CiviCRM Community Forums (archive)

When running a recurring contrib w/ paypal pro, the notification back to Civi isn't working. Here's what I'm seeing:

- single amount contrib works -- transaction is processed and marked complete in Civi
- recurring contrib completes the civi forms (i.e. we get to the thank you page), the record is logged in Civi as pending incomplete
- however, the recurring contrib profile IS correctly created in the paypal account
- further, the IPN details are logged with a 200 status (success)

So what seems to be happening is that civi communicates with PayPal successfully, and PayPal is returning the notification, but Civi is not receiving and logging the successful IPN return. I'm guessing this is because the notification url back to civi isn't being constructed correctly.

Has anyone else seen successful implementation of paypal pro recurring? or is anyone else seeing these same issues?

Civi is supposed to pass the notification url to PayPal, which in turn replies back whenever a recurring transaction is run so that Civi keeps up with what's going on with paypal. But that handoff isn't happening. I've been working with the guys who did the original work on paypal pro recurring contribs, but we don't have it resolved yet.

In the meantime, you can still get this going by manually placing the IPN notification url in your paypal account settings.

Login to paypal, click profile in the horiz menu, toward the bottom you'll see selling preferences. Select "instant payment notification preferences." You then enable IPN and add the url to the ipn file in Civi. In Joomla, that will be:

http://SITE_ROOT/administrator/components/com_civicrm/civicrm/extern/ipn.php

In Drupal it will be something like sites/all/modules/civicrm/extern/ipn.php -- but don't quote me on that, I'm a Joomla user. PayPal should then be able to communicate back and you'll get the expected "completed" statuses.

i was able to make it work with a sandbox account
just make sure you're using a civi test drive page

to make sure you have the url correct, plug it into a browser -- you should get a message (not a dead page)

can you get into paypal, go to the IPN preferences. there's a link to the IPN history
can you check and see if it's getting sent and if paypal is registering a 200 (success) code?

Hi guys.  I am configuring PayPal Pro to use recurring on a Drupal 6/16/3.1.5 installation.  We have upgraded our account to Pro and also bought the additional Recurring add-on feature.  The transaction is processed, and like 'liveforfun' has experienced, the transaction is recorded properly in Paypal.

I have insert the ipn.php URL in Paypal as shown and run a live transaction on my own credit card.  The transaction is still showing as Pending in CiviCRM.  

I have two theories about this:
  1. Perhaps the notification Paypal to CiviCRM is not working
  2. Perhaps because no "initial amount" is billed, the transaction is listed as pending, because no money has actually been charged.  I can confirm that although Paypal successfully 'created' a recurring payment, no $ transaction was made in Paypal and when I called my credit card they could find no record of a recent charge in the amount of $.25.  Perhaps when the charge is actually made (next month?) then the Contribution will be updated from Pending to Complete.

Still I would like to know how this works for sure, without waiting a month to find out.

LCDWEB, do you know how to get ahold of the Paypal Pro guys, would like to hire them to resolve this issue, or at least get an update.


May 22, 2010   Recurring Payment From Stuart X   Created

Payment activity Payment type Initial Payment
Amount due $0.00 USD
Amount received $0.00 USD
Payment type
Payment cycle
Total cycles
Cycles remaining
Amount due per cycle Details
Amount
Shipping
Tax
Total amount per cycle
Amount received
Payment type Regular Recurring Payment
Payment cycle Monthly
Total cycles Indefinite
Cycles remaining Indefinite
Amount due per cycle $0.25 USD Details
Amount $0.25
Shipping $0.00
Tax $0.00
Total amount per cycle $0.25 USD
Amount received $0.00 USD

PS. I have updated the docs on Paypal Pro recurring which were totally lacking.  It is a work in progress:
http://wiki.civicrm.org/confluence/display/CRMUPCOMING/PayPal+Website+Payments+Pro+and+Express+Configuration

that's still not working correctly though.

paypal does handle the initial payment separate from future recurring payment "profiles". in the paypal api, they are handled as two distinct transactions. but if someone submits a recurring payment, there should be an initial transaction + the creation of a recurring profile, which processes all future payments. so the behavior you're seeing is not right.

did you hack any other files while trying to debug things? even with the api callback problem I was previously seeing, i still saw the initial + recurring profile transactions created

Just checked and apparently it does not do the payment transaction immediately but after the callback that happens via paypal. So looks like your call back settings are incorrect which is why the initial transaction is not completed.

All of my settings were correct, but the "initial transaction" still not processing.

The source of my problem was that I was testing Paypal Pro using live transactions less than $1.  ($.08, $.17, etc) It seems that although the script runs a transaction this small, Paypal delays the reporting and/or callback, but will still eventually run recurring transactions under $1.  Only once I attempted to process live transactions over $1, did the script create an initial transaction promptly.

I do not think this qualifies as a bug, as transactions under $1 are very uncommon.  But I am glad for all the help you provided.

I have updated the Wiki documentation for 3.2

I have taken the time to update the Wiki Documentation here:
http://wiki.civicrm.org/confluence/display/CRMUPCOMING/PayPal+Website+Payments+Pro+and+Express+Configuration
or here
http://wiki.civicrm.org/confluence/display/CRMDOC/PayPal+Website+Payments+Pro+and+Express+Configuration