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Yes, but PayPal does not necessarily provide one universal “income” figure. Use a custom statement to review balance-affecting activity, or download detailed transaction activity and calculate the total for the payment types you mean by income. Gross payments received, payments after refunds, and net proceeds after PayPal fees are different figures.
Choose the report that matches your question
| What you need | Best route | Important qualification |
|---|---|---|
| Reconcile changes in your PayPal balance | Custom statement | Summarizes balance-affecting activity and excludes certain pending items; it is not automatically a sales-income total. |
| Total received payments for a period | Activity Download, followed by filtering and summing transaction rows | You must define included transaction types, statuses, refunds, fees, dates and currencies. |
Use a custom statement for an account summary
PayPal describes monthly and custom statements as bank-style reports showing opening and closing balances, total debits and credits, and other activity that changes the balance. They exclude pending activity such as uncaptured authorizations, pending eChecks and unresolved disputes.
That makes a statement useful for reconciliation, but its total credits should not be labeled “income” without checking what those credits represent. Transfers, reversals, refunds and other balance movements can produce a different result from money earned through sales or services.
Business-account path
- Sign in to PayPal and open Activity.
- Select All Reports.
- Under Payments, choose Statements – monthly and custom.
- Request a custom date range and choose the available output format.
Menu names can vary by account view and country. PayPal’s help documentation says transaction activity can be requested for up to seven years, with no more than 12 months in one request.
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Download transactions when you need a precise received-payments total
The Activity Download report provides transaction-level data for a selected period. Available formats include PDF, CSV, TAB, IIF and QIF. IIF is intended for QuickBooks on US accounts, while QIF is for USD data.
How to export the period
- Open PayPal’s activity or reports area and select the Activity Download report.
- Choose a custom start and end date.
- Select the format that fits your workflow, such as CSV for spreadsheet analysis.
- Download the file and retain the original export for your records.
Current PayPal developer documentation, updated July 2, 2026, states that activity can be covered as far back as seven years, but each report may span no more than 12 months. CSV and TAB reports are limited to 50,000 records; larger exports are split into multiple files inside a ZIP archive.
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Calculate the number you actually mean by income
After opening the export in a spreadsheet, filter the rows before using AutoSum. The correct column depends on the report and currency, so inspect the headings rather than summing every number that looks like a payment.
Gross payments received
Include completed incoming payment transactions that represent sales or services. Exclude transfers, currency conversions, top-ups and other receipts that are not customer revenue.
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Payments after refunds
Start with the included incoming payments, then subtract refunds associated with those sales. State whether partial refunds and reversals are included.
Net proceeds after fees
Subtract PayPal transaction fees as a separate rule. This is closer to the amount deposited into your balance, but it still may not equal taxable profit because expenses, cost of goods, taxes and other adjustments are outside PayPal’s report.
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Avoid double-counting
- Do not sum every credit in a statement and call it sales income.
- Do not mix a payment row with a later transfer to your bank as two sources of income.
- Use one date rule consistently, such as transaction date or the date funds became available.
- If transactions use multiple currencies, calculate by currency or apply a documented conversion method.
What the report limits mean in practice
- Seven-year history: PayPal’s current Activity Download documentation describes availability for activity up to seven years back.
- Twelve-month windows: A single Activity Download request cannot cover more than 12 months, so a longer review requires multiple exports.
- 50,000-record threshold: CSV and TAB exports above 50,000 records are split into files in a ZIP.
- Pending activity: Custom statements omit specified pending items, so a statement may not match an export that contains transactions with different statuses.
- Regional formats: IIF and QIF availability and compatibility depend on account country and currency; QuickBooks import instructions should be checked for the relevant region.
A practical workflow for monthly bookkeeping
- Define the metric: gross receipts, receipts less refunds, or receipts less refunds and PayPal fees.
- Export each calendar or accounting period, keeping every report within the 12-month limit.
- Filter for completed incoming payment types that correspond to your sales.
- Review refunds, reversals, disputes and fees separately.
- Reconcile the result to the PayPal statement and investigate differences rather than forcing the figures to match.
- Save the source files and your filtering rules so the calculation can be reproduced.
Bottom line
PayPal can report activity for a selected date range. Choose a custom statement to reconcile balance movements; choose Activity Download when you need to calculate a defensible total of received payments. The result becomes meaningful only after you specify which transactions, refunds, fees, statuses, dates and currencies are included.
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