What happens to transactions where there is no linked transaction order (parent) in Magento?
This situation is known as orphaned transactions and means that you can't fully reconcile income, transactions and, most importantly, can make customer service's job more complicated. Typically, an orphan transaction occurs when an order is not completed (and, therefore, there is no order number in Magento).
Typically, what drives orphaned transactions
There are some typical reasons why transactions fail and we've outlined these here:
- Customer abandoned the transaction
- Declined transaction
- Rejected payment
- Magento error when transaction is saved (including coding errors)
- Timeouts and communication errors
Is this just a problem for e-commerce?
Typically, yes. Because it only affects online payments.
How to avoid orphaned transactions
You will not be able to eradicate them completely because some will be out of your control. If it's to do with the amount of money the buyer has or due to communication errors (flaky wifi) then this is not something you can do much about.
What else can you do? Firstly, keep your payment gateway - such as SagePay - up to date. Make sure you download any updates availabe as it keeps the features and sucurity fixes up to date. Sagepay is one of the most popular gateways in the UK so chances are you will be using it.
What is the best course of action?
Track your orphan transaction list in Magento regularly. This should give you as much information as possible on products selected, billing and delivery details. You could check the logs and it should contain the reason why the transaction did not complete.
Why? It might even provide you with an opportunity to rescue the situation and actually complete the transaction. Call them up and see if you can complete the transaction manually. Your chance of doing this is much increased if it is done reasonably close to when the purchaser tried to buy.
Does it affect my accounting?
It shouldn't but it might if your ERP system is integtrated and pulls transactions across automatically. It is an advantage to ecommerce companies if ERP systems do this.
One last thing
Make sure you clear old transactions from the list regularly. This means you are not undertaking double processing to remove these later on.
If you liked this blog post, then you migh also like this previous blog post too.