Paypal Rest api: billing plan, payment_definitions meaning of "cycles" - paypal

I would like to setup a paypal billing plan with monthly payments similar to e.g. github. The customer gets charged $7 every month.
I am struggling with the property cycles. The api document says cycles = "Number of cycles in this payment definition".
Does this mean the payment definition has to include the values:
"frequency_interval": "1",
"frequency": "MONTH",
"cycles": "1",
Or should cycles have the value "0"?

For what i understood, cycles it's the number of time the payment will be done (if you put 12, it will last 12 occurency -> 1 year). You can put 0 only if the plan's type is "INFINITE", the plan will last forever until you stop it.
So you have to put 0 if you want it never to stop.

Related

Braintree Prorate amount is wrong

I have two plans.
The first one is 4.99€.
The second one is 9.99€.
When using prorate_charges = true option.
I pick the 4.99€ subscription, the transaction amount is 4,99 €.
Now I want to upgrade from the 4.99€ plan to the 9.99€ plan and apply the prorate charges. I should pay 5€ on day one since 9.99€ - 4.99€ but instead of paying 5€, braintree generate a transaction with an amount of 4,83 € and I don't know why. The billing cycle is set to one month but It looks like it calculate the proration without 1 day.

Crystal Reports - Running Total is duplicating if a group has more than 1 "detail"

I have a report that I am trying to get working in Crystal. Basically the report is about gifts (I work for a non-profit). I grouped the report by Payment Method, and then Gift ID, which is a unique field in the .MDB file used to fuel the report.
I want to keep gifts with the same payment method together, which is why I first grouped by that. Then I grouped by Gift ID. the "Details" of my report is a field called Soft Credit Donor, which will list out as many donors that were given soft credit on the gift. There could be 0, there could be multiple...I show running totals in the Report Footer. I have a Gift Count (a Distinct Count of Gift ID, evaluating on each record, resetting Never), a Sum of all Gifts (a sum of Gift Amount, evaluating on Change of Field - Gift ID, resetting Never). These 2 fields work fine.
Then I get to where I want a running total based on each Payment Method. I am able to easily show the # of gifts per payment method. I do this with 4 separate running total fields (one for each payment method). I am doing a Distinct Count on GIft ID, evaluating on a formula (payment_method = "Business Check", "Personal Check", "Credit Card", etc...and Resetting Never.
My issue is when I try to do a $$ total for each payment method. In this case I am seeing that my running total is duplicating if there is more than 1 "detail" or soft credit donor. My running total field is doing a sum of the Gift Amount field, evaluating on a formula (payment_method = "business check", etc...), and I've played around with the Resetting. If I choose Resetting Never, then I am seeing the money being double or triple, etc...counted. Depending on if gift has more than 1 "detail". If I choose to reset on change of field and I set that to either Payment_Method or GiftID, I get a blank running total.
One thing to mention is that my MDB file has multiple tables that are all left outer joined to the main table which holds the Gift ID and Payment method fields. So there is a Soft_Credit table that holds the Gift ID field, along with the each name of the Donor who gets a soft credit. I'm not sure if that matters or not.
I'd appreciate any help!
You can put this in a formula:
If {payment_method} = "Credit Card" Then 1 Else 0
Use this formula as sum in the running total.
Use "on change" on the id field.
User "never reset" for the total sum.
You have to create one formula and one running total for each payment method.

Having a paypal calculating VAT issue?

I am developing a simple shopping cart with paypal checkout, but i am stuck with the VAT processing part on paypal's side.
Paypal seems to add up total +VAT+ shipping. But when i substract the VAT from the $grandtotal variable in my shopping cart i get the error message:
The totals of the cart item amounts do not match order amounts.
I am using Paypal's SetExpressCheckout.
My questions:
1/ for parameter PAYMENTREQUEST_0_AMT should i use the total with or without the VAT
2/ should i use parameter PAYMENTREQUEST_0_TAXAMT? if so how do i prevent paypal from adding it up
regards
Please see the following extracts from the PayPal site :
PAYMENTREQUEST_n_AMT - (Required) Total cost of the transaction to the
buyer. If shipping cost and tax charges are known, include them in
this value. If not, this value should be the current sub-total of the
order. If the transaction includes one or more one-time purchases,
this field must be equal to the sum of the purchases. Set this field
to 0 if the transaction does not include a one-time purchase such as
when you set up a billing agreement for a recurring payment that is
not immediately charged. When the field is set to 0, purchase-specific
fields are ignored.
PAYMENTREQUEST_n_ITEMAMT - Sum of cost of all items in this order. For digital goods, this field is required. You can specify up to 10
payments, where n is a digit between 0 and 9, inclusive; except for
digital goods, which supports single payments only.
PAYMENTREQUEST_n_TAXAMT - (Optional) Sum of tax for all items in this order. You can specify up to 10 payments, where n is a digit
between 0 and 9, inclusive; except for digital goods, which supports
single payments only.
AMT = item amt + tax amt + shipping amt + handle amt - discount.
So if your item amt already includes tax, then don't use tax amt, otherwise, make sure item amt doesn't include tax and put tax in tax amt.

Recurring payments: how to specify an initial payment TAX value different than the subsequent cycles?

If I do a request with the INITAMT equal to the recurring payment amount, it works.
But if I try to bill a different INITAMT (and so different TAX), I get this error:
Tax calculation mismatch. The tax amount for the regular non-trial billing period is different than the sum of the tax for each item in the cart.
My actual request:
I have an initial payment of 4.84€ including 0.84€ of VAT tax.
The next month the amount to bill should be 25.09€ (including 6.09€ VAT).
The request I send is basically this:
Method: CreateRecurringPaymentsProfile
"CURRENCYCODE":"EUR",
"INITAMT":4.84,
"TAXAMT":0.84,
"DESC":"Subscription",
"BILLINGPERIOD":"Month",
"BILLINGFREQUENCY":1,
"AMT":29,
"L_PAYMENTREQUEST_0_ITEMCATEGORY0":"Digital",
"L_PAYMENTREQUEST_0_NAME0":"Subscription",
"L_PAYMENTREQUEST_0_AMT0":29,
"L_PAYMENTREQUEST_0_TAXAMT0":6.09,
"L_PAYMENTREQUEST_0_QTY0":1
"PROFILEREFERENCE":"51a1f8f4732baf580a000031",
"PAYMENTREQUEST_0_INVNUM":"51a1f8f4732baf580a000031",
"INVNUM":"51a1f8f4732baf580a000031",
"PROFILESTARTDATE":"2013-06-26T11:59:12+0000",
And the response:
"TIMESTAMP":"2013-05-27T10:55:46Z",
"CORRELATIONID":"969d07e2cef8a",
"ACK":"Failure",
"VERSION":"74",
"BUILD":"5908853",
"L_ERRORCODE0":"10004",
"L_SHORTMESSAGE0":"Tax calculation mismatch.",
"L_LONGMESSAGE0":"Tax calculation mismatch. The tax amount for the regular non-trial billing period is different than the sum of the tax for each item in the cart.",
"L_SEVERITYCODE0":"Error"
I'd like to do this with the INITAMT value, so that the user can see the two purchases as correlated in the Paypal private area (ie: a subscription with an inital payment).
Otherwise I'll have to do a separate DoExpressCheckout for the initial payment.
What's happening is that you cannot (I believe) set a tax amount for the Initial Amount.
The TAXAMT is for the recurring payment, not the Initial Amount.
Your statement is saying "Billing 29€ with a tax of 0.84€".
However your item list says the tax should be 6.09€
Change your TAXAMT to 6.09€ and it should be fine.

Pass variable cart total to PayPal for Subscription (using Enhanced Recurring Payments w. Website Payments Standard)

Summary: Trying to pass along a variable Monthly Subscription cost to PayPal based on user-selected options on a form I created. Working within Website Payments Standard with Enhanced Recurring Payment option, is this possible?
Details:
User visits "shop" page, which is a form with 4 line items, each line item consisting of 2-7 options, each option with an associated price.
For example, line item 1 is "size of business" with the options being:
a) 1-3 employees - $10
b) 4+ employees - $12.50
User goes through the list and chooses 1 option for each line item and some javascript calculates the total due on the fly.
Is it possible to pass this total to PayPal, not as a one-time cost, rather as the base cost for a monthly subscription?
Yes. Just change the value you're passing for a3, rather than amount.
Is there a problem you're running into?