How To Reprocess PayPal IPNs on SubscriptionBoss

On the Notifications page, click the “Date Processed” column heading. This will bring all your unprocessed IPNs to the top of the list.

IMPORTANT: You should not be in a position of having many unprocessed IPNS. SubscriptionBoss tries to reprocess all unprocessed IPNs every time a payment comes in. So if you have old unprocessed IPNs you should process them manually on Infusionsoft then delete them from SubscriptionBoss.

Automatic Processing of IPNs

Normally PayPal IPNs are processed automatically when they arrive. However, the arrival of the payment from PayPal can sometimes arrive before Infusionsoft has generated the invoice. In this scenario the payment cannot be matched against as an invoice as the invoice does not yet exist so the payment remains unprocessed.

When the next payment comes in (and this may be for any client) then the plugin makes an attempt to reprocess all unprocessed payments. By this time the invoice may exists and if so the payment will be processed.

Manual Reprocessing of IPNs

However, maybe you do not want to wait for the next payment. In this case you can select the IPN and then click the reprocess IPN button.

Screenshot of PayPal IPN for reprocessing

If the IPN is processed successfully the ‘processed’ date is filled in, as is the contact ID, Subscription ID and the Invoice ID.

Reasons for Processing Failure

There are several reasons for payment processing failure:

  • Infusionsoft has not yet created an invoice for the charge
  • the Infusionsoft application server is not available
  • Infusionsoft has changed the underlying database by merging products and subscriptions – this is why the example above was not processed
  • the IPN contains something unexpected that the plugin cannot handle
  • You have deleted the payment’s underlying subscription from SubscriptionBoss
  • You have deleted the contact from Infusionsoft (maybe it was just a test account and you deleted the contact but forgot to cancel the subscription on PayPal)

Take the following actions for each type of processing failure:

  • No Invoice: wait and retry later.
  • No Server: wait and retry later.
  • Known Problem: check this website and if required upgrade to the latest version of SubscriptionBoss on the SubscriptionBoss support web site
  • New Problem: send me the IPN using the contact form and I will investigate
  • Missing Subscription: process the payment by adding a manual payment to Infusionsoft making sure you put the PayPal transaction ID at the start of the payment note/description – then delete the IPN from SubscriptionBoss
  • Missing Contact: delete the IPN from SubscriptionBoss

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