Revision as of 10:40, 28 December 2011

We have prepared a video tutorial for this section @ http://www.whmcs.com/tutorials.php?i=3

Begin by activating the payment gateway under Setup > Payment Gateways

Instant Payment Notification (IPN)

PayPal IPN Setup

For PayPal invoices to be automatically marked paid when you receive a payment you need to enable IPN inside your PayPal account. This is done in the My Account > Profile > My Selling Preferences > Instant payment notifications. It's not important what URL you use so set it to your system url eg. http://www.yourdomain.com/whmcspath/ Then select the "Enabled" option.

PayPal Subscriptions/Recurring Billing

Unless disabled in the PayPal gateway config, when a user views an invoice for a recurring product or service they will be shown a PayPal Subscribe button. This allows the user to subscribe so that their payment for that product or service is sent to you automatically each month/quarter/etc... and automatically applied to the appropriate renewal invoices by WHMCS.

There are two conditions that must be met for the PayPal subscribe button to appear:

1. The invoice's Due Date must be in the future
2. The invoice must contain at least 1 recurring product (ie. domains and billable items on their own won't create subscriptions)

If an invoice contains both a product, and addons or domains, then any which match the products billing cycle will also be included as part of the subscription. For example, if an invoice contained a product, an addon & a domain, all of which recur on an annual basis, then the PayPal subscription that gets created by WHMCS would be for the total amount of all 3 items so that the subscription would cover everything and pay the renewal invoice in full automatically. What isn't possible however is to create a subscription that has different amounts recurring on different recurring terms, ie. $x Monthly + $Y Annually. PayPal doesn't offer an option for that at the current time.

Customising Invoice Emails for Subscriptions

When a subscription is created, the Subscription ID number that gets issued by PayPal is stored by WHMCS in the Subscription ID field for the product. Similarly when a subscription is cancelled the Subscription ID gets removed again. Therefore it is possible to use that ID value to determine if a subscription exists and therefore customise the text shown to the customer in the invoice related emails based on that.

For example, one might customise the "Invoice Created" email template to show different instructions to the customer if a subscription exists (meaning no manual action is required), compared with if one doesn't (meaning the client needs to login and pay the invoice manually), for example:

{if $invoice_subscription_id}
As you have a PayPal Subscription setup, payment will be taken automatically within the
next few days. Please ensure you have enough funds in your PayPal account to cover it.
{else}
You can login to your client area to view and pay the invoice at {$invoice_link}
{/if}

Modify Subscriptions

By enabling Modify Subscriptions, customers will be given the option to create a new agreement or modify an existing one when going through the subscribe process. Saving you from having to cancel a subscription and create a new one.

When a client upgrades/downgrades modifying of the subscription does not occur at the time of the upgrade, it occurs on the next renewal invoice (when the client logs in to pay the new amount).

Due to limitations of PayPal's system, when modify is enabled, they ignore trial period amounts therefore prorata and promos can't be used.

Automated Refunds

As of version 4, you can issue refunds for PayPal payments directly from within WHMCS. Before you can do this however, you need to setup PayPal API access. The steps for doing this are as follows:

PayPal Refunds Step 1

• Login to PayPal
• Go to Profile > API Access
• Choose Option 2 - Request API credentials to create your own API username and password.
• Choose Option 1 - Request API Signature and click Agree and Submit

PayPal Refunds Step 2

• Copy the username, password and signature that get provided and then click Done
• Enter the details from the previous step into the WHMCS Payment Gateways config screen where requested

You will now be able to enter a refund and have it sent from PayPal at the same time from within the WHMCS admin area invoice management screen.

Error Messages

Invalid Receiver Email

WHMCS validates the payment receiver email value against the details specified under Setup > Payments > Payment Gateways so this error means the two do not match. If multiple PayPal accounts are used to receive payment they must all be listed in a comma separated list eg. email1@mycompany.com,email2@mycompany.com. The first email you specify will then be the email used for new payments, but any email in the field will be accepted as an invoice payment.