PayPal Express and iDevAffiliate Capturing the Sale

[Dianne]

I am using zen cart v1.5.5. I have installed PayPal Express Checkout and I also have iDevAffiliate installed. In testing payments, PayPal Express checkout is taking the payment and sending customer back to the store to complete/confirm the checkout/sale. The order is shown in Zen Cart and the payment is shown in my PayPal account.

However, the sale is not "captured" by iDevAffiliate. With affiliate programs, how is the sale captured for their records? Is there something that's supposed to come back from PayPal that would trigger a notice to iDevAffiliate that's not happening?

I can see in the affiliate account that the traffic is captured but not the sale.

I had the debug turned on earlier and it was triggering a LOT of emails for every sale. I turned it off after reading in an old post that the emails weren't significant. I can't help but wonder if there is some sort of error that's causing the sale not to be captured by iDevAffiliate.

Anything you can share about this to help me understand what is or should be happening is appreciated.

Thank you!

[mc12345678]

Hopefully someone has information to help you, but from the looks of it iDevAffiliate should be contacted regarding this issue as it is a paid for application (commercial application) that offers support.

[Dianne]

Hopefully someone has information to help you, but from the looks of it iDevAffiliate should be contacted regarding this issue as it is a paid for application (commercial application) that offers support.

Yes, I am working with iDevAffiliate and also with PayPal to get this resolved. Because we don't know yet "where" the problem is occurring, we don't know which of the three is impacting the issue: zen cart, PayPal and/or iDevAffiliate.

So, I'm checking all resources in an effort to track down the issue. :-)

[mc12345678]

Yes, I am working with iDevAffiliate and also with PayPal to get this resolved. Because we don't know yet "where" the problem is occurring, we don't know which of the three is impacting the issue: zen cart, PayPal and/or iDevAffiliate.

So, I'm checking all resources in an effort to track down the issue. :-)

Well, understand that the interrelationship between the three is needed to resolve the issue, but iDevAffiliate would likely have to identify where they insert themselves into the ZC payment flow (notifiers, files changed, files added, etc.) in order to identify what portion of the issue is "caused" by ZC: ie. perhaps a trigger point is bypassed or their code expects something to happen that doesn't, etc...

That type of information would make it easier to also insert trigger_error type commands to log information that is available at certain points (provided the associated code isn't encrypted) and give iDevAffiliate more information about what is going on so that they can properly integrate with PayPal and ZC.

[DrByte]

With affiliate programs, how is the sale captured for their records?

When configured as shown:
https://www.zen-cart.com/content.php?322-Integrating-Sales-Analytics-and-Affiliates-Tools
... then when the customer hits the checkout_success page on your site (ie: payment is collected, and the order is saved), the tracking code is triggered to send the data to iDev.

Is there something that's supposed to come back from PayPal that would trigger a notice to iDevAffiliate ?

No, there's nothing unique to PayPal Express Checkout in this regard.


Maybe you're using plugins that change the checkout flow?
Maybe you're using old integration logic that's not capturing as much data as you want?

[Dianne]

Thank you mc12345678 and DrByte. It turned out to be that a required change to a file provided by iDevAffiliate was not properly done by me. Like many things, the instructions are clear after you see the final, correct version. :-) The use of some terminology did not quite fit the situation until it was explained what THEY meant by that phrase (I have their cloud version, so it's not installed in my web hosting directory). The instructions were perfect if you host the software, but need a little tweak if you are using their cloud version.

However, they stepped in and helped get it done right and it's working wonderfully now. Great affiliate program software, I might add.

Thank you both, again, for your input. I appreciate it and, though I like zen cart already, your sincere interest in helping others makes working with zen cart even better. Thank you!