Please help: Paypal Module!!

Hi Guys,

I enabled "paypal" option on my site and every thing seems to working fine in terms of processing the order!! Once the customer is moving to the paypal site, he/she is getting a mail stating the order is received and it is getting processed!!

Is there any way to link the payment confirmation with the order confirmation mail being sent to customers.

What will happen, if the customer does not make the payment?? Do we need to check it on paypal? How can we trace a specific purchase? Kindly suggest!! Thanks for your help.

Hi,

I have mention something similar to this here http://forum.opencart.com/viewtopic.php?f=31&t=3580

Phil.

The idea here is that OpenCart is trying to pre-empt the order to prevent losing track of it.

The problem:
1. Customer checks out and leaves your site to be sent to offsite payment site (paypal.com)
2. Scenarios of what can happen:
- Customer can pay via paypal and on the "click to return" page, the customer just closes the browser, and the message doesn't get sent back, so the cart doesn't know that it was paid and the order is still in the cart as if it was never purchased. So the customer paid and you don't know for what because it never completed the order, so there is confusion.
- Customer can goto paypal site, and change their mind and just quit and if you pre-process the order, it looks like the order was processed but since there was no payment, there is again confusion on the admin side.
- Customer can pay via paypal, click the return link and the order is properly successful. This would be the ideal, but not the most likely.

Solutions:
- IPN is paypal's solution. There is some argument that IPN can't be relied on because it can take up to 30 days to process. I think that is vastly misconstrued and an exception to the rule. 99% of the time IPN is instant.
- AutoReturn (+PDT) is another paypal solution. Essentially it returns to merchant on the client end after 5 second countdown. Combining both the Autoreturn on the front side and IPN on the backside is a 99.9% effective way (according to Paypal devs) to ensure proper order handling. Since introducing this method in OpenCart Zero there have been no paypal problems.

Other solutions:
The way OpenCart 1.x is doing it, is:
1. Customer checks out and clicks the confirm button
2. If Javascript is enabled, an ajax callback is made to pre-process the order and add the confirm flag, but put it into the "store's default order state" (like Pending) and an email is sent to the customer.
3. Then if the payment is successful and returns back via ipn or return to merchant link, the order is finalized by being updated to the Paypal custom order state. (like Processing). Then another email is sent to the customer.

This method is OK, but has a few confusion points and limitations
1. Too many emails giving confusing information. The pre-processing step is fine, but it should only pre-process the order. No email should go out. Unless that email is a reminder to the customer that the order is placed but the payment has not been processed yet. But better would be to only pre-process so you don't lose it on the store side, and don't email the customer at all until he completes payment. At the very least there should be an option like "Send mail on Order Pre-Process: Yes/No"
2. If javascript is off, it won't pre-process the order, which relies then on IPN and Click to return. Which is still fine, and possibly less confusing since only 1 email is sent out. But if IPN were to fail or was setup wrong, then you could lose the order altogether.

So there are some refinements that could be made. I have been asked to port the OpenCart Zero module over to 1.x by a few forum members as an alternative option. But it would be nice if you could all agree on one set up to avoid confusion later.

Hi,

Thanks for the process breakdown.

I have used something similar to following...

A possible solution (and fail safe) add a new "Order Status" called "Order Confirmation" and the first email that is sent simply states something like:
"This email is NOT confirmation of the order.
A confirmation email will be sent when your payment has been processed.

blah blah

invoice details...

Blah blah"

Phil.

Actually it could just be left as pending but the content of the email changed to something similar to above.

Hi Q,

porting the mod across to 1.x seems ideal.

I'm currently testing Paypal sandbox and have come across one or two oddities (will post separately)

I currently have my testing set-up in 1.2.5 so that the current email (pre-payment processing) states that the order has been received and won't be processed until payment has been received.
The Paypal module has a status of 'Processing' and then once payment is confirmed, I would presume I need to manually change it to 'Paid''.

However, ideally I think I'd like the status to change to Processing once you go through Paypal processing but payment has not been made, and then automatically change to Paid once Paypal confirms payment received; does that make sense?

I've currently got the sandbox seller user set up but payments aren't being taken from the buyer straight away; it seems to defer taking payment until the seller requests it (pre-auth) and I can't see how to change this to automatically take payment?

What's happenning is that the order is getting set to Processed (the Paypal module status) when the buyer returns to OC and then it gets set to Processed again, when the seller goes in to Paypal and takes payment.
Does this sound correct in terms of how the order should be updated?
To the Customer & Admin, the order is marked as Processed twice.

Thanks
Mark

Dear Qphoria,

Thanks for your detailed explanation!! I appreciate that!!

PDT on paypal.com side can be a good option!!

But in any way, as you suggested there has to be some sort of option which enables us whether or not to send an email upon order pre-process.

This way, we can at least be assured of the payment status. Otherwise, it will lead to confusion when the number of orders are more and it becomes difficult to track!!

Would be great if it can be ported to 1.xx version!!

Thanks.