“PayPal Donation(s) Stuck in Pending”

If you receive an email with the subject line “[Your Site] PayPal Donation(s) Stuck in Pending”, Charitable Pro is alerting you that one or more PayPal donations have been waiting for payment confirmation for longer than expected. This article explains what the email means, what to check, and how to resolve it.

Available in Charitable Pro 1.8.13+.

What the Email Means

The email looks like this:

Subject: [Your Site Name] PayPal Donation(s) Stuck in Pending

The following PayPal donation(s) have been Pending for more than 24 hours
with no payment confirmation received:

#123456

Please check your PayPal account and update the donation status manually
if payment was received.

View donations: https://yoursite.com/wp-admin/edit.php?post_type=donation&post_status=charitable-pending

Charitable Pro monitors your PayPal donations daily. When a donation has been in Pending status for more than 24 hours without receiving a payment confirmation from PayPal (called an IPN, or Instant Payment Notification), it flags that donation and sends this alert to your site’s admin email address.

This does not mean the donation failed. It means that Charitable Pro has not yet received confirmation from PayPal that the payment was completed. The donor may or may not have paid – you will need to check your PayPal account to find out.

Each donation is only flagged once, so you will not receive repeated emails about the same donation.

Why This Happens

When a donor completes a PayPal payment, PayPal sends a notification to your site in the background. Charitable Pro receives this notification and uses it to update the donation status from Pending to Paid automatically.

If that notification never arrives, the donation stays in Pending indefinitely. The most common reasons this happens:

PayPal IPN is not set up correctly. IPN (Instant Payment Notification) must be enabled in your PayPal account and pointed to your site. If it is disabled or misconfigured, Charitable Pro will never receive confirmation for any PayPal donation.

A security plugin or firewall is blocking the IPN request. Some server-level security tools block incoming POST requests from external services, including PayPal’s IPN callbacks.

The donor did not complete their payment. Donors who start a PayPal checkout but abandon it before paying will create a Pending donation with no IPN to follow.

The payment is genuinely pending in PayPal. Certain payment types, such as eChecks or payments flagged for manual review by PayPal, remain in a pending state in PayPal itself for several days before clearing.

Step 1: Check PayPal First

Before taking any action in WordPress, log into your PayPal account and look up the donation.

Go to your PayPal account and search for transactions around the date and amount of the flagged donation.
Check whether the payment was received, is pending in PayPal, or does not exist.

If the payment was received in PayPal: The IPN notification was lost in transit. See Step 3: Update the Donation Manually below, and then address your IPN configuration so future donations confirm automatically.

If the payment is pending in PayPal (eCheck, review, etc.): No action is needed yet. The donation status will update automatically once PayPal releases the payment and sends the IPN. You may receive another alert if it remains pending for another 24-hour cycle — but note that each unique donation is only emailed once, so this is more likely a new donation.

If no payment exists in PayPal: The donor likely abandoned the checkout. You can mark the donation as Cancelled or leave it as Pending. No payment was collected.

Step 2: Check Your IPN Configuration

If you found that payment was received in PayPal but not reflected in Charitable Pro, your IPN setup needs attention. This is also worth checking proactively if you receive this alert regularly.

For full IPN setup and verification steps, see our PayPal IPN Troubleshooting guide.

The key things to verify:

IPN is enabled in your PayPal account settings
The IPN notification URL is set to: https://yoursite.com/?charitable-listener=paypal
No security plugin (Wordfence, Sucuri, etc.) is blocking POST requests from PayPal’s IP ranges
Your site is publicly accessible (not behind a maintenance mode or password protection)

Step 3: Update the Donation Manually

If you confirmed payment was received in PayPal, update the donation status in WordPress manually.

Click the View donations link in the email, or go to Donations in your WordPress admin and filter by Pending status.
Find the donation listed in the email (identified by the # number).
Open the donation.
Change the status to Paid (or the appropriate status) and save.

This will not trigger another payment — it simply updates the record to reflect the payment you already confirmed in PayPal.

If You Keep Getting These Emails

Receiving this alert occasionally for a single donation is not unusual. But if you receive it regularly for multiple donations, it is a sign that PayPal IPNs are consistently not reaching your site.

Common causes and fixes:

IPN is disabled in PayPal. Log into PayPal, go to Account Settings, find Instant Payment Notifications, and enable it. Set the notification URL to https://yoursite.com/?charitable-listener=paypal.

A security plugin is blocking PayPal requests. Check your firewall or security plugin logs for blocked requests from PayPal IP addresses. Whitelist PayPal’s IPN delivery servers if needed.

Your IPN URL has changed. If you recently migrated your site, changed your domain, or moved from HTTP to HTTPS, your IPN URL in PayPal may be pointing to the old address.

For a full walkthrough of diagnosing and fixing IPN delivery issues, see the PayPal IPN Troubleshooting guide.

Adjusting the Notification Threshold

By default, Charitable Pro flags donations that have been Pending for more than 24 hours. You can change this threshold using the charitable_stale_pending_hours filter.

Add this to your theme’s functions.php file or a site-specific plugin:

// Flag donations pending for more than 48 hours instead of 24.
add_filter( 'charitable_stale_pending_hours', function( $hours ) {
    return 48;
} );

You can set this to any number of hours. Setting it higher gives PayPal more time to deliver the IPN before you are notified, which can be useful if you accept eChecks or see occasional IPN delays.

Frequently Asked Questions

Will I get a second email about the same donation?

No. Each donation is flagged only once. Once Charitable Pro sends the alert for a specific donation, it will not send another alert for that same donation, even if it remains in Pending status.

Who receives the email?

The email is sent to the admin email address configured in WordPress under Settings > General > Administration Email Address.

Can I disable these emails?

There is no on/off toggle in the settings UI. To disable the emails, you can remove the hook that sends them:

add_action( 'init', function() {
    $cron = Charitable_Cron::get_instance();
    remove_action( 'charitable_daily_scheduled_events', array( $cron, 'check_stale_pending_donations' ) );
} );

We recommend resolving the underlying IPN issue rather than disabling the alerts, as the alerts exist to prevent missed donations from going unnoticed.

The donation ID in the email doesn’t match what I see in PayPal. How do I find the right transaction?

The number in the email (e.g., #123456) is the WordPress donation ID, not a PayPal transaction ID. To find the matching PayPal transaction, open the donation in your WordPress admin and look for the PayPal transaction or invoice reference stored in the donation details. You can then search for that reference in your PayPal account activity.