Integration Guide

PayPal Payments Standard Integration Guide June 2012 39
Single-Item Payments – Buy Now Buttons
Creating Advanced Buy Now Buttons on the PayPal Website
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PayPal. The generated code is shorter for saved buttons, because PayPal keeps most of the
information about your button in your account instead of placing it in the code that you add to
your website.
Saving your payment buttons in your PayPal account has these benefits:
 Your payment buttons are more secure, because the generated code that you add to your
website contains no information that can be tampered with to produce fraudulent payments.
 You can edit the details and options for your payment buttons in your PayPal account,
without changing the button code that you added to your website.
NOTE: If you change product options, you must copy and paste the code newly generated
by PayPal to replace the code that you pasted previously.
 You can track inventory, and you can track profit and loss.
Use the Step 2 section of the button creation tool to control whether your button is saved in
your PayPal account. You can have a maximum of 1,000 saved buttons in your PayPal
account.
Tracking Inventory and Tracking Profit and Loss
PayPal can track inventory and can track profit and loss for items that you sell with Buy Now
buttons if you save them in your PayPal account. You can track inventory 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 finish 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.
Adding Advanced Features to Buy Now 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 generating the button code.
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 6 of “Step 3 – Adding Advanced Features to Your Buy Now
Button” on page 48.