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.

Banner for Troubleshooting guide on orders not created for recurring payments in Paid Memberships Pro.

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 Profile” screen for a user you know has made multiple payments to you.

  1. Navigate to the Memberships > Members admin page.
  2. Locate a member that you know has had recurring payments.
  3. Edit the user’s profile.
  4. Under “Member History”, locate the log of all invoices for the user.
  5. If you only see a single order but know the member is still paying, you have the “orders not created” issue.
Use the Member History Add On to confirm if orders are not created.

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, PayPal Standard, and PayPal Website Payments Pro 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 & SSL so that you can confirm this setting.
  • In your Stripe account, navigate to Developers > Webhook and confirm that the Webhook URL listed on the Payment Gateway & SSL settings page matches one of the URLs listed in your Stripe account’s “Webhooks” settings page.
  • Next, confirm that you have enabled the right events for the Webhook URL defined in your Stripe account. Paid Memberships Pro automatically configures these events when you use the “Connect Webhook” button. The correct events are:
    • charge.failed
    • charge.refunded
    • checkout.session.async_payment_failed
    • checkout.session.async_payment_succeeded
    • checkout.session.completed
    • customer.subscription.deleted
    • invoice.payment_action_required
    • invoice.payment_succeeded

PayPal Express, PayPal Standard, or PayPal Website Payments Pro

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.

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.

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