Kayabyte

PayPal activity CSV to QuickBooks or Xero

By Kayabyte · Last updated 29 October 2026

PayPal sits between your customers and your bank, so its activity file has sales, fees, refunds, currency conversions and transfers to your bank all mixed together. Menu names change, so treat them as a guide.

1. Download the Activity report

  1. Log in and open Reports, then Activity download.
  2. Set the transaction type to Balance affecting. This hides rows that did not move money and gives you a file that reproduces your balance.
  3. Choose the date range and CSV, create the report and download it when it is ready.

The file has gross, fee, net and balance columns for each row. Check the limits on date range in your account.

2. Sort it by hand

Add a Category column. Payments received are sales; the fee column is payment fees; refunds reduce sales; conversions between currencies and withdrawals to your bank are money movement, not income or expense. The balance column of the last row should equal your PayPal balance on the end date.

3. Get it into QuickBooks or Xero

Treat PayPal as its own bank account in the software. If your software has a bank import for PayPal, use that for transactions, and book the fees as a separate expense. Otherwise post a journal with a PayPal clearing account.

4. Where Balanced helps

Balanced reads the PayPal Activity CSV on your Mac and categorises each row by rules: sales, payment fees, refunds, adjustments, currency conversion, transfers, payouts. It checks the running balance on every row and net against gross minus fee. Export a categorised CSV, Excel with a summary, a Xero manual journal or QuickBooks Online journal entries, Beancount or Ledger.

Honest limits: report layouts change, so check the preview and the category totals; Balanced does not log in to your account or fetch anything, you download the file yourself; the Schedule C worksheet is a suggested grouping, not tax advice, so check it with your tax professional or accountant.

Download Balanced and try it free: the free version reads and checks everything and exports the first 10 lines per file, so you can test your own report before paying. Pro is USD 59 per year or USD 7.99 per month, for up to 3 Macs. See pricing and the help page. macOS 14 or later.