FINANCIALS · PAYPAL

What clients pay,and what you keep

PayPal shows you a balance. CashFish shows you what's behind it: each payment at its gross amount, the fee it carried, and the net that actually reached you.

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FreelancersConsultantsSmall shopsCross-border work

PayPal · Available·PayPal OAuth — read-only transaction access

Growth plan · $29/mo billed yearly ($349) · 4-day free trial · Full refund guarantee

01The balance that isn't the answer

PayPal shows a balance.
You needed the story.

Two payments, one refund, two fees and a transfer to the bank. Five events, one number on the statement, and a year of them adds up to a tax return built on guesswork.

BANK · 28 AUG · PAYPAL TRANSFER+$1,144.52unexplained

$850.00

The number the client will always quote

Meridian Design sent $850 for brief #3. That is the figure on the invoice, in the contract, and in every email about it — and it is not the figure that reached your account.

gross · invoiced

−$30.16

The fee that turns $850 into $819.84

3.49% plus forty-nine cents, taken before it lands. Across a year of invoices that is a real, deductible expense, and most people never separate it out to claim it.

3.49% + $0.49

−$85.00

A partial refund, three days later

Scope came down, eighty-five dollars went back. Income quietly needs correcting, and nothing in a balance screen volunteers to correct it for you.

refund · after the fact

5 → 1

One transfer standing in for all of it

Everything above leaves PayPal as a single withdrawal. The bank line is one number that represents five separate events, none of which it names.

1 line · 5 events

Freelance income is rarely complicated. It is simply recorded somewhere that shows a balance and expects you to remember the rest — which works until it is March and you cannot.

02What comes across

Five things arrive.
Read-only throughout.

CashFish reads the transaction record behind the balance: what came in, what it carried in fees, what went back out, and which withdrawal it left in.

01Payments receivedclient and customer income, recorded at gross value

02Feestransaction and currency-conversion fees, itemized per payment

03Refundsnetted against the original payment they reverse

04Disputes & chargebacksflagged and linked to the sale in question

05Withdrawals to bankso PayPal-to-bank transfers reconcile against your deposits

DIRECTION OF TRAVELCashFish observes your PayPal activity with read-only access — it never sends money, issues refunds, or writes anything back.

Access is granted on PayPal's own sign-in screen and can be withdrawn from PayPal, or from the Connection Health panel in CashFish settings, at any moment. Data is protected with 256-bit encryption; CashFish is SOC 2 Type II, ISO 27001 and GDPR compliant.

03One deposit, taken apart

One transfer to the bank.
Five events behind it.

The withdrawal that reached the account on 28 August, opened up. Two client payments at gross, the refund that reduced one of them, and the fees PayPal took on the way through.

WITHDRAWAL · DEPOSITED 28 AUG$1,144.52

Payments · 2Meridian Design $850.00 · Oakline Retail $425.00+$1,275.00

Refund · Meridian Designscope reduced after brief #3, netted against the payment−$85.00

PayPal fees3.49% + $0.49 per payment, itemized and deductible−$45.48

Net · what the bank receivedmatches the statement line to the cent$1,144.52

Two connections in this category behave differently on purpose. QuickBooks and Xero import into CashFish one way only: they stay your ledger and your system of record, CashFish reads from them and never writes back, and nothing here replaces the accounting software or the accountant who works in it.

04What becomes visible

Income stops being
whatever the balance says.

Three things change once every payment carries its own fee, its own refund and the client who sent it.

Gross, fee, net — itemized

Every payment shows what the client sent, what PayPal kept, and what reached you. Come tax time, the fee total is already a category, not a research project.

Client income without the spreadsheet

Payments group by who sent them, so you can see which clients carried the quarter — and which patterns of work are worth repeating.

Disputes on the record

A chargeback lands linked to the original sale, with its fee accounted for. Your income figures adjust themselves instead of quietly drifting wrong.

05Connecting PayPal

Link it once,
then leave it alone.

Three steps and nothing to install. The connection reads transactions and cannot touch the balance — and it can be cut from PayPal or from Connection Health at any time.

Link your PayPal account

Connect a Business or Personal account through PayPal's own sign-in. CashFish reads transaction data only — it can't touch your balance.

Set the import range

Choose how much history to bring in — up to three years of payments, refunds, and fees.

Name your regulars

Tag a recurring client once and their future payments file themselves under the right name.

Connection method: PayPal OAuth — read-only transaction access. Data is protected with 256-bit encryption and CashFish is SOC 2 Type II, ISO 27001 and GDPR compliant. Every connection shows its state in the Connection Health panel and can be disconnected there at any time.

06Works alongside

Clients pay in
more than one way.

StripeCharges, subscriptions, refunds and fees — each payout unpacked into the records inside it.SquareCounter and online sales from every location, with each deposit matched to its day.WooCommerceStore orders, refunds and fees read into CashFish as part of the Growth integrations.EtsyShop sales and the fees taken out of them, filed the same way as every other channel.

Alongside PayPal: Stripe, Square, WooCommerce and Etsy for the other channels; QuickBooks and Xero importing your accounting one way; Gmail, Outlook and any IMAP inbox reading invoices and receipts; Google Drive, Dropbox and OneDrive for the documents behind them.

See all integrations

07The plan for this

Know your net, not just your balance

Link PayPal read-only in minutes, then try CashFish free for 4 days before the subscription begins.

PayPal, like all payment connections, is included from Growth up. Starter includes email and document extraction only.

$29/mo billed yearly ($349) · or $39 monthly

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08Straight answers

What freelancers ask
before linking an account.

Yes — you can connect either, or both. Freelancers who keep a personal account alongside a business one can bring both in and still see their income split cleanly.