Paypal fees different in TroopTrack vs. Paypal

Our troop is starting up the paypal payment option and I was doing some test transactions, and I was wondering if you could clarify why something is happening prior to us rolling it out to parents…
For an event fee of $10, I paid $10.78 - which I understand is for $.53 fee to paypal and $.25 fee to troop track. The $.25 troop track fee was a separate transaction, so that made sense. On the troop account, it deducted the remaining$.53 fee, which againmade sense, so that the troop track balance shows $10. However, - and this is really my question - our Paypal account deducted $.61 instead of $.53 so our actual Paypal balance is $9.92! Can anyone explain why is there a discrepancy between the paypal fee added to my transaction and the fee they actually charged?

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Hi @MelanieHart!

Thank you for posting this to the community! It looks like PayPal should only be charging you 2.2%, but they’re charging 2.9%. This has been reported to our CEO, and he will be looking into what is causing the problem.

Sorry for the inconvenience!
Claire

Has any progress been made on correcting this?

Hi @MelanieHart,

In most places we’ve changed the default fee back to 2.9%. We don’t know why paypal changed the fee, but at this time, we are just going to change the fee amount on our documentation.

Are you planning to change the fees added on or only the documentation? My
main concern is that the fees added on to the actual amount owed do not
cover the fees that are actually deducted…therefore our ending amount in
PayPal is less than the actual fee for the event.

Hi @MelanieHart,

The fees will remain as they are. $0.30 and 2.9% for paypal. You do have the ability to charge these fees to the person sending the payment (Manage > Settings > Online Payments), but the only change here is that PayPal went back to charging 2.9% rather than what we negotiated with them originally, 2.2%. We are changing the places on the site from 2.2% to 2.9% so people will be aware that the fee is not what we were told it would be.

As for your concern, the fees either go to you, the receiver or to the sender. You can increase the fees to include the cost of the transaction or you can just charge it to the sender. That one is up to you.

Thanks for asking!

Scouts-Sitting here tonight for some reason it finally clicked in my head on why this is the deal with paypal, so let me offer a bit better explanation. Trooptrack staff, feel free to put this out to others that wish to debate with you on the fee as it isn’t your fault.
Paypal standard fee is the 2.9%+$0.30 transaction using it through trooptrack. If you go into your settings you can adjust this so the fee gets charged to the person making the transaction. They will see 2 transactions in their troop account #1 for the amount deposited, and #2 for the 2.9%+$0.30 fee. From your bank account or credit card you used you will see 2 withdrawals #1 for the amount plus paypal fees, and #2 for the $0.25 fee for using trooptrack. What this looks like on a $5 deposit through trooptrack using payal if you set your settings correctly (Your scout account will reflect $5 deposit and another for $0.45 to cover the paypal fees. Your bank account or credit card will show a withdrawal for $5.45 and a withdrawal for trooptrack’s fee $0.25)
Paypal cannot legally (which is what they realized and changed it back) allow you to deposit money into your account as a non-profit at 2.2%. The 2.2% non-profit fee is strictly related to donations/fundraising to scouts. It would not be logical for trooptrack to try and separate the 2 based on money coming in, legally they would be running a fine line, and from a treasurer standpoint it would be miserable. Any questions please let me know I am happy to help.

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Well… I’m really confused.

We just did a bunch of Paypal payments for our Camporee last weekend.

We were charged X*1.022 + 0.30. 2.2% fee.

Did anything get changed? As per this discussion I was expecting to see 2.9% fee.

Mike

Great information here! Thanks everyone!

One question that I’m not really understanding here - When does the money that was charged from the user’s credit card/bank account (via Paypal) here, get sent to the troop’s bank account? I assume that PayPal is more of a transaction processor and not a bank account in itself. Right?

I’d love to see more example transactions like Phillip’s explanation here.