Some problems, suggestions and bugs in the renewal payment section

 After I tested the renewal function by PayPal sandbox, there are some questions:

1)

I found that after the user makes the payment, the order will be kept in 'Pending', and no email will be sent to both the user and admin. The user only saw the thank you message. Is it normal? I believe it is important to tell the admin someone has paid and take action...

2)

After a successful renewal, the 'Pending' state must be updated to 'Active' by admin manually? Since on my website, there will be only one payment method - PayPal, basically, it is online and immediate. Is it any way to make the subscription renewal directly to 'Active' rather than 'Pending'? Another reason is, there are thousands of members on my website If the process cannot be automatically finished, it will be quite horrible.

3)

While the renewal order is canceled, I found it will be also in 'Pending' like the successful payment case. If there is no successful payment email by system. It is quite confused indeed. Of course, I do suggest it should be marked in other statue like 'Not Yet Paid' rather than 'Pending' if possible.

4)

While the user successfully paid the renewal and the status is 'Pending', the user still can see the renewal option in the frontend profile page! Oh! It is quite strange and dangerous to happen double payment situation... Perhaps you may leave it there is for those ppl have not yet finished the payment to pay it again (it will make double records in database no matter the 'Subscription Renewal Behavior' in config is 'Create New Subscription' but not 'Update Subscription'. It is a bit bulky...). However for the ppl who have finished the payment is unnecessary and dangerous. That is also why I give out a suggestion about the status in point 3. If the suggestion is possible, then the case is easy: 'Renew Membership' section (Only one to renew) or 'Renew subscription plan' for specific expired subscription (more than one to renew) will be shown in status 'Not Yet Paid' while not shown in status 'Pending'. It is much more clear and safe!

5)

I think this is a bug. If a custom field is set 'Hide On Membership Renewal' to 'Yes' or simply 'Show On Subscription Form' to 'No', it will really disappear in the payment page, as well as the data will be 'disappeared' in some subscription records. i.e. that field in new record will become empty. For example, if there is a custom field called 'ABC' and 'Hide On Membership Renewal' is 'Yes', after the payment, the value of 'ABC' will disappear in most of the pages except the record in database table 'subscribers' is set 'is_profile' to '1'. However, if saving once in the backend subscription page which 'ABC' is empty because of this case, all the 'ABC' in all the records will be synchronised as empty and the data will be ruined...

'Membership ID' is another serious problem in this situation because there is no option to set show it or not in all subscription form or renewal form. Default it will not be shown. And I tested. Sadly that it no doubt is empty after the payment.

And the most disastrous problem is, since the status of the new record is 'Pending', admin must click into the new record and change the status and save to approve the subscription! What will happen? The missing data fields will be synchronised with the filled one! What a tragedy!

The following image is what happened and look like after payment if all the fields except 'email' (email is the only field must be presented to process the payment and so cannot be hidden) are set 'Hide On Membership Renewal' to 'Yes' in subscription page which is not the 'is_profile' record. Everything is gone but strange that there is a new data 'IP'.


6)

I found the data in the database table 'Subscribers' is not complete, i.e. some columns of custom fields are missing. Is it normal? Or something is wrong? Of course I know the 'Subscribers' function in backend is not fully workable because I asked you previously and you said you mainly focus on the 'Subscription' page. Is it the reason missing something? In my view, if this table is completely storing data properly, it will be very useful in my case...