Reconciling PayPal Transactions with Exchange Rates in Recurly – Recurly

PayPal transactions can show settlement or exchange-rate details even when the Recurly invoice and transaction are created in the same billing currency. This can happen when PayPal, the processor, the acquirer, or the customer's funding source performs currency conversion outside Recurly's billing calculation.

Recurly records the billing side of the transaction: the invoice, transaction amount, transaction currency, invoice UUID, and gateway transaction identifiers. Recurly does not perform PayPal's settlement conversion for subscriptions or invoices created in Recurly.

Key takeaway: Treat PayPal or your settlement reporting as the source of truth for settlement foreign exchange details such as applied exchange rate, settlement amount, settlement currency, and gateway-side fees. Use Recurly transaction fields to join those records back to invoices and subscriptions.

Why the Exchange Rate May Not Be a Structured Recurly Field

The Subscription Management API does not expose a dedicated structured exchange-rate field for Recurly-created subscriptions or invoices. Because Recurly is not determining the currency conversion, the most accurate source for settlement FX is usually the gateway, processor, acquirer, or bank report where the conversion was applied.

In some cases, exchange-rate data returned by PayPal may be stored in gateway response parameters rather than exposed as a first-class API field. That can help with investigation, but it should not replace gateway settlement reporting for finance reconciliation.

Recommended Reconciliation Workflow

Export or retrieve the Recurly transaction records for the reconciliation period.
Capture the Recurly transaction UUID, invoice UUID, amount, currency, and gateway transaction ID.
Retrieve settlement or balance transaction details from PayPal or your payment reporting source.
Join the PayPal settlement records to Recurly using the gateway transaction ID or another shared payment reference.
Use the PayPal settlement record for exchange rate, settlement amount, settlement currency, and fees.
Use the Recurly record for invoice, subscription, account, billing amount, and billing currency context.

Which System Should Provide Each Field?

Data needed	Recommended source
Invoice UUID, invoice number, account, subscription, billing amount, billing currency	Recurly
Gateway transaction ID or PayPal payment reference	Recurly and PayPal
Settlement amount, settlement currency, applied exchange rate, settlement fees	PayPal or payment settlement reporting
Original customer funding currency	PayPal, when available from PayPal reporting or API responses

Source Currency in Recurly

Recurly's Get Transaction API can include transaction currency information for the Recurly transaction record. If your finance team needs the original currency used inside the customer's PayPal funding source, verify that value directly with PayPal because that funding-source detail may be determined outside Recurly.

When to Contact Recurly Support

Contact Recurly Support if you need help identifying the Recurly fields that can be used to join a transaction to PayPal reporting. Include a small sample of transaction UUIDs, invoice UUIDs, gateway transaction IDs, and the specific PayPal reconciliation fields you are trying to match.

Best practice: Do not infer settlement exchange rates from billing amounts alone. Match the Recurly transaction to PayPal settlement reporting so finance teams reconcile against the system that applied the conversion.

For transaction API details, see Get a transaction.