To get a PayPal statement to Excel, start from the activity download if you can, because PayPal offers it as a CSV file that opens straight into a spreadsheet. Use the monthly PDF statement when it is the only copy. Either way, keep gross, fee and net as separate columns and check the closing balance.
PayPal monthly statement PDF versus the PayPal activity download
PayPal gives you two different files. The monthly statement is a summary document for one month, made as a PDF. The activity download is a transaction report you build for a date range, in several formats. For a spreadsheet, the activity download in CSV is the easier start; the PDF statement is the record to check it against.
What PayPal offers
According to PayPal's help article on downloading transaction history, the activity report is created from the History page using the Download icon. It can be saved as PDF, Quicken, QuickBooks, CSV or tab-delimited files, covers up to seven years back, and takes up to 12 months per request. The same article says monthly statements are requested month by month from the account statements page, and that a large report can take up to five business days to generate.
When the PDF is all you have
People end up with only the PDF more often than you would think. An accountant asks for "the statements" and a client forwards monthly PDFs. An old business account has been closed, and the PDFs were saved years ago. A lender wants statements, not exports. In those cases the PDF becomes the source, and every rule below about gross, fee and net applies to the table you extract from it.
Requesting a long range
A 12-month cap per request means a three-year history takes three downloads. Request them with no gaps and no overlap: January 1 to December 31, then the next year. Stack the files in date order in one sheet. An overlap of even one day duplicates every transaction on that day, and the balance check later will fail by exactly those amounts.
Gross, fee and net amounts in PayPal rows
A PayPal transaction row usually carries three amounts. Gross is what the payer sent or what you paid. Fee is what PayPal kept. Net is gross minus fee, the amount that actually changed your PayPal balance. Keep all three in their own columns. Summing gross tells you sales; summing net tells you cash.
Why the split matters
For a seller, the gap between gross and net is a business cost. A bookkeeper records sales at gross and the fees as an expense. If you keep only the net column, the sales figure is understated and the fee expense disappears. If you keep only gross, the PayPal balance will never tie, because the fees came out of it.
Signs on each amount
Money in is positive and money out is negative. A sale of 50.00 with a fee of 2.04 reads gross 50.00, fee -2.04, net 47.96. A purchase you made reads gross -30.00, fee 0.00, net -30.00. Check the sign of the fee column after conversion. Some extractions show fees as positive numbers with a separate debit label, and a positive fee added to gross produces a net that is too high.
Numbers that arrive as text
Amounts from a PDF often arrive with currency symbols, thousands separators or a trailing minus sign. Excel stores them as text, and SUM ignores text silently. Select the amount columns and check that the status bar shows a Sum, not only a Count. If it shows only a Count, strip the symbols with Find and Replace and convert the columns to numbers before any totals.
How do PayPal currency conversions look in a spreadsheet?
A payment in a foreign currency rarely sits in one row. The sheet can show the payment in the original currency, then conversion lines that take it out of that currency and put the converted amount into your main currency. Keep every line, with a currency column, and total each currency on its own.
Reading the conversion lines
Look at the currency column first. If a EUR payment that nets 38.20 is followed by a -38.20 EUR line and a positive amount in USD with the same date and a conversion description, those three rows are one event. The EUR lines cancel out to zero. The USD line is what landed in your dollar balance. Deleting any one of the three makes the EUR balance or the USD balance wrong.
Totalling by currency
Never sum the Net column across currencies. Use =SUMIFS(Net, Currency, "USD") and the same for each other currency you hold. If you want one total, convert at the rate implied by the conversion lines themselves: the USD amount divided by the foreign amount for that event. That rate is the one your balance actually used.
Balances held in another currency
If you keep a balance in a second currency instead of converting each payment, the sheet has two running balances. Track each in its own column, or in its own tab. The check in a later section then runs once per currency.
PayPal holds, reversals and refunds
Some PayPal rows are not final. A payment can be placed on hold, a payment can be reversed after a dispute, and a sale can be refunded in full or in part. Each of these shows up as extra rows, not as an edit to the original row. Keep them all, and link each one to the transaction it changes.
Holds and their release
A hold typically shows as money leaving your available balance and later returning. In a spreadsheet, that is two rows that net to zero over time. If you convert a month in which the hold was placed but not yet released, the closing balance of that month includes the held amount as a deduction. That is correct for the month. Do not "fix" it by deleting the hold row.
Refunds
A refund is a new transaction with a negative gross. On a partial refund, the gross is part of the original amount. Whether any of the original fee comes back depends on PayPal's terms at the time, so read the fee column on the refund row instead of assuming. Match refund rows to their sales with the transaction ID, which appears on both.
Using the transaction ID as a key
The activity download includes an ID for every transaction, and related rows often carry a reference to the original. Store both as text. They are long strings of letters and digits, and Excel can turn some of them into scientific notation if a column is left as General. With IDs intact, an XLOOKUP joins every refund, reversal and hold back to its sale in one formula.
Does the PayPal balance in Excel tie to the statement?
The PayPal balance in Excel should tie: opening balance plus the sum of every net amount for the period equals the closing balance printed on that month's statement. Run this check for each month and each currency. A difference points to a missing day, a duplicated row or a sign flipped during conversion.
Worked example: one month of PayPal rows
The rows below are an example. Opening balance on September 1 is 120.00 USD.
| Date | Description | Currency | Gross | Fee | Net | Balance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026-09-02 | Payment from Example Buyer | USD | 50.00 | -2.04 | 47.96 | 167.96 |
| 2026-09-05 | Payment from Example Shop (EU) | EUR | 40.00 | -1.80 | 38.20 | (EUR) |
| 2026-09-05 | Currency conversion | EUR | -38.20 | 0.00 | -38.20 | (EUR) |
| 2026-09-05 | Currency conversion | USD | 41.90 | 0.00 | 41.90 | 209.86 |
| 2026-09-11 | Refund to Example Buyer | USD | -20.00 | 0.00 | -20.00 | 189.86 |
| 2026-09-20 | Transfer to bank | USD | -150.00 | 0.00 | -150.00 | 39.86 |
The USD check is 120.00 + 47.96 + 41.90 - 20.00 - 150.00 = 39.86. If the September statement prints a closing USD balance of 39.86, the sheet is complete. The EUR lines sum to zero, which is what a fully converted payment should do. The refund's fee of zero is an example; read your own row.
When it does not tie
Sort by date and look at the edges of the month first. A transaction posted late on the last day can fall into the next statement, and an overlap between two downloads doubles a day. Sorting transactions by date in Excel without scrambling the rows covers why dates stored as text sort wrongly, which can hide exactly those edge rows.
PayPal transfers to and from your bank account
Transfers between PayPal and your bank appear on both statements: as money leaving PayPal and as a deposit at the bank, or the reverse. If you convert both statements into one set of books, those transfers must be treated as movements between two accounts, not as income or spending. Otherwise the same money is counted twice.
Spotting transfer rows
Transfers have recognisable descriptions on the PayPal side, such as a transfer to or from a bank, and a matching amount at the bank a day or a few days later. Match them on amount and a date window of a few days. Label both rows "transfer" in a category column, and exclude that category from any income or expense total.
Card funding
When you pay with PayPal and the money comes from a linked card or bank, a funding row can appear next to the purchase. The purchase is the spending. The funding row is the source of money. Count the purchase once, as spending, and treat the funding row as a transfer. Read your own file to see whether funding shows as a separate row; layouts differ by account type.
Other payment apps
PayPal is not the only app with this pattern. Converting a Venmo statement into payments, transfers and notes and turning a Cash App monthly PDF into rows walk through the same issues for those apps, including the transfers to a bank that sit on both sides.
The bank side of the transfer
To match PayPal transfers, you need the bank statement in rows too. FastBankConvert is built for that file: a bank statement PDF to Excel or CSV, with a check that the balances add up before you download. It is not open yet; join on the get-started page to be told when it is.