Paid Memberships Pro creates an order for every payment received. This includes an order for the initial checkout as well as each recurring payment made through the payment gateway.
This guide will help you troubleshoot orders not created for recurring payments so that you and your members can better manage their membership accounts.
Identifying Issues with Member Orders
You will know your site is not creating orders if PMPro only registers the first time payment of a member.
- The Orders admin page will not reflect any data for recurring transactions on a member’s subscription.
- Membership reports on your site related to sales will be completely off from the data your payment gateway is reporting.
- Members will not receive any invoices by email to confirm a successful payment for membership.
The first troubleshooting step is to view the “Edit Member” screen for a member you know has made multiple payments to you.
- Navigate to the Memberships > Members admin page.
- Locate a member that you know has had recurring payments.
- Select “Edit Member“.
- Select the “Orders” panel to locate the log of all orders for the member.
- If you only see a single order but know the member is still paying, you have the “orders not created” issue.
Fixing the “Orders Not Created” Issue
To get started, take a look at your active payment gateway’s IPN or Webhook settings. Your payment gateway uses these services so that it can send messages about payments to your membership site. Your site will keep non-paying members active if these services are misconfigured. In addition, you may continue to receive payments from a member that has already canceled on your site.
PayPal Express and PayPal Standard use the IPN service. IPN stands for “Instant Payment Notification”.
Stripe uses a system called Webhooks. This API communicates with your membership site in real-time and is the method that Stripe uses to deliver data about recurring orders.
The rest of this guide will help you troubleshoot orders not created issues for your specific gateway.
Stripe
First, ensure that you have your Webhook enabled in your Stripe account.
Navigate to Memberships > Settings > Payment Gateway so that you can confirm this setting.
PayPal Express or PayPal Standard
Follow this guide on troubleshooting PayPal IPN issues with PayPal to confirm that your IPN is enabled.
PayPal Payflow Pro
Confirm you are using the Payflow Pro Recurring Orders Add On. Payflow Pro does not use IPN.
You can further debug IPN and Webhook Activity for other Integrated Gateways with Paid Memberships Pro by reading our Webhook and IPN Debugging Guide.
Still Experiencing an Issue?
If you are still experiencing an issue with order creation after working through this guide, it might be that your site is redirecting all traffic to your login page or it’s a unique issue specific to your hosting environment. Premium members can open a ticket in our private support area for help with recurring order issues.
