Dear Team,

We are experiencing an issue with our Amelia and WooCommerce integration, specifically related to the booking confirmation process when payments are incomplete or still pending. This issue has started recently and is now ongoing for about 2 weeks. 

Here’s a brief overview of the problem:

1. Issue Summary:
   • We have "create booking before payment process" enabled in Amelia. This setting allows bookings to be created immediately, even if WooCommerce shows the order as "Pending Payment." However, this has led to cases where bookings are confirmed without the payment being received, which requires us to follow up with customers for payment manually placing their bookings under pending status..
2. Impact on Operations:

• Bookings are confirmed without payment, but no emails are sent to the customers to confirm the booking. We frequently have to contact customers to arrange payment via Stripe links. This has added significant manual work to ensure all bookings are fully paid and secured.
• Disabling the "create booking before payment process" option allows WooCommerce orders to process correctly, but bookings are not secured even after payment - only the order confirmation email is sent confirming the payment and order summary but the booking / package purchase doesn't exist in Amelia. 

Seems like some customers retry the payment and it goes through, but the completed payment creates a new order in woocommerce rather than change the status of pending payment order. 

Also I think it's important to mention that this is happening for our new customers only who have never made a purchase on site before. All transactions for our existing customers are working smoothly.

Can you please advise what could be causing this as this issue? Why, disabling the "create booking before payment process" doesn't create a booking or add the package in Amelia after payment? 

What settings we should aim for that would allow bookings to be created and confirmed only after payment is marked as completed in WooCommerce? We hope to streamline this process to avoid needing to request payment follow-ups manually.

We have updated to latest Amelia version hoping this would solve this problem, but the issue still persists.

I will send website credentials privately in the next message so you can open the backend and see all the configurations. 

Thank you very much for your assistance.

Andzelika

I'd also like to add a link to my previous ticket regarding the issues with booking creations after payment back from the past - which was resolved by enabling "Create booking before payment" process. 

Here's the link: https://tmsplugins.ticksy.com/ticket/3628933/

I thought this might be helpful. 

Hello Uroš,

We will need to wait for a new customer to make a purchase on our site to determine if the issue with pending orders has been resolved, as it was occurring only with new customers.

In the meantime, could you please let me know what you identified as the cause of this issue? I’d like to understand it myself and provide an update to my client regarding the reasons behind it.

Once we receive a new customer purchase, I will let you know.

Best regards,

Andzelika

Hi Uroš,

Thank you for your explanation.

We received three new customer purchases last night. The initial payment attempts still result in pending orders, but it seems that customers are now completing their payments on a second attempt. This creates a new order, leaving the original one as "pending payment."

I've observed that some customers use a different email address and surname in the billing details for their second payment attempt.

This leads me to believe that when customers attempt to pay for the first time, the order is placed without a successful payment. On their end, the item must disappear from their cart without clear payment verification. As a result, they add the product again and proceed to make a second payment attempt. I can’t think of any other reason why they would use different details for the second attempt.

Once the payment is confirmed, customers are redirected to the "Thank You" page, which I have designed to display an order summary. However, this page is not seen by those whose orders remain in "pending payment" status.

I’ve attached a screenshot for your reference for this. 

Also, just now, we had a failed order - orders with failed status automatically reject the booking for single service purchase, and if the customers want to attempt to pay again they are not able to until we remove the rejected booking from the system. Once I delete the rejected booking, the customer was able to pay for it, however they only received an woo email confirming the order, but no booking confirmation from Amelia was sent and after checking I found that the booking didn't even exist in Amelia. 

I have checked last nights orders with single services booked, and they all seem to be fine with bookings confirmed.

Kind regards, 

Andzelika

Hi Uroš,

I hope you're doing well.

I wanted to update you on the checkout process. I've recently switched from the classical WooCommerce checkout shortcode to using the new block checkout system. After making a test order as a new customer the the payment went through successfully from first attempt.

Now, we will need to wait for actual new customers to place their orders to determine if the issue has been fully resolved. I'll keep monitoring the situation and will let you know if anything else comes up.

Kind regards, Andzelika

Hello, I posted an update before I saw your comment. 

I'd like to add that if we disable the option to create booking before payment,  once the payments go through the booking is not registered in Amelia and only the woocoommerce order confirmation email is sent. This wouldn't fix the problem.