Payment workflow and payment transactions log

According to your Payment settings and user's selection, any monetary transaction can be processed online (See Online payments) or manually (when the user does not pay online and sends payment by check or some way else).

Each transaction is automatically recorded in the Payment transactions log, which can be accessed via Settings / Your account / Payment transactions log. This page presents a full list of transactions and can be searched by typing search text, just like Keyword search in member database:

Each transaction record in the list provides the following details:

• Transaction date. This is the latest date on which any changes were made to the transaction (see below)
• Payment details. This column shows whether this transaction is a membership renewal, membership upgrade, membership application, event registration or donation. There is also a link to the corresponding member, donation or event registration record
• Amount of the transaction
• Type: Online via PayPal or Manual
• Status
  • Completed: transaction has been initiated for payment online and successfully completed
  • Pending: either an online payment transaction which has not been completed or a manual transaction which has not been yet confirmed
  • Confirmed manually: either a manual transaction or an online payment transaction which has not been initially completed online - but subsequently the payment has been received by the administrator and transaction status changed to confirmed.
  • Canceled manually: either a manual transaction or an online payment transaction which has not been initially completed online - which subsequently has been marked by the administrator as cancelled.
  • Refunded: Transaction has been initiated from Wild Apricot for online payment, completed, but subsequently refunded from within PayPal. PayPal has sent a notification to Wild Apricot server and this transaction has been automatically marked as Refunded.

Here are the most common workflows:

1. User initiates online payment and successfully completes it online. Transaction is recorded as Completed, no manual intervention is necessary from the administrator.
2. User selects manual payment. User gets in touch with the administrator and completes his payment outside of the system. Once the payment is confirmed, administrator goes to the payment transaction and marks it 'Confirmed manually'.
3. User initiates online payment but for some reason does not finish it online. Transaction is originally recorded in Pending status. According to your settings, system might send you an email. Or you can go to the Payments transactions log, type 'Pending' in the search field and view all pending transactions. Administrator has to get in touch with this user and re-process his payment outside of the system. Once the payment is confirmed, administrator would go to the payment transaction and mark it 'Confirmed manually'.
4. User initiates online payment but does not finish it online. Transaction is recorded in Pending status. Administrator determines that the payment will not be confirmed and goes to the transaction to mark it as 'Canceled manually'

Note that a transaction can be canceled or confirmed as appropriate any time so you can correct mistakes if necessary.

When you have a pending event registration, member application or renewal, changing its status to Confirmed / Active will automatically mark the corresponding transaction as confirmed.

If you click on a particular transaction, you can see its full history. Here are some examples:

Online transaction which has been successfully completed:

Manual transaction which has been confirmed, then canceled and then confirmed again:

You can actually drill down on each step in the process - this will provide you detailed information about both online and manual processing steps - for audit or troubleshooting purposes.

Accessing transactions

In addition to accessing full transactions log, you can (and most probably you will more frequently) access transactions related to a particular operation, for example:

• All transactions related to a particular member from the member details page
• All transactions related to a particular donor from the donor details page
• A particular donation transaction - from the donation details page
• All transactions related to a particular event - from the event details page
• All transactions related to a particular event attendee - from the event attendee details page
• A particular event registration transaction - from the event registration details page

Here is an example of the last one above:

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Automatic cancellation of transactions

• If you delete a specific event registration, its related transactions are automatically marked as canceled.
• If you delete a member, a donor, or an event attendee, related transactions are not affected.