Support non-recurring contributions

[wpf500]

I've done some testing with memberships around when ContributionRecur records exist, and it seems that its only when the membership is set to auto-renew, as @artfulrobot suggested.

The plugin currently creates GoCardless subscriptions and not payments (which are one off), so does not support non-recurring contributions. I'm hoping I can get that functionality working at some point, but for now, just leaving this issue here as a reference. Just in case anyone is worried, any non-recurring contributions won't get silently turned into recurring ones, the plugin just throws an exception.

[artfulrobot]

Yes, I confirm this is the case. For completeness' sake it would be good to get this functionality working. For the sake of comment: having used GC for one-offs with a client with a good number of supporters for a while we've abandoned it based on supporter feedback: people feel it's weird to give bank details and feel safer giving card details for one-off payments.

[petednz]

wondering if it would be worth having a warning come on screen if you save the admin-facing form Contribution page 'Amounts' tab that has GoCardless selected but does not have 'recurring' enabled, to avoid creating a page that then fails, and/or having the public form set so that if someone does not select 'recurring' then the GoCardless option does not show.

[artfulrobot]

@petednz sounds good.

The warning on admin screen makes sense.

Altering contribution page sounds like it could have side effects; it would need to also check if any other payment processors were in use before force-checking the regular box.

[petednz]

thx. perhaps my second point wasn't clear - i didn't mean to suggest that the recur box be force checked - but the reverse, ie if recur is not checked then GoCardless is not shown as an option for payment

[artfulrobot]

Yep that makes sense technically. What happens when there is only gc payment processor/no choice?

Although I think it's a poor UX for users in the cases when the form is specifically for recurring payments and the user is expected to remember to tick that box. (Obviously it's just as a bad if they accidentally don't and it crashes ugly!)

And from a supporter development/fundraising pov better to make regular payments easier rather than adding more barriers, so I think "if gc selected, or gc only processor, force regular". But then people might change back to another processor and forget to un-tick the box. So maybe it should also show an alert to explain itself.

But then I've not seen a decent contribution form that doesn't have some custom code on it somewhere. And in that case people can do what they like. I'm not sure how useful it would be to add this at this level. It feels out of scope. CiviCRM should make nicer contribution forms, perhaps it's not the place of a payment processor to do that?

Hmmm. 🤔

[petednz]

key reason for raising this is client reporting that a page that had GC on it was delivering Failed contributions. reason? because it page was not set for 'recur' - hence suggestion a/ that we notify admin if they try saving such a Contribution page.

next issue though is that even if recur checkbox is available, it doesn't avoid user going ahead and selecting GC - hence wanting to hide GC as an option if recur is not selected by user, or required by admin

[artfulrobot]

Yeah, that's ugly.

The admin thing seems v sensible to me.

The other hack might be a necessary evil because of the limitations of core.

Ironically if single payments were implemented this issue would not exist but things would still be going wrong.(single payment when you wanted recurring)

If someone wants to do a PR please go ahead. If anyone has funding for me to work on this phrase hey in touch.

Thanks

[petednz]

have added to our list fz-16765

[artfulrobot]

Hey @petednz I don't know what "fz-16765" is, but if it happened, a PR for this would be welcome. It regularly trips people up

[petednz]

that is our internal ticket system - no i don't see we did anything on this. Other notes i see on our ticket are

• its better to error on the form rather than adding js and show/hide payment options based on price field selections
• need to handle situations where you do want one recurring membership and one non-recurring membership to be available on the same contribution page

sorry. not being of much help