It’s tax time again. If you have been using Google Checkout for a couple of years, you already know that you need to record Google Checkout fees on a regular basis since Google does not provide a way to get this information at the end of the year. The ability to get a year’s worth of transaction fees has been a highly requested feature from merchants for years. It’s 2011 and guess what, it’s still a highly requested feature. Why Google won’t make this simple change to their web interface, we’ll never know. I doubt it’s a scalability issue, as that is something Google is very good at. And many financial institutions, while they don’t allow you go back very far when doing downloads, provide year end statements, which is actually what most people need.
There is a solution that we have been using for the past few years. Actual steps change from year to year, but the idea behind it still works for tax year 2010.
You will need to use Firefox as your browser. You will also need to install the FireBug add-on for Firefox. Once you have Firefox with FireBug, we are ready to go to the next step.
1. Login to your Google Checkout Seller account and click on the Payouts tab.
2. At the bottom you will see two date dropdowns and a Download button. Click on the checkbox “Payout Details”.
3. Open FireBug and go to the HTML tab.
4. Search for the word “startRD”, and you will see the first date dropdown in the HTML source.
5. Click on the first option value and change it to “d:2010-01-01”. You can change the option label too if you want, but that’s not required.
6. Scroll down a little and you will see “endRD”, which is the second date dropdown in HTML source.
7. Click on the option value and change it to “d:2010-12-31”.
8. Now go back to the Download button you saw earlier on the HTML page and click on it. That will download a year’s worth of payout details, which includes transaction fees.
That’s it. You don’t have to go to each transaction and add all the transaction fees up. If you are having problems with the steps above, or have trouble using FireBug, let me know.
I tried your fix for Google Checkout but I could not get anything to change. Is there a setting to make changes to the HTML?
In Firefox, click on Tools -> Firebug -> Open Firebug. It will open Firebug below the page. Then look for the HTML tab and click on that. On the right you will see a search tab. Use that to search for the text mentioned in the post.
I wish I could use this, but the entire option of downloading transactions to CSV has been mysteriously removed from my google checkout account. It used to be there.. has anyone else seen this and found a solution?
I just logged in to one of our accounts and it’s still there for us. I see it at the bottom of the Payouts tab.
Perfect! Since the backend obviously supports it, I can’t believe Google haven’t implemented this simple feature. Thanks!
Thats very cool, Thanks, saved me some bloody fingers.
Wm
Thanks so much! This still works.
This gives “The date range is not correct” now, so no longer works