select an existing account from the dropdown, if you don’t have an account available, you need to create an account in QuickBooks for this purpose.

How does this data appear in QuickBooks?

PayPal Point of Sale pushes a single sales invoice to QuickBooks Online each day. This invoice represents all sales made over the course of that day. The invoice will contain one line item for each tax rate the merchant trades in, with this line item representing the total of all sales at that tax rate. If no sales have been made for a given tax rate on that day, the corresponding line item will be omitted.

Rounding

Discounts in PayPal Point of Sale are applied to the total of the purchase once all the items have been summed up rather than at an item level. As we are splitting out items into VAT Percentage across all sales for the day discounts need to be applied at the item level which may lead to slight rounding discrepancies compared to applying the discount at the summed level.

As per the advice of most accounting packages, we add an invoice line which will be ± 0.01 to bring the total in line with the correct total.

PayPal Point of Sale Refunds

Account mapping

Refunds are also booked on a nominal account of type “Income or Other Income”. It is typical to select the same account as for the PayPal Point of Sale sales account (see “Sales” above). However, a different account could be used if you want to report refunds separately within QuickBooks.

How this data appears in QuickBooks

PayPal Point of Sale pushes a single refund receipt to QuickBooks each day. This invoice represents all refunds made over the course of that day. The refund receipt will contain one line item for each tax rate the merchant trades in, with this line item representing the total of all refunds at that tax rate. If no refunds have been made for a given tax rate on that day, the corresponding line item will be omitted.

PayPal Point of Sale Tipping

Account mapping

PayPal Point of Sale supports current and bank accounts for all payment accounts. You can select an existing account from the dropdown, if you don’t have an account available, you need to create an account in QuickBooks for this purpose.

How this data appears in QuickBooks

Tipping (also known as gratuity) is pushed to QuickBooks as part of the daily sales invoice as a separate line item.

PayPal Point of Sale Gift Cards

Account mapping

• Gift card sales: a nominal account of type “Liability (Current or non-current)” or “Income (Income or other income)”. The value of this account represents the amount of outstanding gift cards. 
• Gift card payment: a nominal account of type "Cash at bank and in hand" as configured as part of PayPal Point of Sale payments. Once a gift card is spent the money goes into sales and the gift card payments account, and out of the liability account.  

How this data appears in QuickBooks

Invoice in QuickBooks representing a purchase of a gift card and purchase of an item using a gift card:

Payment on an invoice in QuickBooks representing the purchase of an item using a gift card:

Bill in QuickBooks representing a payment using a gift card:

PayPal Point of Sale Fees

PayPal Point of Sale takes a percentage commission on every card transaction processed by a PayPal Point of Sale card reader. PayPal Point of Sale also charges fees for PayPal Point of Sale invoice payments and Cash Advance, if these are applicable to you. The fees affect the amount deposited in your bank account, as they are subtracted from the card payment amounts upon payout. Due to this, the current (PayPal Point of Sale card payments) account would not be zero after completing reconciliation against the bank feed. The integration, therefore, creates a bill in QuickBooks to account for PayPal Point of Sale fees. The payment for PayPal Point of Sale fees will be applied to the account used for PayPal Point of Sale card payments. 

Account mapping

Fees are booked on a nominal account of type “Expenses” and will appear in the Expense section of a profit and loss report. You can select an existing account from the dropdown, if you don’t have an account available, you need to create an account in QuickBooks for this purpose.

How this data appears in QuickBooks

PayPal Point of Sale pushes a single Bill to QuickBooks Online each day. This bill represents all fees taken by PayPal Point of Sale over the course of that day. The bill can have more than one line if there are different types of transactions that occur throughout the day.

Fee Refunds

How this data appears in QuickBooks

A single Bank Deposit is pushed each day representing all fee refunds processed that day.

PayPal Point of Sale deposits

Deposits are the revenue from your sales after deducting any fees owed to PayPal Point of Sale.   
When your funds are paid out, your bank will process and deposit it in your bank account. You must reconcile the PayPal Point of Sale deposit transaction against the deposit amount from your bank statement on Quickbooks. 

Account mapping

On the Quickbooks integration, Deposits can take place where 

 

• PayPal Point of Sale Liquid Account is a Bank Account or a Nominal Account on Quickbooks 
• PayPal Point of Sale Deposit Account is always a Bank Account on Quickbooks. 

 

PayPal Point of Sale Liquid and PayPal Point of Sale Deposit account mappings cannot be the same. 

Please ensure that the account selected as the Deposit account represents your real bank account where funds are to be paid out.  

How this data appears on QuickBooks

It will show up as a transfer from PayPal Point of Sale liquid account to your business's bank account.

PayPal Point of Sale liquid account

The account configured for PayPal Point of Sale payments by card, Alipay and QR represents the PayPal Point of Sale liquid account.

Account mapping

You can assign your liquid account to either a bank account or a nominal account in Quickbooks.  For best accounting consistency, we recommend using a Quickbooks bank account. Your payments data will appear in the current assets section of the balance sheet report. If you don’t have an account available, you need to create an account in QuickBooks for this purpose. 

How this data appears in QuickBooks

PayPal Point of Sale pushes a single payment to QuickBooks per day per payment type which has been used that day. So if you process ten card payments and twenty cash payments in one day, two payments are pushed. These payments are recorded against the daily sales invoice.

PayPal Point of Sale Invoice

Account mapping

• Invoice payments account – This is an account of type "cash as bank and in hand" where payments against PayPal Point of Sale invoices are received. As invoice payments are handled by PayPal Point of Sale, this account should represent the PayPal Point of Sale liquid account, and thus be the same as the card payment account.
• Invoice fees account – This is a nominal account of type "Expense” or “Cost of Goods sold", and will appear on the expenses section of a profit and loss report. Payment fee transactions will be reconciled against this account.
• Invoice sales account - This is the sale account as selected for all "PayPal Point of Sale Data". See PayPal Point of Sale for more information.

How this data appears in QuickBooks

An invoice is pushed to QuickBooks as normal when an invoice purchase is made, however, a payment is not immediately pushed against the invoice, so the invoice is displayed with an outstanding balance.

When the customer has made a payment against the invoice, a payment is pushed against the original invoice. This payment is booked against the Invoice payments account, which should match the PayPal Point of Sale liquid account as this is where invoice payments are paid into. If the payment pays the invoice in full, at this point the invoice will be marked as paid in QuickBooks.

Please note: there are cases where a payment for an invoice is never received. PayPal Point of Sale will check for 30 days after the due date of the invoice. After this time its recommended, if payment has not been collected you will need to manually update in QBO (as paid or as a write-off). 

Invoice fees are pushed in a similar way to standard PayPal Point of Sale card fees (see "Fees" above). A bill is pushed with a single line item with the expense account set to the Invoice fees account. A single payment is simultaneously pushed for the full payment of the bill, representing the transfer of money out of the liquid account to pay the fees. This payment is taken from the Invoice payments account.

PayPal Point of Sale Cash Advance

Account mapping

• Cash Advance account – a nominal account of type “Liability (current or non-current)”. This account will appear in the Liabilities section of a balance sheet report. The value of this account represents the amount of the loan principal that is yet to be repaid. 
• Cash Advance Fees account – a nominal account of type “Expense”. This account will appear in the Expenses section of a profit and loss report. Transactions pushed to this account represent fees on the advance paid to PayPal Point of Sale.
• All flows of cash are pushed to the account configured for PayPal Point of Sale card payments, as this represents the PayPal Point of Sale liquid account. These cash flows are attributed to the PayPal Point of Sale contact (configured as part of the sales/fees sections of the config).

How this data appears in QuickBooks

The advance transaction is pushed to QuickBooks as a “receive money” transaction into the card payment bank account (the liquid account). This transaction is reconciled to the Cash Advance liability account, and thus increases the value on that account.

Repayments of the advance are pushed as “spend money” transactions into the card payment bank account (the liquid account). These transactions are reconciled to the Cash Advance liability account, and thus decrease the value on that account (representing the outstanding principal going down).

Advance fees are likewise pushed as “spend money” transactions into the liquid account, but are reconciled against the Advance Fees expense account, representing a one-off cost to the business.