After a transaction-related event, PayPal automatically sends a message. That message is called Instant Payment Notification (IPN). CS-Cart & Multi-Vendor change the statuses of orders according to transaction statuses that come in IPNs.
Even though you can disable Instant Payment Notifications in your PayPal account, your store will still receive them.
Important
Instant Payment Notifications are the only source of information about PayPal events for CS-Cart/Multi-Vendor and the only way to trigger the automatic change of order statuses.
The PayPal Payments add-on has an order status conversion map. That map determines, which order status in your store corresponds to each transaction status from IPNs.
To view or edit the map, go to Add-ons → Manage add-ons, then find and click PayPal payments in the list.
Once the store receives a notification from PayPal, the status of the order is changed according to the map.
Since CS-Cart & Multi-Vendor 4.3.x, payment methods that use PayPal Express or PayPal Standard work as follows:
A customer clicks the Submit order button on the checkout page. At this point we assume that the customer is ready to make the payment, so an order is created in the store.
The order has the Open status, because it hasn’t been paid for yet. The number of products in stock decreases to reflect that we have put the products aside for this customer.
The customer is redirected to a PayPal page. Now there are three possible scenarios:
The customer pays for the order successfully.
In this case order remains Open until the store receives an IPN from PayPal. The customer doesn’t even have to return to the store via the link on the PayPal page.
The customer uses the link on the PayPal page to cancel the payment and return to the store.
When the customer returns via that special link, the store detects it. The order status is set to Incomplete, and the number of products in stock increases. The customer returns to the checkout page and can make changes and submit the order again.
Hint
To view incomplete orders in the Administration panel, go to Orders → Orders, click the gear button in the top right corner, and choose Incomplete orders.
The customer goes back one page in the browser or closes the window.
The store can’t detect what happens on the PayPal page or if the customer is still there. From CS-Cart’s standpoint, everything is the same as first scenario: the customer might still have the page open and make the payment. It’s just taking longer than usual.
That’s why the order remains Open and the store awaits an IPN, even though there won’t be any. Here’s why we chose that status:
The Canceled status wouldn’t work, because we don’t know whether or not the payment was made.
The Incomplete status wouldn’t work either, because it increases the number of products in the inventory.
That could result in other people buying the very same item while the customer is making the payment or while the store awaits an IPN.
After receiving an IPN, the store changes the status of the order according to the status conversion map.
Important
If you chose different currencies in the payment method and in your PayPal profile, the order may remain Open until the conversion is confirmed.
If you turn on the RMA add-on, customers will be able to request replacements or refunds for the products they bought. This is done by placing a return request. You can view these requests under Orders → Return Requests.
If the product was paid for via a PayPal-based payment method, the store can automatically give a refund via PayPal. Starting with version 4.3.9, you can choose whether or not to issue the refund:
Go to Orders → Return Requests in the Administration panel of your store.
Click the gear button of the request and choose Edit.
Switch to the Actions tab.
Tick the Give a refund via PayPal checkbox, if you want your store to do it automatically.
Note
If you’ve already given a refund for this request, you’ll see Refunded instead of the checkbox.
Change the status of the request to Approved or Completed, or else the refund won’t be issued this time.
Click Save.
Before version 4.3.9 stores automatically issued a refund via PayPal when the status of the return request was set to Approved or Completed.
Important
If you use an earlier version of CS-Cart or Multi-Vendor, please apply the changes described here. That will fix some bugs and make the RMA add-on work like in 4.3.9.
When placing an order in your store, a customer enters the billing and shipping address. But some time after that the address might change. In some cases the values of some fields may even be missing. This is because your store may receive some customer data via IPNs.
The PayPal payments add-on has two settings that determine how to handle customer data.
Override customer info—applies to all PayPal payment methods and can be found under Add-ons → Manage add-ons → PayPal payments.
If you enable this setting, your store will replace the billing and shipping address in the order with the address provided by PayPal via an IPN.
This is the address that the customer has specified in the PayPal profile and chosen when making the payment on the PayPal page.
Send customer shipping details—applies only to PayPal Express and can be found when you create or edit a PayPal Express payment method.
If you enable this setting, then the shipping address that the customer enters on the checkout page in your store will be sent to PayPal. Customer will be able to choose it on the PayPal page when making the payment.
Questions & Feedback
Have any questions that weren't answered here? Need help with solving a problem in your online store? Want to report a bug in our software? Find out how to contact us.