I've been working a long time on a database-driven website that will use IPN to do (hopefully) a lot of the work for me.
Half of what the IPN handler will do is enable access to features on the website for users and the other half will make entries to another table that I will use to create end-of-the-month reports for accounting purposes.
Among of course many other variables that I'll use, the payment_status variable will pass along values that will (should) help my handler script decide whether or not to make an entry into the accounting report table.
The thing is - not all values from this variable have to do with the actual movement of funds in OR out of either my PP account or bank account. Some values such as "pending" just tell you that it's being reviewed first and doesn't mean that any amount, gross or fee, has actually been added-to or removed-from (yet).
What I'm baffled about, because of the vague available explanations in official PP documentation, is which of these values I should use to "trigger" my script into placing an entry into the accounting report table. The reason being I need to record ONLY transactions that are... well... transactions (an actual crediting or debiting of funds).
The basics of the setup is:
- purchases come from choices of several "buy now" buttons
- these are simple (so I thought) purchases that involve only a gross amt and the associated fee (no shipping or tax amounts need to be worried about here)
- I am accepting USD only
- I am NOT accepting ECHECKS as payment
My best guess is that the following payment_status values signify actual debiting or crediting of funds:
- Completed - a succesful and regular purchase
- Reversed - because of some customer complaint or discrepency the funds I got from a Completed transaction have now been removed from my account.
- Canceled_Reversal - I had a discrepency with the above mentioned discrepency and I won. If I understand it right this is an un-doing of a Reversed transaction as described above.
- Refunded - through the goodness of my heart I've taken it upon myself to give a customer a break. I believe this would pop up if I was to log into my PP account, find the transaction in question and then give back the funds.
Now, because of how I have things setup as above - I think these four payment_status values are all I should use to trigger an entry to the report table - since (again, if I understand correctly) these are the only ones that will affect actual movement of funds and/or a debiting or crediting to my account.
I tried calling PP customer service but naturally 20 minutes into the conversation I don't think the person I spoke to was even really familiar with the workings of the IPN to begin with (sigh).
If someone reads this - and REALLY understands and has worked with IPN, I'd really, really appreciate some feedback as to whether or not I'm understanding it myself correctly and if I'm heading in the right direction. It's all very exhausting, especially when you're learning as you go and doing it all by yourself.
Thanx in advance for any input on this.
