Orders on PayPal Standard Don't Show Line Items on the Receipt
When shoppers check out of your store using PayPal Standard, the receipt they get (from PayPal) only lists one line item containing the total amount of the order and the order number. It does not show a detailed list of the items purchased by the shopper.
Yeah, I know. That's why I'm reading this. So why doesn't it list line items?
This is due to the fact that order amounts from your Shift4Shop store are calculated somewhat differently than they are on PayPal. For example, let's take promotional coupons to illustrate why.
PayPal doesn't handle coupons from your Shift4Shop store the way we do. A promotion code like "take10" may discount 10% off the order on your Shift4Shop store, but as far as PayPal is concerned, "take10" is just a weird phrase. To further complicate matters, our software can't send a line item with a negative quantity (to reflect the discount) in a way that PayPal will apply it to the total amount.
So, our only options are to A) lose the coupon altogether and make your PayPal Standard shopper really REALLY unhappy, or B) work some math voodoo on the discount to split it amongst all the items on the order and hope it all works out...
This will cause problems because the totals on Shift4Shop then won't match what is sent to PayPal.
So as a way around these logistical issues, we send only the single line item that contains the order number with a total as it was calculated on your Shift4Shop store. This way there are no discrepancies and everyone in the equation is reporting the same amounts.
Your shopper can always view Order Details through their My Account link.