Price not displaying Decimals (cents) in cart, and a couple other questions.

To test Paypal (according to their suggestions) I have some products in my database with prices of $0.01, 0.05 and a few more under a dollar. When I go to the Cart page, the prices are all showing as ".00" - no leading decimal. The DB datatype is decimal and the price displays correctly on the product page. I tried to format as a number as I found in another post, but that didn't work. All of the other product details are correct. . How do I fix this?

Also, I would like to understand a little more about the workflow, which will help i the future - I an imagine I will have more questions.

1. The Add to Cart Button does not direct to the Cart page so the shopper may add more products. Is there any way to show a message that the item was added? Perhaps just showing the number of items curren't in the cart.
2. When is the 'order" actually created in the DB? I would like to check the tables to see how they are being updating as I progress through each step/
3. If I just wanted to start over from scratch, how do I delete the DB tables the eCart created. PhpMyAdmin is not letting me do this.
4. It looks like the confirmation emails are generated from the confirm page, after the Paypal transaction is complete ad it redirects back. Is that correct? Is it difficult to replace the built in email confirmation with Universal Email to give me more control over the style of the email?
5. And finally, if I wanted to create user accounts to attach orders to, where would be the best place in the process to insert a Login or Create Account function? I would probably use the WA site as a model for this, I'm just afraid that if they had to create an account with email activation, the order itself could get lost in the process.

Thank you always for your excellent support. The initial question is the most important, feel free to point me to tutorials or other references for the others. I'm using eCart five with DW CC.

Update: Resolved the main issue, it turns out I simply did not have the form variable associated with the cart Price in the Add to Cart dialog.

One other thing though- I am using the Paypal Web Standards thing. The cart contents all transfer over to Paypal just fine. But during the checkout process, before it submits to PayPal, there's a form for the user to enter in all the user info - this does not get transferred to PayPal for when the user elects to chose to pay by credit card - the have to fill it in all over again. Should this be automatically sent to Paypal, or does it require extra coding?

Or can I just eliminate this form from the checkout process - and if so, are there any parts that must be retained, such as the email address?

1) Glad to hear you resolved this one.

2) Using PayPal Standard, the order is stored in the database when the checkout form posts to the confirm page. If you where to use PayPal Payments pro, the prder would be stored in the database when the order is confirmed.

3) The only way to delete the tables from the database is to use a MySQL GUI Tool like phpMyAdmin

4) If you are using Paypal Payments pro, the email is sent after the transaction is processed through paypal. Using PayPal standard, the email is generated by paypal.


5) on the eCart support page are tutorials for adding registration to the eCart checkout process:
http://www.webassist.com/support/ecart

Thanks Jason, just a couple more things if you will then I think I'll have it all cleared up.

When you say the database is updated when the order is confirmed, does that mean that Paypal Pro will redirect the user back to the website, and not with Standard? And if so, does eCart configure itself for both scenarios? (I can't remember if I had to specify Standard or Pro during the eCart setup.

Another way to describe it, could you tell me if the workflows below are correct?

PP Standard
User submits order, is redirected to PayPal, chooses which method of payment and completes payment. The user is not redirected back to the website

PP Pro
User submits order, PP Pro is able to use the information sent over - name, address, etc, and redirects the user back to the site after the transaction is complete.

Sorry for asking so many PayPal questions, but I think I may have advised my client that PP Standard would be the best choice, being free and all, but the client needs a a fax confirmation which I need to do from the website - therefore, the payment must be confirmed before this is sent out.

PayPal Pro implements 2 separate payment methods:
1) PayPal Direct pay
2) PayPal Express Checkout


Express Checkout is similar to paypal standard in user experience, but is very different in the actual processing.

Paypal Direct payments is the payment method where the user fills in the checkout information, including Credit card number on your site, and the paymnet is processed in real time without going to the paypal site.

With Express checkout, the user goes to the paypal site to set the payment details. They are directed back to your site to confirm the purchase. if the user decides to confirm, the transaction is processed in real time, and the order details are stored in the database if the transaction is successful.

Paypal standard similar, but the transaction is not processed in real time. the transaction is placed in a queue to processed on a first come first served basis. With Paypal standard an IPN Script should be used to update the order status based on the success or failure. The user experience will never see the success or failure since it is not processed in real time.

Thank you - that confirms what I though plus the testing I've been doing with PayPal Payments Standard.

I did come across the IPN info on the PayPal site but so far have not implemented it yet WE're still deciding on what we really need to store on the website regarding order history.