PayPal Payflow not passing correct variables

Ok, I know this is a long heated subject on the forums (PayPal payflow)... and I’ve made a TON of progress. I have it successfully working and it doesn’t cost me a fortune as so many people predicted it would. It even works perfect with Anton’s Membership Voucher module. 

What I’m running into is this: First, let me be clear that I’m using ONLY the recurring payment part of PayFlow gateway and intentionally not configuring ANY other type of payment method.

The payments go through and show as “processed” on the backend in Dolphin, but they never show as “Subscribed” in the backend. Then in Paypal manager it only shows as a pending transaction. I spoke with PayPal in detail and we found that Dolphin is sending over a request for authorization only. It’s not sending over the recurring profile request or listing it as a sale. Does anyone have any detailed experience with this module or know where I can find the logic on it so I can pull it apart? Ive spent hours looking through the code in the module but cant quite figure out where the call is pushing to PayPal’s system. Once I do get it resolved I’ll be happy to let everyone here know how to fix it. 

Send AlexT an email pointing him to this thread.  This sounds more like a bug in the module than just a misconfiguration.

Will do. Thanks.

Hello

Recurring Billing in the module uses initial "Do Express Checkout Payment" to get "billing agreement ID".  We don't use Authorization request. It means that the process starts from standard "Do Express Checkout Payment" for a first period, when the payment was accepted (a number of clicks on PayPal site) user should be returned back to your site and see the Confirmation page, where he should confirm the creation of a Recurring Billing profile. After that module sends the RB profile creation request to PayPal.

You may see the code in modules/boonex/paypal_payflow/classes/BxPfwRecurringBilling.php file:

1. Do Express Checkout Payment

Method initializeCheckout which is taken from parent class BxPfwExpressCheckout (modules/boonex/paypal_payflow/classes/BxPfwExpressCheckout.php file)

2. Confirmation page.

Method confirmCheckout which is taken from parent class too, but defining that it's a subscription.

3. Finalize checkout and create RB profile.

Method finalizeCheckout which finalizes the initial payment and makes the call to PayFlow to create RB profile. Request is prepared using method _createRecurringBillingProfile from the same class.

 Thank you for this AntonL! Very helpful. 

Two questons on this then:

1. Does this mean that all three sections of the gateway configuration must be setup and set to live for the recurring part of the module to work? 

2. Is there a way to force the subscription through on the backend (on either PayPal or dolphin) if the user doesnt realize they have to press the button to finalize it?

Hello

You are welcome.

1. No you don't need to feel in configuration settings for all payment types if you plan to use Recurring payments only. I wrote about the usage of Express Checkout during the RB profile creation because the profile can be created in two ways: Authorization request or Express Checkout payment. We decided to use Express Checkout payment.

2. Unfortunately, no the user should confirm the receipt.

I actually just got off the phone with PayPal. Apparently they have Recurring Billing turned on for my account, but the transaction processor for recurring isn't turned on. They are working to fix it. It's just frustrating because at first glance you can't see if it's Dolphin or PayPal that's causing the problem. It helped when I downloaded the pp.info.log

That's where the transaction errors were. It's just misleading a bit because for the user it completely goes through. It's just on the administrative side that it doesn't follow through to subscription.

Thanks again!

Hello

It's great that the reason of the problem was found. Let us know about the results, please.

 Let me ask you a question... Is there ANYWAY for us to configure this recurring gateway WITHOUT performing Reference Transactions? That's the thing I can't get around because they won't approve me (my credit rating isn't high enough).

There has to be a better way, unless this is all because of PayPal and their BS; I hope it isn't just Boonex BS ;-)

Hello

Unfortunately, no. Reference Transactions are needed to repeatedly charge a client. PayPal Paflow documentation doesn't tell anything about some other workflow which would allow to use Recurring Payments without Reference Transactions.