Support

June 19, 2015 at 8:02 am

Hi Matthew,

First, I’ll explain what’s happening, then we can dig deeper into your other questions.

For various reasons Event Espresso starts a registration very early on, and it stores these registrations very early on in the database.

So when you select a ticket on the ticket selector and click to register an Incomplete Registration is created with a Failed transaction note this is before ANY information has been entered, other than a ticket selection.

So to show that, here is the view of Incomplete registrations on one of my test sites before I select a ticket for one of my events – http://take.ms/7LZDG

Note the ID of the latest one is 780.

Now I select a ticket on one of my events and click register now – http://take.ms/U2nll

Event Espresso is now asking for registration information for that event (I have NOT entered anything else yet) – http://take.ms/6pG59

Now I’m going to refresh the Incomplete view in a another tab – http://take.ms/KTulE

Now EE has created an Incomplete registration (because it doesn’t have any Attendee details, the registration itself is Incomplete) with an ID of 789.

Now back in my event tab, I’ll enter the details and click ‘Proceed to Payment options’, so now I’m here – http://take.ms/5eSb3

Back to the Incomplete tab and refresh – http://take.ms/cJCcr
There is no longer an Incomplete registration with ID 789, because we provided registration details. The registration status switched.

Go to the Main registration overview – http://take.ms/MteFU

The registration updated the details as the attendee input the details.

So… if I hadn’t have input those details, the Registration would have remained Incomplete, you don’t see a contact assigned because there is no contact (EE hasn’t been given the details to create one) if I had have closed the browser before adding the details, again the registration would remain that way.

Now if I finalize the registration by selecting a Payment method… I will use Invoice. I’ll be directed to the Thank you page and my Transaction updated to the correct status of ‘Incomplete’ (Different from a Registration status of Incomplete)

Select Invoice, Finalize Registration, directed to thank you page – http://take.ms/TNC3n

Check the registrations view – http://take.ms/njFD8

So Incomplete REGISTRATIONS can be created by a user simply selecting a ticket and then closing the browser. There is no contact info available, because none was entered.

So far does that all make sense and if you follow along with the same test, does the same happen on your site?

June 19, 2015 at 9:09 am

Your most welcome, Matthew.

Ok, so now you know what’s happening…

Additionally, I just realized that when I use the “Select Status” dropdown to filter for “Incomplete” status, I only get the empty results referenced above, and not the actual incomplete transactions. I am able to find actual Incomplete registrations (orange status) with attached contact information when I manually wade through the registrations.

Is this within Event Espresso -> Registrations?

You see Incomplete registrations with contact records assigned?

June 19, 2015 at 10:59 am

Those are not incomplete registrations. They are Pending Payment registration with Abandoned transactions.

Registrations with contacts assigned to them should never show in the ‘Incomplete’ view.

Once a registration has a contact, it is no longer Incomplete and so is removed from that view. The ‘Incomplete’ tab is the ONLY section that show incomplete registrations. The reason for the Incomplete view is to allow you to differentiate between those two.

Your in the All Registrations view, so if you scroll down to the very bottom, you’ll see a legend for that view – http://take.ms/j5Zib

If shows a legend for the whole view, however the colour squares relate to the Registration status bar, which is the colored bar on the left – http://take.ms/E5kav

So in your example – http://take.ms/ewT8V

Abandoned Transactions mean the user has either selected an Offsite gateway (such as PayPal) then closed the browser (or paid and not clicked to return to your site afterwards)

Or the user go to the Payment selection, clicked on, then didn’t click to Finalize the registration.

Registrations with Abanonded Transactions will not show in your CSV list (unless they have been manually ‘Approved’)

June 20, 2015 at 12:12 pm

(which differ only apparently when the transaction is abandoned like in my example)

All registrations have their own status, all transactions have their own status. There are many factors the determine the status of both so its possible to have registrations with almost any status associated with transactions with any status.

The best way to view this is to place some registrations and stop at various places, comparing the status of both the registration and its transaction.

One last question; does the way Event Espresso handles registrations (creating them as incomplete and then updating/linking to a contact as the information is entered) also explain there being a large number of failed transactions that are also not linked to contacts?

Yes, all registrations have a transactions.

A transaction can have multiple registrations assigned to it but the same applies from above, when the Incomplete registration is created a transaction is created with a status of failed. Again this updates as the registrant provides addition details (the type of payment gateway selected also effects this)

If you have any further questions just let me know.