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I’m the new treasurer for our cub scout pack. I recently set up a paypal account. I’ve successfully got us as a non-profit (so the lower fee rate), and I’ve successfully linked it to scoutbook so parents can pay there.
However, when I toggle to option to have parents pay the fees, Scoutbook charges them the old higher rate. They end up paying more than the fees that we actually pay to paypal. If I toggle it so the pack pays the fees, it charges the correct fee. I’ve also toggled the option in scoutbook that says we are paypal non-profit.
Any idea how to fix it so it charges parents the correct fee structure?
@RichardAnderholm - there are actually two parts to the fee structure. One is the merchant fee, which is what the pack pays and then there is the customer fee which is what the customer pays at checkout. You may want to dig deeper into that information.
Thanks for your reply. I had thought that might have been the case. However the extra paid by the parent is just going into the pack paypal account and ultimately the bank account. The only portion going to paypal is the correct 1.99% + $.049. Super confusing to me. Paypal help told me to ask Scoutbook.
@RichardAnderholm - yes that is your merchant fee. The customer fee is what the parents are paying. You might want to look at typical customer retail transactions you do… it is exactly what you are doing with the paypal link… your parents are now retail customers.
We did not do the paypal thing because we actually had our troop and pack accounts flagged as we could not provide anything that proved us an entity. The whole Charter Org thing is a mystery to paypal
It was very very very close to us. They froze our account and said there was no recourse and we would have to wait something like 4 months. At that point our account would be liquidated. They said if we opened a new account with the same checking or email, those would be closed automatically. I was able to finally convince support to re-look at us. It was a huge pain. We got them to reverse it, but in the reddit forums, they said no one ever gets a freeze reversed!
I started using it from something i read on this site. Suggesting to use it so people can pay through scoutbook. So far it’s been nice (except for the fee being wrong). I think the fee issue is with scoutbook not paypal.
Units losing everything?? Were they just leaving their funds in the paypal account? I have ours automatically transfer any balance to our bank account every night.
@RichardAnderholm - check or cash for us. I will point out that eventually the only thing a unit will collect are cost of activity and actual dues rather than the national and council fees.
