Prolific Academic Survey Alerts

Value

It's tricky, isn't it? I think you're right not to include anything pending as it's not been confirmed as being paid. I think if there's money there in the balance ready to be paid, I think that needs to be included as Prolific said that, as far as their reporting is concerned, that's been paid even if not withdrawn.

I've logged each payment as I've gone through the year to get the total. For dollar payments, I took the UK pound value at the point I converted it from US dollars in Paypal because that reflected what I actually received, rather than an estimate based on whatever the exchange rate was on the day it came into my Paypal account in dollars. That was the rate for what was sometimes more than one study. I'm not sure if that's technically the right way to do it but I doubt it'll be a significant difference and it seemed like a reasonable explanation for how I accounted for this if I was ever questioned.

lou-rose

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81951802#Comment_81951802

We have to include any money that is available, even if not cashed out, unless under the payout threshold. So yes any pending payments and small balances under the cashout threshold wouldn't be included.

I spreadsheet record everything and use the paypal conversion rate as that is the money we actually receive. At the least record what the exchange rate was when converted, the date, and how many £ it converted to.

e.g. $55 @ £0.729937 = £40.15 (date converted). Then total everything in £. When you do your return they ask what date that you passed the £1k threshold so you'll need to work that out too

silvercar

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81951912#Comment_81951912

I cash out rarely, choosing instead to hold the money in PayPal. So I’ve only made one transfer from dollars to £ in the last financial year (as PayPal with cash out £ before $. I use the dollars to pay the occasional $ amounts. So in the last financial year I have:

A) some dollars converted to pound and withdrawn from PayPal

B) some dollars used as dollar spending

C) some dollars still held as dollars in PayPal.

elsien

I found a spreadsheet somewhere (can’t remember where, might have been Reddit).

I’m not organised enough to keep track of them as I go along so I just downloaded the prolific information including all the returns et cetera into the spreadsheet and then sorted them into the right date order and removed the ones I didn’t want. I probably used the same dollar conversion for all of them because I can’t see there’s going be a lot in it.

MollyR

I just extracted from my personal accounting system (Intuit Quicken) everything which I had categorised as "Survey Rewards", but excluding "Lottery/draw wins" - as some of the Prolific studies do pay a randomly-drawn bonus rather than an earned bonus.

Slinky

I deliberately kept mine just below the £1K as I wasn't going to go over by much if I carried on doing surveys, and I decided the messing about for the tax return wasn't worth it.

However I keep my records in a spreadsheet as others do. I pull everything from PayPal into my Zopa account and transfer into a separate pot, and use those transferred figures into the pot to tot up my earnings. I use the sterling equivalent to record the dollar earnings.

silvercar

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81952349#Comment_81952349

I haven’t kept a record of whether a bonus is a lottery/ draw or rewarded based on answers. It seems odd that one would be taxed and the other not, given both are a result of survey work.

HampshireH

Currently have 43 surveys showing on my page

That's crazy. Never seen so many duplicates

Slinky

I haven't dont any studies for a while. Just logged into Prolific today for the first time, and I'm getting the 'new studies available on prolific' audible alert for the first time in absolutely ages.

HampshireH

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81952520#Comment_81952520

I don't get alerts for new surveys but I've started receiving emails confirming approved responses.