Why are quotes not converted to is_active=0 after checkout? M1/M2

Question

When looking at sales_flat_quote (M1) or quote (M2) table, there are many quotes stuck at is_active=1. Even though there is a sale in sales_flat_order / sales_order.

This does not seem to have a relation to the state of the order (finding complete/processing/canceled orders), nor payment method (finding paypal, checkmo and 3rd party gateway orders).

When joining the quote and sales tables to find orders with 'open' quotes, I find many results on several shops that we manage.

I'm using this query on M1:

SELECT `sales_flat_order`.`state`, `sales_flat_order`.`increment_id`, `sales_flat_order`.`entity_id`, `sales_flat_order`.`created_at`, `sales_flat_order`.`quote_id`, `sales_flat_quote`.`is_active`, `sales_flat_quote`.`customer_email`, `sales_flat_order_payment`.`method` FROM `sales_flat_order` LEFT JOIN sales_flat_quote ON `sales_flat_order`.`quote_id`=`sales_flat_quote`.`entity_id` LEFT JOIN `sales_flat_order_payment` ON sales_flat_order.`entity_id`=sales_flat_order_payment.`parent_id` WHERE `sales_flat_quote`.`is_active` = 1;

and this one on M2:

SELECT `sales_order`.`state`, `sales_order`.`increment_id`, `sales_order`.`entity_id`, `sales_order`.`created_at`, `sales_order`.`quote_id`, `quote`.`is_active`, `quote`.`customer_email`, `sales_order_payment`.`method` FROM `sales_order` LEFT JOIN quote ON `sales_order`.`quote_id`=`quote`.`entity_id` LEFT JOIN `sales_order_payment` ON sales_order.`entity_id`=sales_order_payment.`parent_id` WHERE `quote`.`is_active` = 1;

Am I looking at this the wrong way? Can people confirm the same thing for their M1/M2 shop?

Answer 1

I can confirm that there are a large number of returned rows on several stores that I have access to for your Magento 1 query above. These don't seem to be related with a specific payment method.

There are a number of reaons why the is_active flag is set to 0 or 1.

• is_active always starts as 1 for cart/quote created by frontend
• is_active is 0 for quotes created from admin
• To load quote by Customer Id, is_active = 1 is taken into account
• When quote is converted to order, is_active becomes 0
• When you create a quote via API, is_active is always 0

There are a number of reasons in the Magento flow why the is_active flag may remain at 1.

Mage/Sales/Model/Service/Quote.php has a $_shouldInactivateQuote flag which is checked against when the _inactivateQuote() method is called during submitOrder().

This wouldn't allow the flag to be set to 0 if:

• Nominal items are included in the basket (What are `Recurrent products` and `nominal products`?) - function submitAll()
• If an exception is thrown when Nominal items are submitted
• If payment fails (this could be an issue with the payment gateway whereby the order is submitted, but payment fails or it is handled by another process?)

Additionally, there are a number of times in the codebase when the flag is specifically set to true (1).

• Within Mage/Persistent/Model/Observer.php - setQuoteGuest - would be worth checking if these orders were completed as a guest by adding customer_id to your query above.
• If checkout fails - see Mage/PayPal/Helper/Checkout.php & Mage/Authorizenet/controllers/Directpost/PaymentController.php