AbleCommerce Shopping Cart Software

Hi -

We upgraded a client site from 7.0.7 to Gold R4 and then to R5 including SR1. While live in both R4 and R5, we experience order numbers being skipped. It doesn't happen often, but 1-2 times a week the orders will skip anywhere from 1-4 orders. I've confirmed that the increment setting is indeed 1, and most of the time it works great. I tried doing some testing like clicking Pay Now twice real quick, etc but can't seem to replicate the issue. I've also reviewed orders before and after the skip, but can't seem to find anything wrong with those users or orders.

Bug report was sent to AC but haven't heard much back yet so I thought I'd reach out to see if anyone else is experiencing the same issue.

Thanks,
Greg

This is a confirmed bug in R4 and R5.

Thanks for letting us know.

This happens when a user places an order but the credit card payment he/she makes fails. As a result the actual order isn't created. However the order number logic is such that the the next order number was already obtained before attempting to make the payment. In AC7 an order was always created even when the payment was failed. In AC8 the actual order is only created if the payment is successful.

To make it behave exactly like AC7 go to Configure -> Store -> General : Checkout Settings and enable the "Ignore Failed Payments" checkbox.

You will not se any more skipped order numbers, but you will see orders in your system that users tried to place unsuccessfuly.

Is AC going to work on a fix for this issue? We prefer to have any payment issues resolved at checkout as it's much less of a headache to have the customer correct payment information prior to ordering.

Based on my experience and the comments above, there isn't any problem with payments. The user simply corrects their credit card and/or address info on the checkout page(s) and clicks the "Pay with Card" button again. All you will notice is that sometimes order numbers will be skipped.

Currently, AC Gold has two options:

1. Allow checkout with failed payments and have no missing order numbers
Or
2. Disallow checkout with failed payments and leave possibility of missing order numbers.

A merchant can configure between the two. If we try to disallow checkout with failed payments and still have no missing order numbers, it would become very difficult to handle reliably. We have tried this earlier and finally settled with allowing the above two options only.

We believe that in the interest of not breaking any existing functionality and not introducing any new subtle issues, it is best to leave it as-is. It should not be too much of a problem given that an option is available to ensure no missing order numbers.

If you have any comments, please let us know.

Thanks,
Katie