Troubleshooting
Solutions to the issues store owners run into most often, grouped by area. If your issue isn’t listed here, check the FAQ or contact support.
Earning Points
Section titled “Earning Points”Points aren’t being awarded on purchases
Section titled “Points aren’t being awarded on purchases”- Check the order status. Points are only awarded when an order reaches your Order Status Trigger (Completed by default). Orders still in Processing or Pending won’t earn points until they reach that status.
- Confirm the customer is registered. Guests can’t earn points check that the order was placed by a logged-in customer.
- Check for a duplicate. Look in Points History. If points were already awarded for that order, PointBay won’t award them a second time.
A review didn’t earn its bonus
Section titled “A review didn’t earn its bonus”- Confirm the review was approved. Pending reviews don’t count.
- Confirm it’s the customer’s first review of that product. Only one review per product, per customer, earns points repeat reviews of the same product don’t.
- Confirm the reviewer was logged in. Guest reviews never qualify.
Redeeming Points
Section titled “Redeeming Points”The redeem panel doesn’t appear at checkout
Section titled “The redeem panel doesn’t appear at checkout”- The customer must be logged in. Guests can’t redeem points.
- Check the balance against the minimum. The customer’s balance must be at or above your Minimum Points to Redeem setting (default
100). - Check your theme. A heavily customized checkout can hide the panel. Try switching to the WooCommerce Block checkout, which PointBay integrates with directly.
Tax totals are wrong when points are redeemed
Section titled “Tax totals are wrong when points are redeemed”Some automated tax services (such as TaxJar or Avalara) don’t account for a discount applied as a cart fee.
- Fix: Change Redemption Mode from Cart Fee to Virtual Coupon in the Redemption Rules settings. In Virtual Coupon mode the discount is handled as a standard WooCommerce coupon, which tax services support natively.
VIP Tiers (Pro)
Section titled “VIP Tiers (Pro)”A customer’s tier isn’t updating
Section titled “A customer’s tier isn’t updating”- Confirm Enable VIP Tiers is actually on. It’s easy to leave this off after testing.
- Remember tiers are based on a rolling 365-day window, not lifetime points a customer’s tier can legitimately drop if their qualifying points have aged out, even without any error.
- Wait for the daily recalculation. Promotions on crossing a threshold are immediate, but demotions from aged-out points are only caught by the once-daily automatic check.
Referral Program
Section titled “Referral Program”A referral didn’t pay out
Section titled “A referral didn’t pay out”- Confirm the friend placed an order, not just visited. A click alone never triggers a reward.
- Confirm it was that friend’s first order. Only a first order qualifies later orders from the same referred customer don’t trigger anything.
- Check the 30-day tracking window. If the friend visited the link long before finally purchasing, the referral may have expired before they checked out.
Admin Screens
Section titled “Admin Screens”The settings or Points History screen is blank
Section titled “The settings or Points History screen is blank”- Look for browser errors. Right-click the page, choose Inspect, and open the Console tab to see if anything failed to load.
- Check your security plugin. PointBay’s admin screens load their data through the WordPress REST API. Security plugins and firewalls (such as Wordfence) sometimes block those requests check whether one is interfering.
- Check for a conflict. Temporarily switching to a default theme, or disabling other plugins one at a time, can help pinpoint a conflict.
Getting diagnostic info for support
Section titled “Getting diagnostic info for support”If support needs more detail on a hard-to-reproduce issue, turn on Debug Logging under Display & System in Settings. This writes PointBay’s own diagnostic messages into WooCommerce’s logging system check WooCommerce → Status → Logs and look for entries filed under the pointbay source. Turn it back off once you’re done; it’s not meant to stay on during normal use.
Still Stuck?
Section titled “Still Stuck?”If you hit an error you can’t explain, contact support with a description of what you were doing and any message you saw. Turning on Debug Logging (see above) before reproducing the issue gives support a log they can work from.