Music Teacher's Helper - Your music studio manager

Making PayPal work for you

Sat February 23rd, 2008 by ronniecurrey

PayPal has become one of my hardest workers. Signing up and using PayPal is free and painless. Using PayPal with MTH is even better.

When a student pays by credit/debit card through PayPal, you get an immediate email from PayPal as well as MTH advising you of a student payment. That’s not all! MTH immediately updates the Accounts Receivables and credits the payment to the student’s account. What do you need to do? Nothing. The fee you are charged for a student making a credit card payment is $2.62. However, if you want have the funds transferred from PayPal to your bank account, there is no charge.

Occasionally I have a student, who has set up reoccurring payments through PayPal, wanting to stop the reoccurring payment and is unsure of the procedure. Below are instructions I received from PayPal to terminate reoccurring payments. I just copy and paste the information shown below in an email to the inquiring student. Try it. You will like it.

Cancelling a Subscription and Recurring Payment 
cancels all future scheduled payments for that 
subscription. You can only cancel a subscription 
that is ‘Active’ and recurring. If your original 
subscription creation is ‘completed’ no future 
payments will be deducted and no cancellation 
is necessary.

To cancel an ‘Active’ Subscription:

1.  Log in to your account at https://www.paypal.com  
2.  Click the ‘History’ subtab.  
3.  Choose the ‘Subscriptions’ field from the ‘Show’ 
     drop-down menu.  
4.  Check the ‘From’ box and change date back 
     to the year the subscription was created.  
5.  Click ‘Search’.  
6.  To view the details of a specific  ‘Subscription 
Creation’, click ‘Details’ in the Details column.  
7.  At the bottom of this page, click 
     ‘Cancel Subscription’.  
8.  On the confirmation page click 
     ‘Cancel Subscription’ again.  
If your subscription is a non-recurring subscription, 
you will see your ‘Subscription Completion’ already 
posted and no future payments will be 
deducted from your PayPal account.  
If you need a refund from your subscription, 
please contact the seller of the subscription.  
Please note:  ยท   When viewing your subscription 
details, make sure you are clicking on the 
transaction that is titled ‘Subscription Creation’ 
and not a payment transaction. The scheduled 
payment will need to be canceled at least one 
day prior to the scheduled date of the next payment.
Canceling a Subscription on the day of a scheduled 
payment will not guarantee the payment will 
not be sent. 

3 Comments (Add Comment)

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  1. Can that fee (that is charged when a student makes a payment via Paypal) be considered a business expense? Will Paypal send you a month's work of transactions and fees for proper documentation?

    by Sarah Luebke — Sat Feb 23, 2008 @ 2:26 pm

  2. Yes, the expense is a deductible business expense. You can set perimeters in paypal to pull up these charges between certain dates (ie: jan 1 2007 - dec 31, 2007) and print the report. I do this every year, as well as input the fee into MTH so I can print out expenses as well as income.

    by Ronnie Currey — Sat Feb 23, 2008 @ 2:37 pm

  3. Also, I should clarify that Paypal doesn't take a flat $2.62 fee, but takes a percentage of the transaction, based on you volume. Normally it's around 2.9% + a $0.30/transaction fee. A lot of teachers charge their students an extra amount on their invoice to make up for this fee, or simply raise their rates. For me, I think it's worth it regardless because it saves me from having to run to the bank, deposit checks, remind parents over and over again to bring them, etc. Online payments are definitely the way to go.

    by Brandon Pearce — Sat Feb 23, 2008 @ 6:34 pm

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