How can I track order details (products, quantities) in PayPal?

Question

BACKGROUND

I have an online store. Previously, I used PayPal "Buy it now" buttons, and I had a button for each product. I would then periodically export the data from PayPal (download history as CSV) and it would have the following field/value pairs:

Item Title: Type of product (e.g., Nintendo DS)

Option 1 Name: Type of product (e.g., Nintendo DS)

Option 1 Value: Color (e.g., red)

Users were limited to ordering one item per order. I used this information to analyze what are the top selling products/variations in the store in Excel, and I have a few years of historical data.

DRUPAL COMMERCE

I recently moved the store to Drupal Commerce, although I am still using PayPal for payment (PayPal Payments Standard/WPS) via the Commerce PayPal module. This works very well, and users are still limited to one item per order. However, when I export the transaction data from PayPal, it now looks like this:

Item Title: Shopping Cart

Option 1 Name: null

Option 1 Value: null

Is it possible to set the Item Title and options somehow during checkout with Commerce? If not, how can I analyze my new sales data in Excel in a way that is (at least mostly) consistent with the years of PayPal exports I already have?

Answer 1

Right now, Commerce PayPal does not itemize order information for PayPal WPS. We implemented itemized order details for Express Checkout in the 2.0 branch, but we currently just have a patch in a feature request to add this support to WPS. If you'd like to review it or follow along, the issue is here: https://drupal.org/node/1301570

In the meantime, your alternative could be to create a View inside your Drupal site that uses Views Bonus Pack to generate a CSV in the same format for your completed orders. That might even be a preferable long term solution, as it will work regardless of what payment method a customer uses to buy from you (in the event that you add additional methods).