Oscommerce and PayPal

[AWS]

Hi,

I am hoping that someone out there can help me.

I have an oscommerce template www.colleenbawn.com/store

The payments are made through paypal and everything was working fine or so I thought.

I went through the purchasing process in order to test and all went well with the order been viewed in the oscommerce admin area and the payment going through to the Paypal account.

I have recently had a customer complain that he had not received his order and checked the admin area and no order was visible here but only my own test order.

The payment had been received by Paypal.

I would be grateful if someone would tell me what went wrong and how to fix.

(I myself do not own this website and I have a Paypal account from which my credit card has been added to in order to receive a paypal verification. This may or may not have any bearing on the above problem but I thought to mention in case)

[Karen Mac]

Bev,

In paypal after you sign in you have a profile tab on the far right under the main header. You need to set up the one called web site payment preferences. You need to type in an url for return after purchase, turn off encryption, thats for buy now buttons not websites, scroll down and make sure you choose all the info on that page and save it. There is also a payment notification in the profile, click on it and choose which email you want the paypal notification sent to.

Karen

[AWS]

Thanks Karen.Very much appreciated.

[navaldesign]

But, if i understand well, you do NOT have the order in your database ? I'm not by no means a OSCommerce expert, but shouldn't the order appear in the database, independently from the options in PayPal ?

[AWS]

But, if i understand well, you do NOT have the order in your database ? I'm not by no means a OSCommerce expert, but shouldn't the order appear in the database, independently from the options in PayPal ?

Hi Naval,

Yes....you have it correct......I have done all that Karen has explained but in the oscommerce admin area I can view the customer details but have no record of the order.

I have just got another person to complete the login and order an item with a credit card through paypal of which I can view the order etc.

I am completly at a loss to what has happened with this customers order details.

[AWS]

But, if i understand well, you do NOT have the order in your database ? I'm not by no means a OSCommerce expert, but shouldn't the order appear in the database, independently from the options in PayPal ?

Hi,

I got someone to test by purchasing an item on the oscommerce website template.I could view the customers details in the admin area and I could view the payment made in the paypal account but I could not view the order details in the oscommerce admin area.

I then did a test purchase again myself but used my wifes credit card and all could be viewed.

Is it that some people get as far as paypal and receove their notification but neglect to process to the end? or am I missing something?

[navaldesign]

No, from what i know, the order is being stored in the database, before the get redirected to PayPal. So there should not have been any problem.

Sorry, i do not know what to guess.

[Karen Mac]

If they close the tab on paypal and dont return to the store, it will NOT complete the process, and you will have to view your order details like an abandoned order or incomplete order. If you set paypal correctly, paypal will notify you of payments for orders posted there. You CAN find the order details in they mysql database, but not in the back end of the store. This is common for paypal. Thats why its crucial to make the auto return and put in the correct url for the order to show PROCESSED in your store builder. CHeck the osc manual, or scan their forum, cuz the return page will be the recipet page that is processed on your store, and not just a thank you page. If you cant find that info, then CREATE a page in OSC that thanks them for their paypal order, and have paypal return to that created page,(note this page does not have to appear in any menu system, just exist within osc generated pages) in doing so, the redirection script should pick it and return them also to the reciept page. Your created return URL link will be something like
www.yoursite.com/thankyou.php

Id have to go play with OSC to figure out what the url is that is generated for the reciept script to run, and I just dont have time right now.

Karen

[Karen Mac]

Bev,

Also check in the oscommerce backend where u set payment methods and see if your paypal option has text that you can edit for a return button from paypal.. Many builders incorportate this.. soho does as well as several others, and put on that button Complete order, or FINISH or something to see if they will click that instead of click OFF.

Karen

[AWS]

If they close the tab on paypal and dont return to the store, it will NOT complete the process, and you will have to view your order details like an abandoned order or incomplete order. If you set paypal correctly, paypal will notify you of payments for orders posted there. You CAN find the order details in they mysql database, but not in the back end of the store. This is common for paypal. Thats why its crucial to make the auto return and put in the correct url for the order to show PROCESSED in your store builder. CHeck the osc manual, or scan their forum, cuz the return page will be the recipet page that is processed on your store, and not just a thank you page. If you cant find that info, then CREATE a page in OSC that thanks them for their paypal order, and have paypal return to that created page,(note this page does not have to appear in any menu system, just exist within osc generated pages) in doing so, the redirection script should pick it and return them also to the reciept page. Your created return URL link will be something like
www.yoursite.com/thankyou.php

Id have to go play with OSC to figure out what the url is that is generated for the reciept script to run, and I just dont have time right now.

Karen

Hi Karen,

I have found the redirect url which is http://www.colleenbawn.com/checkout_process.php I added this to paypal IPN etc. as you outlined above but on clicking the link I noticed this page does not exist? I received this link from oscommerce support site so do I add to ipn? Is that it? If a customer closes off when in paypal, will I still view the order?

I also tried to view the order made by the customer which was not visible in the oscommerce admin area but I do not know how to find this order. Can you help?

Thanks once again Karen.

[Karen Mac]

Bev

Without logging into OSC, Im going to guess that in your admin, view orders area, you have some options to set besides the date range, like incomplete, or declined orders etc. Without going to look I cant tell you exactly. I dont know rather that link they gave you was the correct one or not, I would think it would be a thankyou.php or a reciept.php type page.

You can always go in your mysql and view the tables if you cant view them thru the builder.

Karen

[AWS]

Hi Karen,

Thank you for all your help. The return url should have read http://www.colleenbawn.com/store/checkout_process.php

I entered this into the paypal as directed. I think thats it. What do you think? will this catch all who log off in paypal?

I do not how to find and view the incomplete iorder in mysql

I would be grateful if you could please explain as I need to view this order.

[Karen Mac]

Bev

In your main cpanel go to mysql, scroll to the bottom go phpmyadmin, on the far left choose the database you want to browse. Down the left should be a list of TABLES in that database. You should have one called orders or Incart or something close to that, click on that and it should open in the window on the right, Somewhere in there should be a substructure of order id's which should also list your order numbers. Hilight that row, and then up at the top of that window click browse. You should see the order details there.

There should also be a way of configuring OSC attributes to also display this table when you query it. It should give you a list of all orders in a date range rather they were completed or not.

I wish I could help you more, but I honestly dont have the time to go play in osc. Also your paypal notifications and reciepts should also carry what was ordered if the payment was made. You should be able to view the details there as well as that should have transferred from the store with the payment options to bill the customer.

One of the headaches attatching paypal to OSC or any catalog builder is that they customer can actually GO to paypal and NOT pay, but hit the back button and return to store and show up as an order, or as in your situation, pay and not return to the store to complete the order. MAKE SURE YOU HAVE THE MONEY!! If you dont have the money, and you cant find the payment details, then, the order NEVER HAPPENED. This is one of the BIGGEST reasons you should 1.) have a merchant account, and 2.) have an ssl or be able to use SIM integration methods with your processor.

Anyway.. check those places for your order. If you HAVE money, just ask the customer so you can process it.

Karen

[AWS]

Thank you Karen.