PayPal-Standard & Recurring Donations

[Masked Marauder]

according to the on-line documentation ( http://tinyurl.com/2flt3l4 ) recurring donations are supposed to work with CiviContribute. 

I tried yesterday, twice, in the PayPal sandbox.  Although single transactions went through flawlessly, it never accepted anything I submitted as a recurring charge.  THe PayPal error message said that the recurring service was not available to PP-Standard accounts and that PP-Pro was needed.

Does anyone know if this is a flaw in my setup, CiviCRM documentation, or just an artefact of Sandbox Land and that it will work if I go live.?

[CiviTeacher.com]

Recurring contributions are a function of PayPal Pro.  Recurring features are an "add-on" to your existing PayPal Pro account that cost (I think) $30/mo extra beyond what Pro already costs.

Subscriptions are a function of PayPal Standard.

The two are often confused, but very different in function and price - recurring charges credit card (Pro) and subscription charges Paypal account (Standard). 

[Masked Marauder]

Thanks for clarifying that.

I guess my issue now is that I don't quite see how to activate the subscription feature in civi*.

In my sandbox I can pledge a series of payments at, say $50/month and the processor sends me to the sandbox where I can pay the initial instalment.  But I don't see anything in the civi* admin or paypal-sandbox pages about a commitment for further payments.  The pledger gets the right email with the schedule of future contributions, but which link in the chain is supposed to initiate subsequent payments?

In real life, will the subsequent payment reminders be generated by paypal, civicpledge, cicicontribute or by hand?  Or is this just a limitation on the fake sandbox accounts that will be different on a live page?


A related question is: is there a way to connect a contribution/donation to a pre existent pledge? 

We were required to collect pledges of financial support as a prerequisite for our FCC application back in 2007.  We just received our construction permit last month in Jan, 2011.  So now we have a pile of antique pledges that I'd like to be able to charge against donor's incoming donations, sort of like how the donations can be "charged" to a particular contribution page.  Is there any existing functionality remotely like this that might be hacked to relate donations to prior pledges?

[Donald Lobo]

in our current code base, Paypal / Auth.net schedules and triggers a recurring payment at the right time, and lets civicrm know. We then record the contribution and link it to the original recurring contribution record

note that pledges are different from recurring contributions. CiviCRM maintains the pledge schedule etc. You might want to read the book:

http://en.flossmanuals.net/CiviCRM/

to get a better understanding

lobo

[fen]

Hmmm... I don't see much on either recurring payments or pledges in the book, but there is this: http://wiki.civicrm.org/confluence/display/CRM/CiviPledge+Roadmap

I'd like to get Democracy Now!'s contribution process to be managed by CiviCRM and am thus interested in how pledge payments are made.  Are they contributions attached back to the pledge some how?  I see in the Pledge API (v3) that pledge params can include contribution_page_id or Campaign ID), but I don't see any way to connect a Contribution to a Pledge.

Also, as others have asked, can a recurring contribution (e.g., with PayPal or Authorize.net) be created in parallel with/ties to a pledge?  Or (good to know) can pledges - as currently implemented - only be satisfied by manual (administrative) processes?