Subscription - revise quantity

[sjk4]

I'm currently working on implementing new PayPal subscription mechanism for my online service using REST API. Unfortunately, I'm having some issues with revise method for the existing subscription - for all kind of requests I'm getting PAYMENT_IN_PROGRESS error.

My request (containing all necessary auth headers):

POST <a href="https://api.sandbox.paypal.com/v1/billing/subscriptions/I-89G0SXP46PJM/revise" target="_blank">https://api.sandbox.paypal.com/v1/billing/subscriptions/I-89G0SXP46PJM/revise</a>

{"quantity":"4"}

API response:

422 {"name":"UNPROCESSABLE_ENTITY","message":"The requested action could not be performed, semantically incorrect, or failed business validation.","debug_id":"c1c8e4e320f44","details":[{"issue":"PAYMENT_IN_PROGRESS","description":"Payment for the subscription is in progress."}],"links":[{"href":"<a href="https://developer.paypal.com/webapps/developer/docs/api/#UNPROCESSABLE_ENTITY","rel":"information_link","method":"GET" target="_blank">https://developer.paypal.com/webapps/developer/docs/api/#UNPROCESSABLE_ENTITY","rel":"information_link","method":"GET</a>"}]}

Subscription I-89G0SXP46PJM is definitely an active subscription and next payment date is tomorrow. I have no idea why I'm getting "Payment for the subscription is in progress." all the time even if today's payment has been successfully made. The PayPal documentation doesn't say anything about payments in progress.

Please let me know if anyone had similar issue.

[JuanitoCarlitos]

Any answer?

[Xtempore]

Sorry, I was unable to find any answer to this either.

Here are some facts:

1. PayPal have made no attempt to address your question.
2. The message "PAYMENT_IN_PROGRESS" appears nowhere in their poorly written, incomplete documentation.
3. PayPal's API returns inconsistent results.
4. PayPal openly acknowledges that the sandbox and live systems do not behave exactly the same way, which makes testing unreliable and unpredictable.
5. Stripe's implementation is much easier to use as it is very well documented with a much superior dashboard.

[iharel]

I'm hitting the same issue exactly. 

Any answer to this? 

[goranl]

Guys, how did you solve this issue?
It happens randomly for months

[synagen]

Anyone have a resolution? It's now July 2021, 2 years since this thread was opened, and I'm getting the same error. At the moment I cant use Paypal for my business because modifying the quantity of a quantity-based subscription when the customer changes their quantity, doesnt work in Live. Never been able to get it working in Test because the subscription details pages of the sandbox have never worked, so I am testing in live. If I cant resolve this then I'll have to look for an alternative method of billing subscription customers.

I have used raw CURL commands, as per the developer docs, and have also used the php Paypal libraries (code below). The PHP code returns nothing, just a 204 status (no content)

namespace PayPal\Api;
require '/opt/bitnami/php/bin/vendor/autoload.php';
use PayPal\Common\PayPalResourceModel;
use PayPal\Validation\ArgumentValidator;
use PayPal\Api\WebhookList;
use PayPal\Rest\ApiContext;
use PayPal\Validation\UrlValidator;
use PayPalCheckoutSdk\Core\PayPalHttpClient;
use PayPalCheckoutSdk\Core\PayPalEnvironment;
use PayPalCheckoutSdk\Core\ProductionEnvironment;

[endymon]

In case anyone runs into this. I contacted paypal Merchant Technical support about it. They finally got back to me (after a week).

PayPal Response:
----

The error "PAYMENT_IN_PROGRESS" is returned if you attempt to revise the billing details for a subscription within 24 hours of the next scheduled billing. 

As the profile you referenced "_____________" has a daily billing cycle, you won't be able to revise the billing details for this subscription.  Instead, you would need to cancel the existing subscription and create a new one with the relevant billing details which you wish to use.

[mrrobk]

Thanks @endymon This solved the problem. I hade a daily subscription in sandbox and tried to revise the billing details for a subscription within 24 hours of the next scheduled billing.

When doing it for a monthly subscription with renewal 30 days into future it worked.

The fact that the next billing could not be closer then 24 hours was not documented anywhere in the REST API.