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cvadev
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April 21, 2017 at 12:26 pm
We’re having a similar issue like the one in the past (After updating WP/EE). I’m trying to understand the following:
1. Is it normal for the # of registrations to not match the # of tickets sold?
2. We have 35 registrations for the event, but when we view the registrations, only 32 registrations are listed.
3. Of those 32, 2 registrations (March 26 and 28) are sitting in a [Not Approved, Incomplete] state. This makes me believe that 30 (32 – 2 = 30) tickets have been sold, but the event page shows 31 tickets have been sold. We’ve also got a limit of 30 tickets to be sold, but 31 have been sold. So, we’ve oversold by 1 ticket and we’re missing the details of that 1 ticket.
4. What happens if a user registers for an event, but never completes the purchase on PayPal’s website? Do those tickets get consumed so other registrants can’t purchase them? Do they sit in a queue for X-hours before returning?
Is there some sort of Registration/Payment status state flow diagram you have that can explain how this stuff works where I can try to understand this?
For typical events, overbooking might not be a huge issue, but we have a very concrete # of registrants we can accept at certain events.
Old topic I posted about: https://eventespresso.com/topic/ee4-sold-not-matching-registration-count/#post-231506
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Josh
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April 21, 2017 at 12:55 pm
Hi there,
I’ll follow up with each of your questions below:
1. Is it normal for the # of registrations to not match the # of tickets sold?
Yes. A registration where they haven’t paid yet does not count as a sold ticket.
2. We have 35 registrations for the event, but when we view the registrations, only 32 registrations are listed.
Are you looking at all registrations when you see 32 or is that 32 of a specific registration status?
3. Of those 32, 2 registrations (March 26 and 28) are sitting in a [Not Approved, Incomplete] state. This makes me believe that 30 (32 – 2 = 30) tickets have been sold, but the event page shows 31 tickets have been sold. We’ve also got a limit of 30 tickets to be sold, but 31 have been sold. So, we’ve oversold by 1 ticket and we’re missing the details of that 1 ticket.
So again, when you’ve received the money or manually a registration to approved status, the registration also now counts as a sold ticket. So do you have 31 PayPal sales now?
4. What happens if a user registers for an event, but never completes the purchase on PayPal’s website? Do those tickets get consumed so other registrants can’t purchase them? Do they sit in a queue for X-hours before returning?
The ticket will be reserved for up to one hour. If they don’t complete the purchase process within that one hour, the ticket gets released back into the inventory which allows someone else to register and pay for it.
Is there some sort of Registration/Payment status state flow diagram you have that can explain how this stuff works where I can try to understand this?
You can look at the individual transaction records in Event Espresso > Transactions, then click on “view additional transaction session details “. This will open an expanded panel of information that includes a “Registration Step Progress” section. That section shows each step through the registration process and how far the user progressed. So for example if they completed the payment, then all 3 steps will show as completed. On the other hand, if they stopped at the Attendee Information step and didn’t even submit the registration form, it will only show that step as initiated, and the other steps that follow didn’t even initiate. Then there are multiple steps in between those two states where they complete a step, and the next step initiates.
One other thing that will help, since you mentioned you’re using PayPal, is you should switch to use the PayPal Express payment method if you haven’t already done so. The PayPal Standard payment method is deprecated and we’ve seen a number of issues where it’s not properly sending back payment information. You can use your same PayPal account with PayPal Express, and you get switched over by following this guide:
https://eventespresso.com/wiki/paypal-express-payment-gateway/#locate
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cvadev
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April 25, 2017 at 12:06 pm
Are you looking at all registrations when you see 32 or is that 32 of a specific registration status?
The page I’m viewing registrations is accessed from the Event Details page and then we click on the icon “View registrations for this datetime.” So, we’re looking at registrations for a specific datetime.
31 Transactions in PayPal?
We have many transactions passing through the PayPal account and paypal doesn’t differentiate between any of the event types/payments.
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We’re also seriously concerned because the available ticket counter (for registrants) is incorrect and it makes the events appear sold out.
So one instance of this occurred when an event was “sold out” to the registrants. However, on the backend, there were incomplete/not approved transactions from the previous month. So they’d definitely been sitting in that state for more than an hour. Those registrations were then trashed and the counter updated correctly on the front end, rendering the ability to purchase tickets again.
One theory is that for some reason, notapproved/incomplete transactions are considered as sold and the ticket counter gets reduced.
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Josh
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April 25, 2017 at 1:03 pm
The ticket will be reserved for up to one hour, but after that they’re released back into the inventory. You didn’t mention whether you were still using PayPal Standard or you’ve already switched to PayPal Express.
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cvadev
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April 25, 2017 at 1:17 pm
Yes, the tickets that were added back to the ticket count were a month old though (not 1 hour). So that’s why we think there’s an issue there.
We’re using Paypal standard.
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Josh
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April 25, 2017 at 2:03 pm
You’ll continue to see issues if you continue to use PayPal Standard. PayPal Standard was deprecated and replaced with PayPal Express, which is much more reliable. One of the reliability issues we saw with PayPal standard was the Instant Payment notification would delay or even not make it to the site, which leads to a mismatch of transactions that should have been marked complete, but they stay incomplete.
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cvadev
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April 27, 2017 at 9:44 am
We’ll spin up PayPal EE on a test server and see if we we can get better results but I don’t think that solves the 2 current issues.
I’m trying to understand how a delayed or missing IPN would cause EE to oversell the event? Doesn’t this mean that EE is erroneously completing/approving ticket sells without an IPN? I can understand an underselling of events when there is a missing IPN, but I cannot understand how we’re overselling events.
This also doesn’t seem to solve the issue where we are trashing incomplete registrations (that are a month old and not 1 hour) and the ticket counter gets increased. The only thing I can think is that EE isn’t following up (for whatever reason – EE or our server) after 1 hour and adding those tickets back to the number of available tickets.
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Josh
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April 27, 2017 at 11:18 am
The reason that a delayed IPN will cause an oversell is because Event Espresso stops selling tickets the moment the sale limit is reached. If there’s a ticket out there that did indeed sell, but wasn’t reported back to Event Espresso as paid, then Event Espresso doesn’t calculate that the sale went through. So it will not count that ticket as sold, and it will allow another sale.
This also doesn’t seem to solve the issue where we are trashing incomplete registrations (that are a month old and not 1 hour) and the ticket counter gets increased. The only thing I can think is that EE isn’t following up (for whatever reason – EE or our server) after 1 hour and adding those tickets back to the number of available tickets.
That’s a completely different issue that may involve making sure your server supports wp-cron.
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