Set up PayPal enrolment

PayPal enrolment is one of the available enrolment methods for courses. You will first need to configure the settings in PayPal, then set up enrolment at the site level, and finally configure PayPal enrolment on specific courses.

PayPal setup

Before setting up PayPal enrolment in Totara you need to complete the following steps:

1. Go to https://www.paypal.com and create a PayPal account. You may wish to upgrade to a Premier account and have the account Verified.
2. Go to Profile > Profile and settings > My selling tools > More selling tools > PayPal button language encoding.
3. Check that your website's language is set to Western European Languages.
4. Click More Options and set the encoding setting to UTF-8 (this should also be used for the IPN setting).
5. Go to Profile > Profile and settings > My selling tools > Getting paid and managing my risk > Instant payment notifications > Update.
6. Enable IPN (instant payment notifications) and set the Notification URL to your site's URL with /enrol/paypal/ipn.php appended. For example, your URL could be https://mytotarasite.com/enrol/paypal/ipn.php.

Enable PayPal enrolment

As a Site Administrator you can set up PayPal enrolment by following these steps:

1. Go to Quick-access menu > Plugins > Enrolments > Manage enrol plugins.
2. If it is not already enabled, enable the Manual enrolment plugin by clicking the eye icon ().
3. Enable the PayPal plugin by clicking the eye icon next to the plugin if it currently disabled ().
4. Click Settings next to the PayPal plugin and configure these settings:
   • PayPal business email: This must exactly match the business email in your PayPal account. Note that this setting is case sensitive.
   • Default role assignment: This is the default role a user will be assigned when they purchase access to a course. Typically you would set this to Learner, but if required you can override this setting on a course-by-course basis.
   • Optionally configure any other settings.
5. Click Save changes.

Configuring PayPal in your courses

Once you have set up the PayPal enrolment plugin on your Totara site you can add it to courses using these steps:

1. Navigate to your course, then Course administration > Users > Enrolment methods.
2. If PayPal is not on the list of available enrolment methods, click the Add method dropdown menu and select PayPal.
3. On the next screen, optionally give the enrolment method a Custom instance name.
4. Set Allow PayPal enrolments to Yes.
5. Enter the Enrol cost and select the Currency to be used.
6. Optionally set an Enrolment period, Start date and End date.
7. Click Add method.