PayPal User’s Guide

[emember_protected for=5]

Setting Up Your Account Details

Before you start using PayPal for taking payments online, make sure you have all your account details in order. Having your account details right will ensure that your customers will be able to contact you if they need to. It’ll also ensure that your customers know it’s you billing them when they get their credit card statement. Finally, it’ll ensure that you can smoothly transfer funds to and from your bank account from your PayPal account.

Here’s how to setup your PayPal account details.

Step 1: Go to Your Personal Info Setup Page

Log into your PayPal account then click “Profile.”

Then go to your “My personal info” page.

Step 2: Setup Your Email Addresses

Setup your email addresses. You can have up to 8 different emails stored in PayPal’s system. You can receive payments from each email address.

This will allow you to essentially take payments as up to 8 different businesses. All you need to do is add a different email for each business.

This is also the email address that customers will be interacting with. If they have trouble with a payment or a transaction, it’s usually the email they’ll try to contact you with.

Start by clicking on “Update” next to “Email.”

You’ll be presented with the email edit screen.

Click on “Make Primary” to use a different email address as your main address. Use “Confirm” to have PayPal send a confirmation email to that address. Click “Remove” to delete an email.

To add a new email address, just click “Add.”

Step 3: Setup Your Phone Number

Your phone number will allow customers to contact you if they have a problem. PayPal will also use it as a fraud prevention tool. If they see suspicious activity, they need a valid phone number to reach you at. If you don’t have a valid number on file, they may have to freeze your account. To prevent this kind of downtime, make sure you have the right phone number(s) on file.

To setup your phone number, click “Update” next to “Phone.”

Click “Edit” to change any existing entries. Click “Make Primary” to change an existing number to the primary number. Click “Remove” to delete a phone number.

To add a new phone number, just click “Add.”

Step 4: Update Your Business Information

If you’re running a business from your PayPal account, you should also update your business profile.

Click on “Update” next to “Business information.”

PayPal will show you all the business data it has so far. If you haven’t setup your business information, most of the fields will be blank. Click “Edit.”

Then fill out the business information fields to add your business profile.

Step 5: Setup Your Bank Account

PayPal has the ability to link to your bank account, which sets up a two-way relationship. You’ll be able to both deposit and withdraw from your PayPal account. Here’s how to setup the link.

Click on “My Money” in your “Profile” page.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Click “Update” next to your bank account.

Click “Add Bank” to add a new account.

Enter your routine number and account number. These can be found on your checkbooks. If you have trouble finding it, you can also call your bank’s support center to get these numbers.

Upon adding an account, you may need to verify it. PayPal does this by placing two small deposits in your account. You’ll need to check the amounts, then report the amounts to PayPal. Once your account is verified, it’ll be linked to your PayPal account.
Step 6: Choose What Appears on Your Credit Card Bills

When you bill someone for a product or service, what appears on their credit card? If it just says “PayPal,” that could result in chargebacks if they don’t remember what the actual charge was. PayPal allows you to easily choose what actually appears on people’s credit card statements.

Start by going to “My selling tools” in your profile page.

Click “Update” next to “Credit card statement name.”

Then enter a shorter and a longer version of what you want to appear on credit card statements of your customers.

 

These are the most important aspects of setting up your PayPal account. You’ve learned how to update your email address, your phone number and your business information. You’ve learned how to setup a link with your bank account. Finally, you’ve learned how to setup what shows up on your customer’s credit card statements when they get a billing from you.

 

Create a Buy Now Button

If you want to take payments with PayPal on your website, you’ll need to create a “Buy Now” button. A “Buy Now” button allows users to click a button on your site and pay you for your product using either their PayPal account or a credit card.

Here’s how to create a Buy Now button.

Step 1: Navigate to the Button Creation Screen

Click on “Merchant Services.”

Then click on “Buy Now Button.”

 

Step 2: Choose a Button Type

Click the button type to choose what kind of button you want to create.

Here’s what each button type means:

• Shopping cart: People can add multiple items from your site before checking out.
• Buy now: Sells one item and takes people to the payment page immediately.
• Donations: User chooses how much they want to pay / donate.
• Gift certificates: Users can purchase cash certificates for use on your site by others.
• Subscriptions & automatic billing: Sets up billing on a recurring basis.
• Installment plan: Sells a purchase in multiple payments.

For the purposes of this guide, we’ll be using the “Buy Now” button.

Step 3: Name and Price

Enter the name of the product you’re selling and the price. If you’re shipping physical items, give it an item number for fulfillment to easily identify what was purchased.

 

Step 4: Add Drop Down Menu or Text

If you want to add a drop down menu or text near your button, check the respective boxes.

To customize the button’s appearance further, click “Customize text or appearance.”

Step 5: Customizing Appearance

Here you can choose to use a larger or smaller button, choose whether you want logos displayed, choose the language and choose from a couple pre-set button texts.

Alternatively, you can also just give PayPal a totally different image to use.

 

Step 6: Shipping and Taxes

Setup whether or not you want to charge shipping and taxes.

Step 7: Choose Your Merchant ID

Your merchant ID is what other people see when they’re paying for your product. If you don’t want them to see your email, check the first box. If you don’t mind them seeing your PayPal email, check the second box.

 

Step 8: Track Inventory, Profit & Loss

If you want to take advantage of PayPal’s inventory and profit tracking system, click the dropdown box at the bottom of the page.

 

All areas are grayed out by default. Click the checkboxes to enable each feature. Fill in the needed data for each feature you enable.

Step 9: Messaging, Addresses and Thank You Pages

To customize your checkout purchase further, click “Customize advanced features.”

Choose whether or not you want buyers to be able to send you a message with the purchase. Also choose whether or not you need the buyer’s physical address.

Finally, add a URL that users should be directed to after completing a purchase.

Step 10: Using the Finished Button

At this point you’ve done everything you need to do to create the button. Just copy and paste the generated code to use it on your website.

You can also click on “Email” to get the plain text link to the checkout page. This can be used to send people to place an order by email, or placed anywhere else in HTML.

Congratulations! You now know how to create a Buy Now button. We’ve covered all of the important options to setting up a payment button.

 

Create and Manage Invoices

PayPal invoices are different than invoices from other systems, in that they make it very easy for people to pay you with a click of a button. When you send someone a PayPal invoice, inside the email is a “Buy Now” button they can click to pay you, with all the forms already filled out for them.

Here’s how to create and manage invoices.

Step 1: Start the Invoice Creation Process

Go to “Merchant Services.”

Click on “Send Invoice.”

Step 2: Choose Recipient

Type in your recipient’s email address. They don’t have to have a PayPal account.

Step 3: Dates and Payment Terms

Type in the invoice number, the invoice date and the payment terms.

 

The payment term choices are:

• Due on receipt: Payment is due when you send the invoice.
• Due on date specified: Enter a due date for when the recipient needs to pay the invoice.
• Net 10/15/30/45: Specific number of days after the invoice is sent when they need to pay.

Step 4: What the Invoice is For and Price

Type in what the invoice is for. Then set the amount or price.

Step 5: Enter Terms and Notes

Enter the terms and conditions, such as return policy or refund policy. Then add any notes you want for the recipient.

Step 6: Finishing the Invoice

To finish the invoice, pick one of the following options.

• Send: Sends the invoice.
• Preview: View a preview before sending.
• Save Invoice: Saves it as a draft.
• Save as Template: Use the same invoice as a template for future invoice.
• Close: Cancel this invoice.

Generally it’s a good idea to preview your invoice before sending it off. If you click preview, this is what the screen will look like.

If everything looks in order, then click “Send.”

Step 7: View and Manage Invoices

Click on “Request Money” to go to your invoices.

Go to “Manage Invoices.”

Step 8: Invoice Actions

There are a few things you can do in the manage invoices screen. First of all, you can see all of the invoices you have that are paid, canceled, or waiting.

You can also send a reminder, mark unpaid invoices as paid or cancel an invoice.

Here’s what the invoice screen looks like. In this example, the invoice we just created hasn’t been paid, so we’ll send a reminder.

After clicking remind, you can add a note and then send the reminder.

To mark an invoice as paid, just click the drop down arrow next to an invoice and click “Mark as Paid.”

If you don’t want to create an invoice from scratch next time, you can just click “Copy” to create an invoice from a previous template.

Congratulations! You’ve learned how to create a new invoice, as well as how to manage invoices you’ve already sent. PayPal’s invoicing system makes it easy to keep track of who owes you money, as well as to send easy-to-pay bills to your customers.

 

Create Reports

Reporting is at the core of any payment system. In PayPal’s reporting system, you can view all your received payments, sent payments and other types of transactions. You can set your filters so you only see all the money you withdrew to your bank. Or you could do a refunds report and see how many refunds you processed in the last month.

Here’s how to create reports.

Step 1: Navigate to the History Tab

Click “History” in the “My Account” sub-navigation bar.

 

 

You’ll be presented with a list of your most recent transactions.

Step 2: Generating Different Kinds of Reports

To generate different kinds of reports, hover your mouse over the “More Filters” button. A long drop-down list with all the different kinds of reports you can generate will appear.

To display transactions that happened during a certain time window, select it in the date range chooser.

Here are a few examples of the reports you can generate.

Refunds Report

To view all the refunds you’ve made over a certain period of time, click “Refunds” in the “More Filters” menu.

 

You’ll see a refunds screen that looks like this:

Withdrawals to Bank Account

To view your withdrawals to your bank account, go to “Money added and withdrawn” then “Money withdrawn.”

Here’s an example of what this might look like.

To view money added from your bank account, just click “Money added” instead.

View Your Recurring Payments

If you have recurring billing agreements, you might want to take a look at all the transactions you’ve made through these agreements. To do so, go to “Subscriptions and agreements,” then “Recurring payments,” then “Transactions.”

You’ll see a screen with all your recurring payment transactions.

As you can tell, there are many different kinds of reports you can create. Just about any kind of transaction you want to find, you can create a report for it.

Step 3: Find a Specific Transaction

What if you don’t want to create a transaction report but instead want to find a specific transaction? To do so, click on “Find a Transaction.”

 

Then choose your search method.

Assuming PayPal can find your transaction, it’ll then be displayed below the search box.

That’s how to view your most recent transactions, how to create specific kinds of reports and how to find a specific transaction.

[/emember_protected]

	Course Overview