paypal pro recurring -- notification back to civi not working

[lcdweb]

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?

[liveforfun]

Hi,

I have the same problem when implementing recurring contributions using Paypal website payments pro.
Have you found a way to do it? And is there any update on this issue?
Thanks a lot.

[lcdweb]

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.

[liveforfun]

Thanks a lot for your suggestion.

You are right about the drupal path
I tried this but still nothing happen.
Is it because I am using Paypal sandbox account?
Is there anything else I should look into to find the root cause of it? Thanks a lot.

[lcdweb]

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)

[liveforfun]

I was able to use IPN simulator to send notification to my site successfully.
However, although all the IPN message were successfully sent, the status of recurring contribution was still pending.

I looked into the ipn.php code and did some test.
And I found that ipn.php was called when IPN was sent, but there was no data send to ipn.php (nothing in $_GET or $_POST array)
Has anyone got this problem before?

[lcdweb]

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?

[liveforfun]

Yes,

All the notifications in IPN history were sent and with 200 code.

[CiviTeacher.com]

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.

Code: [Select]

May 22, 2010   Recurring Payment From Stuart X   Created


Code: [Select]

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

[CiviTeacher.com]

I'm pleased to announce that an experiment has given me a good answer.  I created a Recurring contribution with Paypal Pro and set it to "daily" rather than "monthly" contributions.  This way I could see the results of my testing faster.

#2 (in the above post is correct).  Paypal Pro processor in CiviCRM doesn't process an initial financial contribution, it only creates the recurring, which then will do an actual $ transaction at the NEXT interval.  Maybe this is not the desired behavior, but this is what it does.

My recurring payment, (daily in this case) was Pending for 24 hours, then the next day this transaction was changed from Pending to Complete.  Then the day after  another Complete donation occurred.  I'm now on the 3rd day of my test, and expecting a 3rd donation.

From this, I can surmise that if someone were to create a monthly donation on May 21st, the recurring contribution would be started, but no money would actually bill to the credit card until June 21st, as this is what happened with my daily experiment.

Maybe this shoudl change, but this is the way it works now.  At least the contributions are updated trough IPN and changed from Pending to Completed, this is a positive thing, I think.

[lcdweb]

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

[CiviTeacher.com]

I am using a clean, fresh install of 3.1.5.  No hacks.

It still is not creating the initial payment.  Just did this one today.

Code: [Select]

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 Daily
Total cycles 3
Cycles remaining 3
Amount due per cycle $0.11 USD Details
Amount $0.11
Shipping $0.00
Tax $0.00
Total amount per cycle $0.11 USD
Amount received $0.00 USD
Payment summary Total received $0.00 USD Details


[claudian]

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.

[claudian]

Things you would need to check.

1. API Username / Password / Security is as specified in your live Merchant account
2. The appropriate path where the file is located (IPN.php). One way is to call the path in your browser and you should get some kind of error message saying that some parameters are missing, this means it is being called properly
3. Later check the CiviCRM log (This has probably now shifted to templates_c/uploads or some such directory) and see that this entry has been made in the log
4. Under IPN History, in the merchant account there should be some details on the callbacks made and the status.

There is a time delay in the callback as paypal kind of schedules the call backs and it make take some hours (1-3hours) and not in minutes and seconds

Hopefully with the above this should help resolve your problem.

[CiviTeacher.com]

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