Payments in Auction FactoryThey are two different payment types in Auction Factory Component:
  • payments to site (commissions, listing fees, featured listing, bidding, etc.)
  • the auction winning bid payment form to the auctioneer Paypal's email
The first category lies on buying actual credits for the specified plugin items.
Payment gateways must be enabled and configured for internal site payments.
This can be done in Payment Methods section in the component back-end. Here particular settings for payment gateways can be saved. For instance, Paypal needs to have information on the Paypal account to which the payment is done, the testing mode selection, etc.

Featured Pricing (gold, silver, bronze)

Buying credits

The credit situation is displayed in the profile page of each user. From there users can buy credits and use them later by clicking on "Purchase":
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By clicking this, users will be redirected to a form where they can choose exactly what
type of credits they want to aquire.
From this form they are redirected to Paypal and the rest is up to Paypal for the moment.

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Spending credits

For instance if you want to promote your auctions to featured gold position in the site listings, you can do this by upgrading your auction from the auction detail page.
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If you do have "Featured Gold" Credits, by setting this feature, this type of credit will be "consumed". Else you will be redirected to a payment form for buying a "featured gold" credit to the auction in question.
When the user part of the payment is done, PayPal will send an IPN notify (IPN must be enabled in the Paypal account settings!) to the site with the payment information and status. The IPN will arrive if the payment is valid, directly accepted if the buyers Paypal account is trusted or manual accepted. In the latter case the payment must be approved by web master and only after this, the credit will be available to the buyers account.

Here is a sample of how it looks a manual accept payment in the "View Payments" section (component back-end).

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By "Approving payment" from here, the acquired credit is transferred and the eventual auction is automatically made featured.

Note:
If, due to server or what so ever reasons the auction is not automatically promoted featured and you (the webmaster) are
informed (you see in your Paypal account the succesfully made payment, etc. ), by this you can manually set the auction featured in the auction detail page in back-end.

Commission Pricing

The commission is a requested fee, demanded at each successful closing of an auction (the acceptance of a bid, BIN, etc.).
The main idea is that the auctioneer is taxed a percentage for each sold auction.

Configuring Commission Pricing

In back-end there are configuration settings for the Commission Pricing Plugin in "Payment Items" section.

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As in the image, different commissions for user types can be set up. You can set up the default percentage for regular users, or commissions for Power Sellers or Verfied Users.
An extra feature of commissioning is enabled in "General Settings" section, in "Preferential payment categories" tab. Here you can choose if only specified categories can be commissioned. For this, you must enable the option and select the certain categories intended to be commissioned.
You can also choose custom prices for cateories in the plugin configuration, if the "Preferential categories" is enabled.

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Commissioning

Let's say, for instance, auctioneer sorin has accepted a bid of 20.00 EUR for an auction of his.
If "Commission Pricing" is enabled, then the commission percentage is calculated in the following manner and order:

  • if the auctioneer is a power seller, then the percentage is the Power seller price
  • if the auctioneer is a verified user, then the percentage is the Verified price
  • if preferential categories enabled, the category of the auction in question has a commission price, it is returned this price (ie percentage)
  • else the regular commission is returned.
Let's assume in our example that sorin is a regular user and preferential categories is disabled.
In this case the commission is the default (let's say 10%) and the price percentage of the commission applied to
the auction closing in question is 2.00 EUR

Auctioneers balances can been seen in plugin configuration section, in Auctioneer balances menu.

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The commissioning is followed naturally by the payment of the commission.
Each auctioneer has a commission status in his profile from where he is redirected to make the payment.
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The commission can be actually payed partially and automatically adjusted in the auctioneers balance.
In the next form (redirection form when choosing to pay the commission) you can enter an amount you want to pay.
By default, the form is auto completed with the total of commission the user has to pay at that moment.

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As for each payment pricing item, after the payment is been done in Paypal or other payment Gateway, it has to be manually accepted if it comes with the "manual check" status.

Contact Pricing

The pricing item is available only for non-CB users. If enabled, contact information of a user profile are hidden and can be seen only consuming a Contact credit.
This feature is not available in CB because Community Builder displays by it self the profile of an user and only setting up restrictions of privacy directly in CB can prevent hidding the user details in case of an active CB.

Contact buying is as for every credit buying. You are redirected to the buying form (from the Auction Profile page) and choose to buy credits to view hidden profile info.
Contact credit is bought when the payment will be accepted in back-end as for every payment pricing.

Bid Pricing

Pay per bid feature is for buying a biding process. Every time an user bids, it will consume a biding credit or redirected to buy one if no credits.

As for every pricing, the bidding credit is bought when payment accepted in back-end.

Winning bid payment

The auction winning bid can be payed in Paypal directly to the auctioneer paypal email. This implies that the auctioneer
must have a paypal email saved in his profile! Otherwise the Paypal Button will not be displayed on the won auction page for the winner.
If Community Builder is present, CB Field for Paypal email must be created and integrated in the component .