When a sponsor's application moves to checkout, Rhythm creates an order from the sponsorships they requested. This happens whether the sponsor checks out in the Portal or you complete checkout for them. Use this article to understand how Rhythm builds the order, so you know where to look first when something seems off.
Warning
An order that shows as processed in Rhythm does not, by itself, confirm that a bank-account payment, such as ACH or eCheck, was created with the payment processor. If you are troubleshooting a bank-account payment, verify the transaction with the processor directly instead of relying only on the order status.
What Goes on the Order
Result
Rhythm bills and ships the order to the sponsor organization's address, and the application's contact becomes the order contact. If the application does not have a contact, the order contact fields stay empty.
The order includes one line for each opportunity on the application, using the quantity the sponsor requested. If a selected optional benefit has an extra charge, Rhythm adds it as a separate child line under that opportunity line. That charge appears in the checkout review, order total, and invoice, so the sponsor is billed correctly. Benefits with no extra charge do not add order lines; Rhythm records them on the sponsorship after the sponsorship exists. Rhythm dates the order with the application date.
Why a Benefit Might Be Missing from the Order
Optional benefit groups on an opportunity can change after a sponsor applies. Checkout handles those changes based on what changed:
- If the sponsor's selected benefit is no longer on the opportunity but its benefit group still exists, Rhythm leaves that benefit off the order. The sponsor is not notified, so if they ask why an expected charge is missing, check whether the opportunity's benefits changed after they applied.
- If the entire optional benefit group is no longer on the opportunity, checkout fails and Rhythm does not create an order. If this happens, check the opportunity's optional benefit groups, then consider processing the application again using the benefits currently offered.
Tip
See Add, Change, or Remove a Sponsorship Benefit if you need to add a benefit back onto a sponsorship by hand after checkout instead of reprocessing the whole application.
Member Pricing
Some optional benefits have a lower price for sponsor organizations that are active members of your association. Today, checkout does not use that member price. Rhythm charges the standard price for a benefit with an extra cost, even when the sponsor organization is an active member. If a member-priced benefit shows the full price on an order, that is expected behavior and does not mean anything is misconfigured.
Warning
You can configure special pricing on a sponsorship opportunity using contact-based membership criteria, and the setup may show eligibility signals that look correct. That configuration does not change the outcome above: sponsorship pricing is still evaluated from the sponsor organization's membership at order time, not the individual contact's, so a contact-based rule will not produce the member price you expect.
Availability at Checkout
Adding an opportunity to a cart or application does not reserve it. Checkout is expected to check current availability again when the sponsor completes the purchase, so an opportunity that sold out after it was added should not be purchasable. In practice, this check does not fully prevent overselling for an exclusive opportunity, which has a maximum availability of one. If two buyers had the same exclusive opportunity in their carts at nearly the same time and completed checkout close together, both purchases can succeed and leave the opportunity oversold. If you see an opportunity with more sold than its total availability, this kind of near-simultaneous checkout is a likely cause.
What an Incomplete Opportunity Line Looks Like
Every requested opportunity gets a line on the order, even when Rhythm cannot find the opportunity or the sponsor requested it with no quantity. A missing or inactive opportunity still creates a line, but Rhythm does not load that opportunity's details onto it. If the quantity was blank or zero, the order line uses a quantity of one. If an order line does not show the opportunity details you expect, confirm that the opportunity still exists and is set up the same way it was when the sponsor applied.
Related
See Process a Sponsorship Application for a Sponsor for how staff run checkout on a sponsor's behalf, and Purchase Sponsorships in the Portal for how a sponsor does the same thing themselves.