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Entries are created Regardless of Payment

Gravity Support Forums » Plugin Support » Gravity Forms PayPal Add-On

  1. lmabee
    Member

    Good Day Gravity Form Support!
    I have a question regarding entries being made with this PayPal Add-On. At first, there were a few entries that were submitted in which the payment was "processing", but the payment never seemed to get out of this stage.

    To be honest, I thought the hold up was on PayPal's side, but it has been days now. I did some research through the forums here and I see that once the user clicks 'submit' regardless if the PayPal goes through, the entry is made on the database. So I have two questions:

    1. One of my PayPal Forms via Gravity Forms gave me this option, but the other PayPal Forms do not have this option. Why does this option come up for one form, and not the rest that I have incorporated with PayPal? Is it because the other forms have variable prices?

    2. Can I assume then that any entry in which the payment type is "processing" is okay to ignore and trash?

    I appreciate your help and support and thank you for this amazing plugin!

    Posted 11 years ago on Thursday January 10, 2013 | Permalink

  2. Chris Hajer
    Key Master

    1. The form with the option showing is likely creating a WordPress post. You must have post fields in the form. If you do, that option will appear. The WordPress Post is completely separate from the database entry from the form submission. The entry will be made regardless of and before payment. However, if you check that option, the WordPress Post will not be created until payment from PayPal is verified.

    2. I would not assume that. In some cases, the payment has gone through, but PayPal could not communicate that information to your server, and thus Gravity Forms. Log in to PayPal and check the IPN History. See if PayPal is having trouble sending some IPN to your site. I usually search by email as well and if there is a transaction, even when it says that IPN was successful, I resend it, to update the payment status on my site.

    Posted 11 years ago on Friday January 11, 2013 | Permalink

  3. lmabee
    Member

    Good Day Chris!
    Thank you for responding. I appreciate your patience.

    Questions from your answers:

    1. Thank you for your insight. This is the submission form that allowed me that extra option. I am assuming that it was because I have them uploading files which would be attached to their entry. Is there a way to get the functionality of not creating an 'entry' like in this instance in my other forms?

    2. Thank you for the advice to check the IPN History. I checked it this morning and this was what I could see, I can't seem to be able to search by email, and I can't find an area where it tells me if it was successful or not. I checked the Message ID and I checked the Transaction ID of all items in my IPN HIstory, and everything that has been reported on my IPN History, has been a completed payment and successfully reported via Gravity Forms. There are no others (such as my payment processing entries). How would I be able to check and see if the IPN is having trouble with my server?

    3. Just for confirmation. This is one of the entries in question. Since it says "Payment Status: Processing" and since I could not find any record of this in my IPN History, it's safe to delete this yes? And using the above method of checking, I can use that for any entries in the future? I know it's a rather derp question to ask, but I just want to get a very good understanding of the entry process.

    Thank you kindly for your time and your patience, I truly do appreciate it.
    Best regards,
    Laura Mabee

    Posted 11 years ago on Friday January 11, 2013 | Permalink

  4. Chris Hajer
    Key Master

    We're getting confused on "entry" vs. "Post". A Post is a WordPress Post, visible on your site like any other Page or Post. There are menu items in the wp-admin for Post and Pages. That is the Post this option refers to.

    The entry is the data stored in the database by Gravity Forms, and is visible under the Forms > Entries menu item.

    1. If this form is creating Posts, and you have that option in the PayPal feed, one or more of the fields in your for came from the Post Fields section of the form builder. Without seeing how the form is configured in the form builder, it's difficult to tell which ones. Can you hover over the individual fields in the form builder and see if any say "Image", "Title" or "Body" before the field ID?

    2. If all the IPN were successful, and there are no transactions in PayPal which are not in Gravity Forms entries, then those transactions were likely abandoned and not completed. You did not receive the money for those. It sounds like that's the case.

    3. That entry does not seem to have been paid. It's like an abandoned shopping cart. You can safely delete it, or you can follow up with the customer to see if they had trouble completing the checkout process. In the past, when I have emailed customers to see about payment, they've sometimes provided me with their PayPal receipt, then I had to go dig a little harder at PayPal and find that they used a different email address or something. So, to prevent embarrassing situations like that, I search the PayPal history for the correct time period, and make sure I can match up all the completed transactions. If so, then the transaction was just incomplete.

    Does that make sense?

    Posted 11 years ago on Friday January 11, 2013 | Permalink