Orders on hold in Paypal

Hi @naturalwholesale

All of my completed orders in PayPal are marked “On Hold” and I have to manually add tracking.?

If you are authorizing the payment so it can captured later then the plugin sets the order’s status to on-hold by default. You can control that status via the Authorized Order Status option located on the PayPal Settings page of the PayPal plugin.

How do I automate this plugin so that a “completed” order in WooCommerce is marked “completed” in Paypal?

I am not sure I understand your request. Are you asking how you can capture the PayPal payment when the order’s status is set to completed? If so you can control that via the Capture Status option located on the Advanced Settings page. Using that option you can tell the PayPal plugin when to capture the payment based on the WooCommerce order status.

Kind Regards

When a customer orders on my site using Payment Plugins for Paypal gateway, the order goes into Paypal.com and is listed as “On hold.” I presume it’s listed “on hold” until the API tells paypal.com that the order is “completed.”

In my case, nothing is updating the orders in paypal.com from “on hold” to “shipped or completed.” So I have to manually add tracking into each order on paypal.com so that I can get paid on these orders.

How do I set it so that the API tells paypal.com that these “on hold” orders are “completed”?

• This reply was modified 1 year, 2 months ago by naturalwholesale.

I presume it’s listed “on hold” until the API tells paypal.com that the order is “completed.”

Thank you for the clarification, I see now that you’re referring to the on-hold status within PayPal and not the WooCommerce order status.

So I have to manually add tracking into each order on paypal.com so that I can get paid on these orders.

You can add tracking via the WooCommerce > Orders > Order Details page of the WooCommerce order. There is a PayPal Actions button which when clicked will open a modal where you can add tracking. That will update the PayPal order with the tracking info.

What plugin are you using for shipment tracking? We’re looking at adding automatic updates of tracking info when the shipment tracking plugin is updated.

Kind Regards

I see, so currently this plugin requires the user to manually add the tracking in order to get paid by paypal.

We use shipstation for shipping which automatically sends tracking back to Woo. So since shipstation is updating the order from processing to completed, why isn’t paypal.com being notified?

I see, so currently this plugin requires the user to manually add the tracking in order to get paid by paypal.

No. While this plugin does have an option to add tracking, I don’t know why PayPal is placing your orders on hold. PayPal has different reasons for placing a payment on hold. It could be for security reasons to check for fraud, a new account is paying you, etc. That doesn’t happen with most of the merchants using our plugin so I’d recommend contacting PayPal and asking them why your transactions are being placed on-hold.

So since shipstation is updating the order from processing to completed, why isn’t paypal.com being notified?

The WooCommerce order’s status being updated to processing/completed doesn’t have any meaning in PayPal unless you’re authorizing payments and you want the PayPal plugin to capture the payment based on order status. If you are authorizing payments so they can be captured later on (like when a product ships), then you should make sure the PayPal plugin is configured to capture payments based on the order completed status.

What value do you have selected for the Transaction Type option on the PayPal Settings page of the plugin? It’s either “capture” or “authorize”.

• This reply was modified 1 year, 2 months ago by Payment Plugins.

Capture.

We want to capture payment, then ship.

Yeah, it’s weird. I don’t know why but all the orders in Paypal.com are marked “On hold” and then when they ship with shipstation, they don’t get updated, so I have to go in and enter manually. I may reach out to paypal, and see if it’s a security setting on their end.

then when they ship with shipstation, they don’t get updated, so I have to go in and enter manually

It sounds like PayPal is leaving the on-hold status until the tracking number for the order is added.

I may reach out to paypal, and see if it’s a security setting on their end.

Yes, I would recommend that. Ask them if there is a setting enabled on your PayPal account to hold payments until tracking is added.

Is ShipStation a premium plugin? If so, can you create a support ticket and we can add compatibility for auto tracking uptates via ShipStation in our plugin.

Thanks. I’ve created a support ticket. The plugin is called “WooCommerce – ShipStation Integration.” Appreciate your help!