PayPal Express Orders Not Registering with AffiliateWP Plugin

Hi Griffin,

Unfortunately, our 1.1.6.3.5 update does seem to have some problems with it. We are working to release a 1.1.6.3.7 that essentially rolls back to 1.1.6.3.4, but then re-applies the necessary things to make it compatible with WooCommerce 2.4.

Until I can get that done I really can’t focus on anything else. It’s not causing problems for everybody, but I have too many reports of issues in 1.1.6.3.5/6 that are proving difficult to troubleshoot, so I need to get that back to clean and then I look into this sort of thing.

It’s possible some of the same issues in our recent updates are causing your issue here. If you want to download our current 1.1.6.3.7 code from GitHub you could install that and hopefully you won’t have any problems.

You’ll need to install it manually, but it should be ready to go. I had just a few other minor things I was going to add to it before releasing it as a roll-back update.

We just released the 1.1.6.3.7 update, which as explained above, is a rollback update that removes the problematic adjustments that were included in 1.1.6.3.5.

Please update accordingly, and then it is recommended that you go into the settings for each gateway that you have enabled, review the settings, and then click Save even if you don’t change anything.

You’ll also need to make sure you clear any caching/CDN services you might have in place.

Then the problems that you’ve been facing should be resolved. Please let me know.

Thanks so much for the quick response and action. Sadly the update did not fix the pending referral issue.

I updated, cleared all caches and CDNs and then tried two test purchases both with the same issues for PayPal Express. Any other things I can try or provide to help troubleshoot?

I am not familiar with that plugin, so it’s tough to say without spending some time studying it and the hooks it provides.

Can you give me any detail on exactly what point it would update when it works? Is it when the order is updated to Completed, or is it something else?

I know that when the order is paid with Express Checkout it will get left as “Processing” in your system until you update it to “Completed”. Maybe that’s the issue? If you update it to Completed manually does it update your Affiliate status?

If so then I have a solution for you, but check that out and let me know please.

So with he affiliate plugin it should update to approved automatically once the order is completed. We are seeing the PayPal Express orders as pending only for a short time while they checkout and then they automatically get marked as completed.

This is from the plugin creator:

When the order is initially processed we create a “pending” referral. As per the highlighted lines below in our WooCommerce integration, the referral is marked as complete when those last 2 actions run.

https://github.com/affiliatewp/AffiliateWP/blob/master/includes/integrations/class-woocommerce.php#L23-L27

So when the order completes it should set the referral as approved, but for some reason any PayPal Express orders as being set as pending affiliate referral approval even thought he woocommerce order is marked as completed. Does that help?

What is your other suggestion and maybe I can try it.

Actually, our Express gateway should be leaving your orders as Processing. It wouldn’t automatically update to Completed unless there is something else in place doing that.

That said, according to the highlighted lines in their code it looks like it should be updating the “mark_referral_complete” function any time an order is set to either Processing or Completed, so it should be handling both of those.

We’ll have to install that plugin and play with it so see if we can figure out what’s going on. It looks like they’re simply using the “woocommerce_order_status_completed” and “woocommerce_order_status_processing” hooks that are built into WooCommerce directly. As I said, Express orders are setting the status to Processing so that should be triggering that hook just like anything else.

We’re currently working on a few things to get 1.1.6.3.8 (which may just become 1.2) released, but I have added this to our GitHub repo so we can look into it after that.

Should they be set as processing only for digital downloadable products, or does that make more sense that they would be marked as completed?

Thanks for checking into it. Do you know when the update might be ready?

We have a few other things on the priority list ahead of this, so it might be a few weeks, unfortunately.

Processing vs. Completed is really a matter of how you want to handle those orders. If you change them to Completed manually does it trigger what you need, by chance?

Earlier you said:

Actually, our Express gateway should be leaving your orders as Processing. It wouldn’t automatically update to Completed unless there is something else in place doing that.

I think that is the default for non-digital products, but when a product in woocommerce is marked as Digital and Virtual, then there is the option to have it be marked as completed on successful payment.

https://docs.woothemes.com/document/digitaldownloadable-product-handling/#section-3

The orders in our system are being marked as completed on successful payment, but for some reason only with this PayPal express gateway plugin, the referral is not being marked as approved automatically as it is with your DoDirect Payment PayPal CC payments. Does that help narrow down what may be the cause of the different behavior based on payment?

Yes, we must have a hook or something missing in our Express Checkout class that we’ll need to add. The fact that it works fine from the other gateways means we should be able to compare and find what we’re missing pretty easily.

Our primary focus right now, though, is to get PayPal Plus fully integrated. We have a user that paid a premium so that we make that our top priority. I have to honor that, of course.

This is on our list for 1.1.6.3.8 and will be included with that update. We’ll get it all done ASAP!

Thanks so much and makes sense.

I have sent an email regarding this just now. Do have an estimated ETA for 1.1.6.3.8 by chance or a rough estimate of days, weeks, etc? Thanks again.

Our goal is to have to have it done by the end of Sept.