AbleCommerce Shopping Cart Software

Just went live with our first Ablecommerce site!

When customers pay with Paypal, orders are not automatically showing as being PAID. For PAYMENT STATUS they either show "Authorization pending" or "Unprocessed". What needs to be done so orders paid with Paypal will have their PAYMENT STATUS updated to PAID automatically? (Credit card orders are working fine.)

For now, we are going into our Paypal account, manually accepting the payments, then going back to Able to change PAYMENT STATUS to PAID, but we see no way to change PAYMENT Status for multiple orders at once - is there a way?

Thanks in advance...

Clay Ghann

Hello Clay,

There are 3 different Paypal integrations available (std. Paypal, Express Checkout, and Paypal Payments Pro). I'll assume you are using the std Paypal for now. If the payment status is not updating, then it's likely that you need to set the Instant Payment Notification (IPN) which is available from your Paypal Profile page under Selling Preferences. You'll also need to view the AbleCommerce/Paypal configuration page to see what Notification URL to use. It should be something like:

https://www. my store. com/ProcessPayPal.ashx

For live payments, you will need to have your SSL enabled as well.

For Express checkout and Payments Pro, there are additional API settings that need to be entered into AbleCommerce. Let me know if you need help with this.

For your existing orders, there is a batch update for statuses from the Order Manager. Select all the orders for the change, and scroll to the bottom of the grid to see your batch update options.

Hope this helps.
Katie

Thanks for the prompt reply Katie!

Yes, we are just using Paypal Standard at present, I'll investigate the Paypal IPN setup you described.

As for the Batch update operations, it seems all the "Update Status: options in that action-dropdown at the bottom of the Order Manager are to update ORDER Statuses, not PAYMENT Statuses. I just want to change PAYMENT Status to PAID.

Clay

In the batch options, first option i.e. 'Process Payment' is responsible to change payment status. If the existing orders are 'Unprocessed' and you update status using Process Payment option, the order status will changed to 'Authorized' first, then the same action is required to mark them PAID. Whereas 'Authorized' orders will directly changed to PAID when you update their status.

I will try the two-step status change you described - that would certainly be easier than changing each order 1 at a time.

As for the auto-process via Paypal issue... I contacted Paypal today, they instructed me to activate IPN in my Paypal settings, & set the Notification URL to the URL shown on the Edit Paypal Gateway page of my Able store, then change a Paypal setting:

Profile > My Selling Tools > Paypal Button Language Encoding > More Options > "Do you want to use the same encoding for data sent from PayPal to you (e.g., IPN, downloadable logs, emails)?" - set it to "NO", use "UTF-8".

Did all this, subsequent Paypal payments still come through as "Authorization Pending" rather than "Paid".

Any other ideas?

Thanks!

Clay

It should work. I assume you have a valid SSL certificate working for the store? The IPN URL needs to be SSL.

I don't remember having to change the Language encoding, but I sort of doubt this would have any affect on the authorization.

Katie

No joy.

SSL is enabled & cert installed.

Last two orders that were paid with PP show "Authorization Pending" in our AC admin panel.
In Paypal, they both have an "Accept" button beside them. One is from an Unverified sender, but the other one IS verified.

What now?.....

Clay

UPDATE!

I just manually accepted both the payments I mentioned in previous post, and AC's Payment Status DID automatically update to PAID once I did, which means PP did talk back to AC, right?

I think both of these customers had unconfirmed addresses... I changed the setting in our PP account to ALLOW payments with unconfirmed addresses, maybe that was the problem. We should get a few more by tomorrow afternoon, I'll see if those come in automatically.

If not, I'll be back!

Thanks!

Clay

This sounds like good news to me! There are so many settings in Paypal, and it can be really difficult to troubleshoot sometimes. Please update when you are certain this was the problem. It will be helpful for others who run into the same issue.

Thanks!
Katie

SUCCESS!

These were the steps required to get Paypal to automatically mark payments as PAID in Ablecommerce:

• ensuring SSL was enabled in my AC cart settings
• enabling IPN in my Paypal account settings
• setting the "Paypal Button Language Encoding" setting to UTF-8
• set Paypal to allow payments from unconfirmed addresses

Thanks for your help!

Clay Ghann