[tribe-tpp-success] displays a meaningless invoice reference

I have setup Event Tickets with PayPal and followed the instructions in Events > Settings > Tickets > Success Page to link to a page containing the [tribe-tpp-success] shortcode which, we are told, will “display the order confirmation to the user in the page content”.

What the page actually displays, after a successful PayPal ticket purchase, is a message like: “Your order (#r2KJ…9Li) is currently processing. Once completed, you’ll receive your ticket(s) in an email. Please make a note of the Invoice reference above.”

However, this order/invoice reference (#r2KJ…9Li in this case) is meaningless because it doesn’t match any identifier that is actually visible to the user or to the administrator, and it is definitely not the Order number used in Event Ticket nor the Invoice id used in PayPal. (I eventually found the string buried in post meta data, but that’s not much help.)

To compound the confusion, the e-mail receipt that PayPal generates displays a “Transaction ID” (e.g. 55X9…812A) that also is not useful, as well as an “ID Number” (e.g. 7326:9747, which I recognize to be the Event ID and Ticket Type ID from Event Tickets). Neither of these can be used to find the matching information in Event Orders, Event Attendees or in PayPal. On top of that, the ticket confirmation email that Event Tickets sends to the purchaser contains Ticket Number(s) and corresponding Security Code(s), but no Order information. Aaaaaghhh!!!

There should be consistency. In my example there is another string, e.g. 8T67…3111, that is in the “Order” column in the PayPal Orders tab on the Events side and is also the primary search term on the PayPal side where is called the “Transaction ID”. (Note, this is not the same string as currently appears in the email receipt generated by PayPal.

Please consider modifying Event Tickets to use the value from the “Order” column on the PayPal Orders tab as the main identifier in the Success Page and in the PayPal receipt, and as an additional identifier in the Event Tickets email confirmation.

Thanks!

I’m using The Events Calendar 5.1.6 with upgraded views, Event Tickets 5.0.1 and WordPress 5.5.3.