Understanding Registration Statuses

Not every registration finishes the same way.

Depending on the ticket type and whether payment succeeds, a registration will land in one of a few statuses:

• Approved — The registrant is confirmed. This happens automatically for free ($0.00) tickets, and for paid tickets once payment goes through successfully.
• Pending Payment — The registrant started checkout but hasn’t completed payment yet. They’re holding a spot, but they aren’t confirmed until payment clears.
• Incomplete — The transaction itself never finished (the attendee abandoned checkout, their card was declined, or the payment gateway timed out).
• Not Approved / Cancelled — Set manually by an admin, or automatically if a payment expires without being completed.

For most ASSP chapter events (which are free), you’ll rarely see anything other than Approved. Pending Payment and Incomplete statuses mainly show up on paid chapter events — for example, workshops with a registration fee.

Reviewing a Pending Payment or Incomplete Transaction

If you see a registration stuck at Pending Payment, or a transaction marked Incomplete, you can find out why:

1. Go to Event Espresso → Transactions, find the transaction in question, and click the shopping cart icon next to it.
2. Scroll down to the Payment Details section.
   • If it’s empty, the attendee never actually attempted a payment (they likely abandoned checkout before entering payment info).
   • If it shows one or more entries, the attendee did attempt payment. Each entry includes a gateway response, and successful payments will show a transaction ID.

Tip: This is a good first stop when a member emails asking “I registered but never got a confirmation” — it tells you whether they actually reached the payment step.

Checking Failed Payment Logs

For more detail on why a payment attempt failed (declined card, expired session, gateway error, etc.), go to Event Espresso → Payment Methods → Logs.

1. If you don’t already have the transaction ID, look it up first under Event Espresso → Transactions.
2. Find the log entries associated with that transaction ID.
3. Open a log entry to see its Status and Gateway Response Code.

Keep in mind the log format differs by payment gateway (Stripe logs look different from PayPal logs, for example), so the fields you see will vary depending on which gateway your chapter uses.

This is mainly useful for troubleshooting a specific member’s registration problem — most chapters won’t need to check this routinely.