CiviCRM Community Forums (archive)

check the log message timestamped 18:34:33

that indicates that the paypal IPN was sent with a pending status

lobo

1. r u setting up currencies in different units? paypal sometimes takes a few days to resolve multi-currency issues

2. eventually paypal does send an IPN with status completed, at which time civicrm switches the status

lobo

It seems that this is finally resolved on my end.

The problem appears to have been that payments made to my PayPal test account were flagged for review.  This seems to have sent the "pending" status back to CiviCRM. 

Why, exactly, PayPal flagged the payments for review is unclear at this time, but I'll continue researching that.  When I went into the PayPal test account and "accepted" the payments, it sent a "completed" message to CiviCRM.  This was duly processed.

So it looks as though I was to anxious, and too uninformed (i.e. "Ignorant") about the interplay between the software pieces to comprehend the entire process.  I won't complain about the CiviCRM documentation except to say that it could be a little better at the following:

1. Explaining the overall process of CiviCRM contribute interaction between payment processors -- a flow diagram would have been nice.
2. Identifying precisely where various files reside -- in what sub directories -- so that debugging the questions could be more efficiently accomplished.
3. A better explanation of how to debug the processes using the CiviCRM debug controls.

These are all suggestions.

Finally, thanks to all who helped me resolve these issues on the forum.  If you responded -- or even if you only looked at the questions -- it was valuable to this project.  Thanks very much.

Tom