Actual versus calculated paypal fees

Hello,

we are using the paypal plugin allow for paypal payments on our site. Therefore, we have configured the paypal plugin in compliance with our paypal conditions (0,39€ fixed amount per transaction plus 2,99% of the overall transaction fee).

 

I was assuming, that we would by that configuration handing over the paypal fees to our customers using that service. Whatsoever, I oberserved that this is not entirely the case, as paypal is calculating the fees based on the amount charged to the customer, after calcuation of the fees by events booking.

To illustrate the whole thing with numbers:

• Amount of booking is 80€
• Events Booking calculates a fee of 2,78€ (0,39€ + 0,0299 * 80€) and charges the customer paying per pay an overall amount of 82,78€ 
• Paypal calculates the a fee of 2,87€ which is based on the charged amount 82,78€ (not on 80€) since this is the charged amount (0,39€ + 0,0299 * 82,78€)
• Accrodingly we are finally payng a transaction fee of 2,87€ instead of the one calculated by events booking which 2,78€
• in an ideal world we would like PayPal to calculate the fee based on the "net amount" of 80€

Consequently PayPal calculates a higher fee, which prevents us from letting the customer pay for the comfort function of using PayPal.

The best idea I had so far, is to increase the Payment processing fee (%) in the paypal plugin configuration of paypal (we charge the customer with a higher fee than PayPal is doing afterwards). Whatsoever, I don't see how how this can be done accurately (due to rounding I assume, that there will be always slight differences betwenn the amount calculated by events booking and PayPal). Further, this is very sensitive to changes of the fees by PayPal, which we do not review regularly.

I do not see a way around this given german accounting rules and required accuracy. We are thinking about abandoning PayPal again, as this is complicating things very much more for us internally, from an accounting point of view. 

My questions:

• Have I missed anything?
• Is there any approach to this?
• Do you have similar experiences or even work-arounds in the community?

I would be grateful for sparring and exchange on this "issue".

Best regards,

Sascha

Hi Sascha

You do not miss anything. It is just how payment processing fees calculation works. However, I have seen some suggestions to change the way fee is calculated for PayPal

I will try to look at it when I come back to work after new year holiday in the next few days. We are celebrating new year in our country these days, so I don't have much time to work

Tuan

Hello Sascha

Today, I spent sometime to work on this calculation logic and have code ready. If you want to help testing this change (to make sure it works as expected), please submit a support ticket so that I can send updated package to you for testing.

Regards,

Tuan

I tested and it worked well. So I updated download package on server. You can access to My Downloads menu item, download latest package, upgrade it to your site to have it works as expected

Tuan

Hello Tuan,

thanks for considering my feedback and your efforts. I will have a look at this in the next few days and come back to you.

Can you give an indication of what changes you made precisely and where to find it (screenshot).

Thanks a lot,

Sascha

I made change to the code which handle payment processing fee calculation so that if the booking fee is 100$, you will get 100$ and users will have to pay the payment processing fee charged by PayPal.