Connect PayPal

Connect PayPal to bring your PayPal disputes (chargebacks, claims and other cases a buyer opens) into Profitario. You do not need the connection for PayPal fees: those already arrive with your Shopify orders. Connect it if customers pay you through PayPal and you want disputes and their fees in your reports.

Where: In the sidebar, open Integrations, then PayPal
Who: Stores that accept PayPal in Shopify. Owners, admins and members with access to the whole account can connect. Viewers and members limited to single stores cannot
Time: About 2 minutes
Updates: The first import starts as soon as you connect. After that, new disputes are fetched about once an hour

What Is Imported#

Data	Where it comes from	Needs the connection	How far back
Transaction fees	Your Shopify order data, for every order paid by PayPal	No	With each imported order
Disputes	PayPal	Yes	180 days
Transaction fees, read from PayPal directly	PayPal, only when you click Import Fees	Yes, optional	3 years

Fees without the connection. When a customer pays a Shopify order with PayPal, Shopify passes the PayPal fee along with the order. Profitario reads it from there, with or without a PayPal connection. This is controlled by Import fees from Shopify in Store settings > Costs & Fees, which is on by default.

Disputes. For each dispute Profitario imports the disputed amount, the reason, the status and the dispute fee, if PayPal reports one. Each dispute is matched to the Shopify order it belongs to. One connection covers every store in your Profitario account.

Optional fee import. Import Fees in the connection menu reads the fees of your PayPal transactions straight from PayPal, for up to 3 years. It runs once, each time you click it. It is not switched on permanently: the hourly sync keeps fetching disputes only.

Profitario only gets read access to your transaction history and your disputes. It cannot move money or change anything in your PayPal account.

How PayPal Fees Work With Your Fee Rules#

For each order, Profitario uses the first of these that exists:

Priority	Source	When it applies
1	A fee you changed on the order	Always wins
2	The real PayPal fee, from the Shopify order data or from Import Fees	As soon as it is known for the order
3	Your fee rule for the PayPal gateway on the Transaction Fees page	As long as no real PayPal fee exists for the order

Example. An order of $82.00 is paid with PayPal. Your fee rule is 3.49% + $0.49, which gives $82.00 × 0.0349 + $0.49 = $3.35. Shopify passes on the fee PayPal actually charged, $4.58, because the buyer paid from another country. Profitario uses $4.58. The rule would only be used if no PayPal fee were known for this order.

Connect PayPal#

Your account needs at least one installed Shopify store before you can add an integration.

To add a second PayPal account, click Connect Integration again and log in with the other account.

What PayPal Asks For

At PayPal you log in and then approve what Profitario may access. PayPal words this in its own way. Profitario asks for three things:

Access	Why Profitario asks for it
Identify your PayPal account	So the connection shows which PayPal account it belongs to
Read your transaction history	Used only when you click Import Fees
Read your disputes	Chargebacks, claims and other cases a buyer opens

Which account. Log in with the PayPal account that receives the payments of your Shopify store. Disputes of another PayPal account are not imported.
Read only. Profitario cannot move money or change anything in your PayPal account.
Cancelling. If the approval is cancelled or does not complete, you see Failed to connect to PayPal back in Profitario. Nothing was connected. Click Try Again.

What Happens Next#

Dispute fees. The dispute fee is counted as a cost on the disputed order, except for disputes you won. If PayPal reports no fee for a dispute, the default from Store settings > Order Events > Default dispute fee per gateway is used.
Updates. New disputes follow about once an hour. Last Sync on the PayPal page shows when the last sync ran. The hourly sync looks for newly opened disputes only, see Limits.
Fees. Your PayPal fees do not change when you connect. They were already on your orders.

Manage the Connection#

Click the three dots at the end of the connection row.

When to use Import Fees

Default: not run. Fees come from your Shopify order data.

Situation	Run Import Fees?
PayPal orders show the PayPal fee	No
Some PayPal orders show no fee, or only the estimate from your fee rule	Yes
You turned Import fees from Shopify off and still want real PayPal fees	Yes, and again later for newer orders

The import can take a while on accounts with many transactions. Fees it finds replace the estimate from your fee rule on the matched orders. A fee you changed on an order yourself is kept.

Check What Was Imported#

Payment Records lists one row per imported dispute or transaction.

Click a row to open Payment Record Details, including the order it was matched to.

In the screenshot, the dispute over $39.90 is unmatched: Profitario found no order for that PayPal transaction.

Limits#

Disputes go back 180 days. Older disputes are not imported.
Fees from PayPal go back 3 years, and only when you run Import Fees.
Only Shopify orders paid by PayPal are matched. PayPal payments that do not belong to a Shopify order in Profitario (invoices, another shop system, money sent to you directly) stay unmatched and are not counted.
Very busy days can be skipped by Import Fees. A single day with more than 10,000 PayPal transactions is left out of the fee import.
The status of a dispute is not refreshed every hour. The hourly sync fetches disputes opened since the last sync. A dispute that was imported as open keeps that status until the disputes are read again. To refresh the last 180 days, click Import Fees.
Not real time. New disputes arrive with the hourly sync.

Troubleshooting#

What you see	Cause	Fix
Connect a Shopify store before adding integrations.	No installed Shopify store in the account	Install Profitario on your Shopify store first
Failed to connect to PayPal after returning from PayPal	The approval was cancelled or did not complete	Click Try Again and approve the access on PayPal's page
Status Expired, and an Integration expired notification	PayPal no longer accepts the access you gave, for example after you removed it in PayPal	Click Connect Integration and approve again with the same PayPal account. See Reconnect expired token
Status Failed	The last sync did not finish	Hover the status to read the message. The next hourly sync tries again
No disputes in the list	No dispute was opened in the last 180 days, or a different PayPal account receives the payments	Check the account name in the Account column. Connect the other account if needed
A dispute still shows as open although PayPal has closed it	The hourly sync only fetches newly opened disputes	Click Import Fees to read the disputes of the last 180 days again
Disputes are unmatched	The order is not in Profitario yet, or the payment did not come from a Shopify order	Once the orders are imported, click Sync Orders
A PayPal order shows no fee	Shopify did not pass a PayPal fee for this order	Connect PayPal and click Import Fees. Add a fee rule for PayPal as a fallback, see How to Add Transaction Fees
After Import Fees, the confirmation message names Stripe	The message is shared with the Stripe integration	Nothing to do. The PayPal import has started
Menu entries are greyed out and say Import already in progress	An import is running	Wait until the status is Connected again

If the problem remains, contact support and send: the store, the PayPal account name shown in the Account column, the status message, and one order number with its PayPal transaction ID.