Changing new order status with PayPal (PayPal or credit card via PayPal)

[davedavedave]

In Magento versions 1.4 and below you were able to have the option for the order status of a PayPal order to be something other than processing.  This is especially helpful when you have orders come in as an authorized payment that still need to be captured.  This allows us to see for example unpaid (authorized) orders as something like "pending payment" and paid (invoiced/captured) as "processing".

This causes big headaches when we integrate with 3rd party systems for things like accounting, shipping and inventory management.

That option no longer exists on any version over 1.4.

Is there a way for us to do what we want above?

[MarkShust]

When you Authorize funds, you are guaranteed the amount that has been authorized.

I believe this was removed because the control flow of the order follows PayPal's payment processing... don't think this can be changed.

[davedavedave]

I mean you aren't technically guaranteed. Authorizations expire.  Or a credit card can be reported stolen for example, and if you try and capture funds a week later, it could get denied.

At the end of the day, the most important factor is the following:

Authorized Fund: You have not technically gotten paid, from an accounting perspective, there has been no transaction or movement of money.

Captured Fund: You actually have money in your account, and would be reconciled as a payment/getting paid.

The problem we're coming in with is third party integrations.  All of these integrations require us to know whether an order is "cleared" (aka paid) so we can move forward with it.  They all look at order status to do this.  From what I've seen with other payment solutions, you are able to choose the order status (it makes sense to give the option at least!), take the Braintree extension for example (owned by PayPal).   You can see in their settings the option (New Order Status):

For real word third party integration issues that this causes:

Xero: Accounting software, it should only import an order once it's paid because accounting only cares about money coming in.  Bringing in all orders automatically, you'd have to go back into Xero and delete out ones that you canceled for whatever reason (fraud, customer canceled, etc).

Webgility eCC: Same issue, but is a middle man connector with Quickbooks.

Shipstation: This software brings in your orders and allows you to create shipping labels.  If it's bringing in all orders (based on a processing status), the person making shipping labels has no idea which orders are actually cleared or paid for so that they can actually ship.  Very easy to accidentally ship something that has not been "paid" for.

StitchLabs: Inventory/order management system so sync inventory across multiple channels.  This would integrate along with things like Shipstation and Xero possibly...but then you run into the same issues if it does not know if something is paid or not.

I realize that it's not an option with the default PayPal workflow, I'm just wondering what the workaround is.  I can't be the only using Magento with PayPal along with these very popular and powerful third party integrations...

[Alex Wu]

davedavedave, 

How's the Braintree extension working out?

[davedavedave]

I don't use it, I was just showing as an example.