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Importing a paypal account with multiple currencies

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Ian Parks

30 Apr, 2012 01:01 AM

So I just decided to try and use Moneydance instead of standard spreadsheets for my basic accounting.

Much of my transactions happen in Paypal in multiple currencies.

So, I downloaeded a QIF file with a years worth of transactions and imported it into a bank account in Moneydance which I named Paypal.

I expected the file would convert CAD, USD and some AUD transactions to pounds using an appropriate conversion rate but instead all transactions have come through in GBP. So a $374 USD transaction from paypal is showing as a 374GBP transaction in moneydance.

Is there a way for Moneydance to at very least keep the base currency of the transaction or make the correct conversions? If not then I may have to just go back to spreadsheets with manual conversions!

Do you have any other suggestions for handling this?

1. 1 Posted by Scott Meehan on 24 May, 2012 06:50 PM

   

   Hi Ian,

   I'm sorry for our extremely delayed response to your issue.

   At the moment, this is not possible. QIF files fundamentally don't support currency information so there isn't anything that Moneydance is able to do with them because they do not carry the necessary information to discern between multiple currencies. However, the Text File Importer extension could import a CSV file exported from paypal with the currency information, but it currently doesn't support recognizing the "Currency" field that paypal provides.

   The best solution I've come up with so far in thinking about how to make this practical is to export your paypal data as a CSV file (or tab deliminated, no difference). Then create a Paypal bank account in your base currency (GBP). Then create Paypal sub accounts to the initial Paypal account in the foreign currencies that you receive. Then, open the paypal CSV data file in your favorite spreadsheet program and, using that, separate the different currencies out into multiple CSV files (so, for example, downloading paypal-data.csv, editing it with the spreadsheet results in: paypal-data-gbp.csv, paypal-data-usd.csv, paypal-data-cad.csv, etc). After that, you can import them using the Text File Importer extension.

   To do this, go to Extensions -> Text File Importer, then select one of the paypal individual currency CSV files, choose the destination account (matching the currency of the file) and the delimiter (either [tab] for a tab-deliminated file or [.] for a comma-deliminated file), then (as long as you're using the default options for exporting transaction history from paypal), click the "more fields" button until you have 10 fields and fill them out as following:

   1. Date
   2. Ignore
   3. Ignore
   4. Description
   5. Memo
   6. Ignore
   7. Ignore
   8. Ignore
   9. Ignore
   10. Amount

   Then choose Finish and the data will be imported. From there Moneydance should then manage the separate currencies with ease, with the top-level Paypal account showing the total in the account.

   I hope this answers your question. Please let us know if we can be of any further assistance!

   Scott Meehan
   Moneydance Support

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2. 2 Posted by Forest Parks on 25 May, 2012 04:34 AM

   

   Thanks for the email Scott.

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3. Scott Meehan closed this discussion on 25 May, 2012 03:04 PM.