Error on recurring payment with one installment

Question

I recently launched a new donation page that allows recurring payments via PayPal Standard. I noticed a couple of recurring contributions had a status of "Pending (Incomplete Transaction)". It turns out both donors had entered "1" in the Installments field. I expect that would either be considered an input error or perhaps it would simply process it like a single payment. I tried it myself and found that the donation page will submit, but PayPal then displays an error:

The link you have used to enter the PayPal system is invalid. Please review the link and try again

I assume the donors simply gave up at that point. I've reached out to both to find out. I suspect they thought the option for a recurring payment was actually a directive, and they entered "1" to ensure they were making a one-time donation.

Is there an option to force the Installments field to accept only values greater than 1?

While I was at it, I decided to try entering a zero in the Installments field. This makes no sense, but you never know what people will try. It actually processed the transaction with a payment. When I look at the transaction on "Find Contributions", it shows it as "Installments: (ongoing)". When I follow the link that is provided in the receipt to update the recurring contribution, it shows "Number of Installments 0".

Answer 1

To make it even more confusing -> installments = 0 actually means unlimited/open-ended recurring contributions in CiviCRM.

Your options:

• Do not expose the installments field (that will then be = 0 or NULL by default > so open-ended).

• Add some jQuery to check the value of that field give the user a notice that it can not be = 1. How to add jQuery - there are a number of ways to do this - depending on the CMS that you use.