Integration Guide

The PayPal Shopping Cart – Add to Cart and View Cart Buttons
Creating Advanced PayPal Shopping Cart Buttons on the PayPal Website
6
270 June 2012 PayPal Payments Standard Integration Guide
Tracking Inventory and Tracking Profit and Loss
PayPal can track inventory and can track profit and loss for items that you sell with Add to
Cart buttons if you save them in your PayPal account. You can track inventory and profit and
loss for the item itself or by its product options.
If you track inventory, PayPal helps you avoid oversold situations. PayPal sends you an alert
by email when your inventory on hand falls to or below the alert level you specify. You have
the option to let oversold transactions go through or to warn buyers and prevent them from
buying more than your quantity on hand.
If you track profit and loss, PayPal helps you understand the profitability of your items. You
enter the cost of your item, including the price that you pay to acquire the item, as well as other
activity costs that you incur, such as warehousing, quality control, and administrative
overhead. PayPal then provides profit and loss reports based on the volume of sales.
Use the Step 2 section of the button creation tool to specify the information that PayPal uses to
track inventory and to track profit and loss. You can have a maximum of 1,000 saved buttons
in your PayPal account.
Adding Advanced Features to Add to Cart Buttons With HTML Variables
Some advanced features of payment buttons can be specified only with HTML variables. If
you are familiar with HTML programming and the advanced HTML variables supported by
PayPal Payments Standard payment buttons, you can enter them in the button creation tool
before the button code is generated.
Use the Step 3 section of the button creation tool to enter advanced HTML variables that you
want to include in your payment button.
For more information, see Step 5 of “Step 3 – Adding Advanced Features to Your Add to Cart
Button” on page 279.
Pricing Items in Multiple Currencies
All items that buyers add to carts must be priced in the same currency. The first item that
buyers add to an empty cart determines the currency for all items in the shopping cart. The cart
uses the currency that you selected for your Add to Cart buttons when you created them.
After a buyer adds the first item to a shopping cart, the buyer cannot add items priced in other
currencies. To change the currency of a shopping cart, a buyer must purchase the items in the
cart with the current currency or empty the cart and add items priced in the other currency.
To avoid shopping difficulties that arise with multiple currencies, price all of your items in the
same currency. If you must price items in multiple currencies, let buyers choose the currency
for viewing your catalog and display prices on your website only in the currency that the buyer
selected.