Are you someone who pays your affiliates through PayPal?
Or maybe you have give donations to multiple people at once through PayPal?
Did you know that PayPal has an option to make a mass payment? This feature is totally awesome and as much as I dislike PayPal, I’m in love with this feature.
When you use the mass payment feature, you as the sender are paying the cost (which is a cost of doing business and something your business should cover anyway). But the cost is only 2% and is capped at $1 per payout.
So say you are sending one of your affiliates a payout of $10,000 for their affiliate fees, you are only charged $1 for this payout to be sent. If you send the money any other way, your affiliate is charged $.30 + 2.9% of the fee amount. While this is still a cost of business for your affiliate, your affiliate should receive the total amount of their affiliate earnings, not have to eat the charges too.
Benefits of Using Mass Payments
Of course there are benefits to using the mass payments feature, or I wouldn’t be here telling you all about this feature.
First, this method is quick and easy.
You get the affiliate totals from your affiliate dashboard and create a spreadsheet. Then you’ll upload that spreadsheet to PayPal, verify the information and hit send.
This could almost be done in your sleep, if it didn’t have to do with money and making sure your affiliates are paid properly.
Just think how much time this would involve if you had to hand key in each individual payment. If you have a lot of affiliates, that’s a LOT of time!
Second, there are lower fees involved.
When you send your payments this way, the fee is only 2% and it’s capped at $1.
When you send the payment individually, either you or (most likely) your affiliate is charged $.30 + 2.9% of the total transaction.
For example, if you send a payment of $10,000 to one of your affiliates this way, you are charged $1. If you were to send this payment the normal way you send money through PayPal, the fee would be $290.30. And your affiliate would most likely be charged this fee, depending on how you send the money.
Third, you are charged the fee.
As the affiliate host, or the business sending mass payments to a large group of people, you should be the one paying the fees involved.
Again, this is a cost of doing business. But also, see above benefit #2, where the fees are capped at $1 per payout.
Finally, you don’t have to worry about 1099’s to your affiliates.
If you pay your affiliates more than $600 in a calendar year, you have to issue a 1099-MISC to them. But when you use PayPal to send these payments, you don’t have to worry about totaling up how much you paid each affiliate and creating and issuing those 1099’s to your affiliates.
PayPal will do all of that work for you!
Isn’t it nice when you have a system like this that will do all of the accounting work for you that you really don’t like to do? Plus you save the cost of having to pay an accountant and/or assistant to help you prepare these 1099’s and mail them out to your affiliates.
How Do I Send Mass Payments?
First things, first.
PayPal Business Account
You must have a PayPal Business Account for this feature to be turned on. It’s free.
Need help creating a PayPal Business Account, check out this article that I walk you through how to create one.
Tools Menu/Pay & Get Paid
Once you have a PayPal Business Account, log in. In the top bar, you have an option for tools in the old PayPal version.
My PayPal account has been upgraded to the PayPal interface, so my menu is Pay & Get Paid, as you can see from the screenshots here. (All screenshots are from the new version.)
In the drop down menu under tools, you should have an option for Mass Payment in the old version. If it’s not there, it will be under other tools at the bottom of the list.
In the new menu, it just says Payouts.
Mass Payment
Click on the Mass Payment or Payouts option.
It will take you to the Mass Payment page.
If you have never used this feature before, you have to set it up.
Click the Get Started button, then fill out the questions as they pertain to your business.
After you fill out the questionnaire that they provide, PayPal has to review your information to make sure that you are using payouts method in the right way. They will get back to you within 24 hours.
After your request has been processed and you are approved to use this method, you can then get started with the mass payouts method.
Create Your CSV File
The easiest method to use is the CSV file. Your affiliate dashboard should be able to give you a spreadsheet of the totals you owe each affiliate for the month.
Download this file from your dashboard.
For the PayPal CSV file, you need 4 pieces of information in your spreadsheet.
- Paypal email of the recipient
- Amount recipient is receiving
- Currency type (USD, CAD, GBP, EUR, etc.)
- A note to the recipient
That’s it! Super easy.
Upload Your File
Next step is to upload your file to the Payouts area in your PayPal account.
After you upload the file, PayPal will convert the file to a payment form in PayPal.
You just have to verify the information and hit send.
Again, it’s quick and easy.
So much easier than paying each of your affiliates individually. And it’s cheaper too.
Using the Mass Payments Feature of PayPal
There are 4 main benefits to using the mass payments feature of PayPal and these 4 benefits will greatly help your business and save you time and even money.
This method is also much less prone to errors than sending each payment individually.
Since the majority of affiliates are paid via PayPal, this feature can be a total gamesaver for you and your business.
