PayPal Plus: Order status set to "processing" and not "on-hold"

The PayPal Standard plugin makes use of a limited IPN script that updates its order status.

We decided to leave the order status as default with our plugin, and rather than tie a basic IPN solution into our plugin we built an entirely separate plugin that allows you to setup an IPN solution that can be much more powerful than limiting it within the payment plugin.

If you take a look at our PayPal IPN for WordPress plugin that will get you setup with IPN quickly and easily. Then you can look at this guide on updating the WooCommerce order status using IPN after you get that plugin installed.

Let me know if you have any questions about any of that.

Thanks for your fast reply!

I installed your IPN for WordPress plugin and I also did the settings in PayPal.
Now I wanted to copy your snippet into my functions.php but in your documentation, you say:

“From now on, any orders that come through PayPal and have a matching WooCommerce Order will automatically update the order status to Completed!”

How can I change that order status to “on hold” ?

[Edit] maybe like this?

function update_wc_order_status($posted) {
$order_id = isset($posted[‘invoice’]) ? $posted[‘invoice’] : ”;
if(!empty($order_id)) {
$order = new WC_Order($order_id);
$order->update_status(‘completed‘); <<<<< Change status here?
}
}
add_action(‘paypal_ipn_for_wordpress_payment_status_completed’, ‘update_wc_order_status’, 10, 1);

Best regards

Eric

Yes, exactly. Change it to $order->update_status('on-hold') and that should give you what you’re after.

Thanks, what about the last line?

add_action(‘paypal_ipn_for_wordpress_payment_status_completed’, ‘update_wc_order_status’, 10, 1);

do I have to change it, too?

It’s not working. I tried an order and I still get my orders directly to “processing” in Woocommerce.

The add_action line would stay the same because you’re still triggering your function based on the PayPal payment showing that it was completed.

That would trigger your function, which would then set the order status to On Hold in WooCommerce.

If it’s not updating as expected you’ll need to step through general troubleshooting of IPN to figure out what could be going wrong.

The first step would be to check the PayPal IPN history to see if it’s showing that IPNs are indeed being sent or not, and if so, what the result code is.

I can see IPNs when I click in the backend on “PayPal IPN”.
I see the Transaction IDs etc… listed.

ok, so that means IPN must be getting sent correctly.

Are you sure the payment was indeed completed and not pending for any reason?

Also, are you using an invoice prefix in the plugin settings? If so you’ll need to adjust that part of the function, too.

The payment status is set to “completed”, I see it in the backend “PayPal IPN”.
I indeed use a prefix, but I adjusted that in the function.

In PayPal Plus, in Woocommerce, the prefix is set to “ODL-“

my function looks like this:

function update_wc_order_status($posted) {
$order_id = isset($posted[‘invoice’]) ? str_replace(‘ODL-‘,”,$posted[‘invoice’]) : ”;
if(!empty($order_id)) {
$order = new WC_Order($order_id);
$order->update_status(‘on-hold’);
}
}
add_action(‘paypal_ipn_for_wordpress_payment_status_completed’, ‘update_wc_order_status’, 10, 1);

I wrote this function in my functions.php of my child theme, that is also active on my site.

Try putting this in your functions.php and see if it runs as expected. This should trigger on all IPNs.

function paypal_ipn_for_wordpress_ipn_response_handler($posted)
{
    $to = '[email protected]';
    $subject = 'Email from PayPal IPN';
    $message = 'The IPN was hit';
    $message .= "\n" . print_r($posted,true);
    wp_mail( $to, $subject, $message );
}
add_action('paypal_ipn_for_wordpress_ipn_response_handler', 'paypal_ipn_for_wordpress_ipn_response_handler', 10, 1);

That should simply send you an email with all the IPN data displayed any time the IPN is hit. Please give that a shot so we can verify that your hooks are indeed triggering at all.

Of course, make sure to update the email address to your own.

Hi,

I did what you said and I just got a mail “Email from PayPal IPN” with “The IPN was hit , Array……. and a list with a lot of codes. May I mail you the content somewhere?

Or what shall I do now?

Does it just look like all the IPN variables and values? For example, first_name=John and a bunch of other variables?

Yeah, these are all I got in my mail (I removed the content after “=>” due to privacy protection):

??? [mc_gross] =>
??? [protection_eligibility] =>
??? [address_status] =>
??? [item_number1] =>
??? [payer_id] =>
??? [tax] =>
??? [address_street] =>
??? [payment_date] =>
??? [payment_status] =>
??? [charset] =>
??? [address_zip] =>
??? [mc_shipping] =>
??? [first_name] =>
??? [mc_fee] =>
??? [address_country_code] =>
??? [address_name] =>
??? [notify_version] =>
??? [custom] =>
??? [payer_status] =>
??? [business] =>
??? [address_country] =>
??? [num_cart_items] =>
??? [address_city] =>
??? [verify_sign] =>
??? [payer_email] =>
??? [txn_id] =>
??? [payment_type] =>
??? [last_name] =>
??? [address_state] =>
??? [item_name1] =>
??? [receiver_email] =>
??? [payment_fee] =>
??? [quantity1] =>
??? [receiver_id] =>
??? [txn_type] =>
??? [mc_gross_1] =>
??? [mc_currency] =>
??? [residence_country] =>
??? [receipt_id] =>
??? [transaction_subject] =>
??? [payment_gross] =>
??? [ipn_track_id] =>

And the payment_status is completed?

If so that other function should be triggering at the same time.

Can you add an email into that function too so we can see if it’s running at all?