Linking paypal payments to accounts

I have two common situations that users run into, slightly similar so I’ll post both here:

Firstly, my setup uses the normal standard paypal button so they are redirected back to register an account, in most cases this works fine, but I do get users running into this regularly too.

Case 1 – A user pays on paypal, but for some reason don’t go back to the site to register a username, they are also claiming not to receive an email from us with a link to register either.

Case 2 – A user renews a membership, but does this whilst logged out, and they then want this renewal added to their original account.

From these cases, I have a few questions:

1. Is there a way/log to enable/check what emails have been sent?

2. Can we trigger a resending of an payment confirmation email by e.g. searching for a transaction on the system? normally we end up having to create accounts manually.

3. Is there a way to PREVENT the user registration link from working e.g. in both cases where we manually create an account or extend a membership, so they don’t register a second account with a new membership?

Any advice on this appreciated!

Thank-you for your inquiry.

1. Is there a way/log to enable/check what emails have been sent?

s2Member does not log emails, but does route emails through WordPress’s wp_mail(). So a plugin like this one might work for you.

2. Can we trigger a resending of an payment confirmation email by e.g. searching for a transaction on the system? normally we end up having to create accounts manually.

Emails cannot be resent, but you can recreate the email using Registration Access Links. This way if you can find the transaction within PayPal, you can use the transaction ID to have the user sign up the same way they would have normally, and cancellations will automatically be handled the same way s2Member would have if they had received the original email.

These links are meant specifically for this occurrence.

See: Dashboard -› s2Member® -› PayPal® Buttons -› Registration Access Links

3. Is there a way to PREVENT the user registration link from working e.g. in both cases where we manually create an account or extend a membership, so they don’t register a second account with a new membership?

These registration links are only valid for up to 2 days after they are sent. You can wait out this time limit to ensure that this does not happen.

Thanks, that is helpful!

Follow-up question:

Does s2Member always send out an email regardless of whether or not the user is redirected back to our site to register immediately after paying?

Does s2Member always send out an email regardless of whether or not the user is redirected back to our site to register immediately after paying?

s2Member’s Emails are sent when s2Member processes PayPal’s IPN data, right after the user finishes checkout through PayPal. So any time that a user pays for access to your site through PayPal, and the the transaction requires an email to be sent, s2Member will send this email regardless of if the user has been sent back to your site yet or not.

Does that make sense?

yup, all clear, thanks!