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#1 2010-07-16 08:06:04
- shane1090
- New member
- Registered: 2010-07-16
- Posts: 6
Using PayPal and none paid bookings
I've setup the system to take PayPal bookings, so when clients make a booking, they make a payment to PayPal and the booking is approved and shows in the correct schedule.
However, i have a problem if people don't make the payment with PayPal, or exit from PayPal. The system stores the booking in the system, and the booking is not available to see anywhere in the admin area - although when creating appointments through the admin area, you can see the booked out area. In the database, it has its "is_ghost" column set to "1". My problem is that this appointment has been cancelled by the client (in the sense they didn't want to follow it through) but the booking still exists in the system with no way to remove it, or for the time slot to be available to another client.
Is there anyway around this or am i doing something wrong? We don't want to have to keep logging into the system to make sure people have paid via PayPal to ensure the booking is approved. Would this be some kind of Cron job that removes any appointments that have "is_ghost" status and older than a certain date?
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#2 2010-11-08 03:04:12
- shane1090
- New member
- Registered: 2010-07-16
- Posts: 6
Re: Using PayPal and none paid bookings
Just wondered if anyone knew the answer to my post above? I've just looked in the database and found a column called 'ghost_last_access'. Just wondering if this is used to free-up the available time slot taken if a payment is not made as i cannot find any mention of it in the php files which look for available time slots.
Would i need to create the cron job to remove any appointments that have the 'is_ghost' status of 1 in the database?
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#3 2010-11-08 03:24:28
- shane1090
- New member
- Registered: 2010-07-16
- Posts: 6
Re: Using PayPal and none paid bookings
Sorry, please ignore my two previous messages! Just decided to play around with the 'last_ghost_access' and realised that it automatically removes appointments that have not been paid after a certain period of time - saves me some coding!
Could i suggest a manual though which details everything to which the system is capable of? It seems there is a lot going on that is either not mentioned on the site, or unknown until you start digging around!
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#4 2010-11-08 08:07:22
Re: Using PayPal and none paid bookings
Hello Shane,
sorry for not writing a doc about it, actually it's sort of internal stuff and 99% of people are simply not interested in it. Yes, currently the "ghost" appointments are automatically deleted after one hour of inactivity.
A ghost app is created when a user comes to the payment screen, we need it because the user will leave the site to pay on Paypal, thus we need to temporarily store the appointment waiting for the user return. If he or she just skips the payment, we don't know about it, so the ghost appointment is still left in the database. And after 1 hour it's deleted if the user doesn't return from the payment site.
We can add a setting to change this period of 1 hour, will you need it?
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#5 2010-12-19 14:56:36
- bluemist
- Member
- From: vancouver
- Registered: 2010-03-14
- Posts: 73
Re: Using PayPal and none paid bookings
How long are ghost bookings kept when making a booking... 1 hour ?
I noticed during tesitng when we didn't confirm bookings the slots were unavailable.
Perhaps on the final confirmation screen there should be a cancel booking to release them immediately.
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