| Note: This is the latest documentation. The previous version of this page is identical — only the left nav differs. |
This page identifies changes to the Google Checkout Developer's Guide and the dates that those changes were introduced. This document is intended to be a reference to developers who are looking for an easy way to identify recent changes to the Google Checkout suite of APIs and the Developer's Guide as a whole.
Changes in this document are listed with the most recent changes first.
September 8, 2009
Google Checkout now allows you to receive information about the transaction fees applied to each order within the charge-amount-notification, refund-amount-notification, and chargeback-amount-notification. If you enable fee notifications for your account, you'll receive both the fee rate (flat rate and percentage) and the total cost of the fee for each order for each charge amount notification. For refund and chargeback amount notifications, you'll receive the total fee amount.
To enable this feature, visit the Settings - Integration tab in the Merchant Center. Then, expand the Advanced settings section, select the box next to 'Notifications must include information about transaction fees' and then click the Save button.
September 4, 2009
Launch of a major reorganization of the documentation, including the new left navigation menu. There are no changes to the Checkout API or any of its features, only the documentation. The goal is to make the documentation easier to navigate and understand. New "How To" sections (with Part I and Part II) have been added that give step-by-step procedures for setting up Google Checkout, such as for Custom Shopping Cart. In addition, this revision provides more ways to compare the options.
February 24, 2009
The newly released Notification History API allows you to retrieve a list of previously sent Google Checkout notifications. Using the Notification History API, you can retrieve any notifications that are less than 450 days old and that are at least 30 minutes old. Notifications can be requested either by order number or by date range, and you can optionally limit results to the specific notification types you choose.
July 14, 2008
The Merchant Calculations API is no longer supported for merchants who have implemented the Google Checkout HTML API. The HTML API documentation has been updated to reflect this change. The Merchant Calculations API is still supported for merchants who have implemented the Google Checkout XML API.
February 7, 2008
The document formerly known as the HTML API Developer's Guide has been split into two separate sets of documentation:
The Basic HTML Integration Guide presents step-by-step instructions for implementing Google Checkout using basic HTML forms. Following the explanation in this guide, you can submit orders to Google Checkout, offer flat-rate shipping methods, and specify a tax rate for a single geographic region, such as a U.S. state or a country. This guide is intended for developers who want to enable customers to complete orders with Google Checkout but who do not plan to integrate Google Checkout with internal order processing systems. Merchants who complete a basic HTML integration should plan to manually review orders before charging customers and fulfilling those orders.
The HTML API Developer's Guide explains how to use the HTML API to access all of Checkout functionality available in the XML API. This guide is designed for developers who want to access the complete set of Checkout features but cannot or do not want to work with an XML solution. This guide will also be useful to developers who want to access specific Checkout features not available in a basic HTML integration, such as the ability to charge different tax rates for different items in a single order or the ability to use merchant-calculated shipping methods to calculate the cost of shipping an order after the buyer selects the shipping address for the order. The HTML API documentation also explains how to integrate Google Checkout with your internal order processing systems.
January 25, 2008
The newly released Order Report API allows you to retrieve a list of Google Checkout orders in a comma-separated (.csv) file. The API returns a list of orders for a period of up to 31 days, and you can limit results to orders that have specific financial or fulfillment order states.
January 15, 2008
Google Checkout now supports political campaigns, allowing campaigns to accept contributions via Google Checkout. Learn more about accepting political contributions through Google Checkout.
December 13, 2007
The Using Google Analytics to Track Google Checkout Orders document has been updated to explain how to integrate Google Checkout with a site that uses Google Analytics' ga.js tracking code. Please see the Google Analytics Blog for more information about ga.js.
November 15, 2007
The <carrier> tag, which is used in line-item shipping and order-level shipping, now supports two additional values, UPS MI and UPS Mail Innovations. Please note that both of these values refer to the same UPS service.
November 8, 2007
The API now allows you to use the <tax-areas> tag to apply a tax rule to multiple geographic areas. The addition of this tag represents an API change that is backward-compatible with existing Checkout implementations. The <tax-areas> tag can be used anywhere that the <tax-area> tag was previously used. However, since the <tax-areas> tag can specify multiple geographic areas, it may allow you to simplify your tax tables if, for example, you charge the same tax rate in some, but not all, U.S. states or in multiple European countries.
Please see the Defining Tax Rules document for sample XML that demonstrates how to use the <tax-areas> tag.
The Defining Tax Rules document has been updated so that a Google Checkout button displays next to each sample XML API request. You can click each Checkout buttons to simulate the buyer experience for an order that uses the corresponding tax tables. Please note that the examples are for a fictional merchant and link to the Sandbox development environment.
The line-item shipping feature is now supported for merchants in the United Kingdom.
October 29, 2007
Google Checkout now allows you to enable five features for notifications through the Settings - Integration tab in the Merchant Center. The API documentation has been updated to describe these five new features:
The new Receiving First and Last Names for Buyers and Shipping Recipients document explains how you can receive names of buyer and order recipients in structured fields that identify the first and last names of those people. There are several new API tags to support this feature.
The new Google Checkout Promotion Notifications document explains how to receive information about Google promotions in notifications. This feature is designed to help you to understand whether any portion of an order's total will be paid by a party other than the buyer. There are several new API tags to support this feature.
The <phone> tag's definition has been updated to explain how you can receive the buyer's billing and ship-to phone numbers for an order. These two features are enabled separately in the Merchant Center.
The Responding to Notifications section of the Implementing the Notification API document now explains how you can require notification acknowledgments to specify the serial number of the notification. This system allows Google to more reliably confirm that you successfully processed a notification. The <notification-acknowledgment> tag now has an optional serial-number attribute are several new API tags to support this feature.
October 19, 2007
Google Checkout now offers a pair of new features for merchants that sell digital goods. The Digital Delivery document explains both of the following features in detail:
You now have the option to decide when the buyer will receive instructions for accessing purchased digital content. The first option, which is the default behavior, is to prevent the buyer from accessing the purchased digital content until his credit card has been authorized to be charged for the full amount of the order. The second option is to allow the buyer to receive instructions for accessing the digital content as soon as he confirms the order.
In addition to email delivery and key/URL delivery, you can now use description-based delivery to specify how instructions for accessing digital content will be communicated to the buyer. You can use the <description> tag, which is a free text field that can contain HTML tags, to convey instructions to the buyer.
The Financial Commands in the Order Processing XML API document has been updated to explain that Google will return an Invalid Double Authorization error if you try to reauthorize a customer's credit card for an order that still has a valid authorization. This documentation update does not reflect any changes in the API functionality and has been made solely to clarify existing behavior.
The XML API Tag Reference has been updated to include definitions of several additional tags:
The <display-disposition> tag is a new element that supports the new digital delivery features described above.
The <hello> and <bye> tags are existing elements that are used for simple API tests. The Getting Started with Google Checkout section of the developer's guide previously described how to use these tags using curl or a similar tool to verify that your server communicates properly with Google Checkout.
The <analytics-data> tag is an existing element that was previously described in the Using Google Analytics to Track Google Checkout Orders document.
The <parameterized-urls>, <parameterized-url>, <parameters> and <url-parameter> tags are existing elements that were already defined in the Understanding Google Checkout Support for Third-Party Conversion Tracking document.
October 9, 2007
The discussion of the <cancel-items> command for line item shipping has been updated to reflect the following information:
Prior to this update, the documentation did not correctly identify the subtags of the <cancel-items> tag. According to the XML schema, the <cancel-items> tag has two required subtags (<reason> and <item-ids>) and two optional subtags (<comment> and <send-email>). Although these tags were correctly defined in the XML schema, the documentation had erroneously omitted the <reason> and <comment> tag from the sample <cancel-items> request and the corresponding XML tag definitions.
Prior to this update, the discussion of the <cancel-items> command suggested that you could not submit that command without issuing a full refund for the order. This policy was confusing to some merchants who questioned whether they needed to charge an order, then refund the order and then cancel items from the order. As such, the discussion has been modified to note that you only need to issue a full refund for an order if the order has already been charged and the <cancel-items> command will result in all of the items in the order being cancelled.
September 20, 2007
Structural Changes:
The API guide has been restructured in a more modular format. As a result, the XML API Developer's Guide is a much shorter document that now links to numerous other documents that describe specific Google Checkout features. We hope this new format will simplify your efforts to understand the basics of the XML API and then delve into the specific Checkout features that you want to implement. As you read through the Developer's Guide, you will see links to the following documents:
Functionality Changes:
This update introduces Google Checkout's carrier-calculated shipping feature, which allows Google to dynamically request rates from shipping carriers based on the information in your Checkout API request. Google supports the carrier-calculated feature for three carriers: FedEx, UPS and the U.S. Postal Service (USPS). The list of supported shipping options varies for each carrier. For example, you can specify that you offer FedEx Priority Overnight shipping for an order, and Google will dynamically request the FedEx shipping rate based on the weight of the items in the order. See the carrier-calculated shipping feature document for more information and instructions for implementing this feature.
We have activated new URLs to which you can submit API requests in the Sandbox and production environments. While we will continue to support the old URL format, some new Checkout features may only be supported if you are using the new URLs. For that reason, we encourage you to switch to the new URL format.
September 6, 2007
This update introduces Google Checkout's line-item shipping feature, which enables merchants to specify different shipping information for individual items in an order. The line-item shipping feature also allows merchants to identify specific items that have been placed on backorder, canceled or returned.
The Order Processing API now defines several new commands that enable you to track the shipping status of individual items in an order. These commands are <ship-items>, <backorder-items>, <cancel-items>, <return-items> and <reset-items-shipping-information>. The Order Processing API section of the Developer's Guide provides a brief introduction to these commands and the line-item shipping. The commands are then explained in detail in a separate document titled, XML API Commands for Line-Item Shipping.
Please note that the introduction of line-item shipping does not affect the existing commands for tracking shipping information, such as <deliver-order> and <cancel-order>. Google will continue to support these tags indefinitely.
Note: This feature is currently only available to merchants in the United States.
The Order Processing API section of the Developer's Guide has been rewritten to link to four separate documents that explain how to implement different features of that API. The following list identifies those documents, which describe the API's functions for tracking an order's financial order state, tracking an order's fulfillment order state, and archiving orders:
With the exception of the line-item shipping document, all of these documents explain existing API functionality that has not changed with this update. These documents are designed to help developer's more easily locate information about specific API features.
June 28, 2007
This update highlights Google Checkout's newly introduced support for merchants that sell digital goods. The Developer's Guide now defines the <digital-content> tag, which is a new subtag of <item>, as well as the subtags of the <digital-content> tag. The subtags contain information about how the buyer will access the digital content after completing the order.
Merchants that sell digital goods should read the Google Checkout Digital Delivery document, which explains how to specify that items in an order are digital items. That document also explains how to specify whether you will email the buyer instructions for accessing the digital content or if you will embed the information needed to access the content in your Checkout API request. If you embed the information in your Checkout API request, Google will display that information to the buyer after the buyer completes the purchase.
The Checkout API section of the Developer's Guide has been updated to list the information that you can provide for each item in a buyer's shopping cart. This update describes one change to the current API behavior, which is the addition of the <digital-content> tag described above.
April 13, 2007
This update to the Developer's Guide identifies several features that work differently for U.K.-based merchants than for U.S.-based merchants. These features are noted in several places in the Developer's Guide and are also listed below.
The Merchant Calculations API does not support coupons and gift certificates for U.K. merchants. If you are a U.K. merchant and your Checkout API requests include the <accept-merchant-coupons> or <accept-gift-certificates> tags, those tags will be ignored.
The default rounding policy for financial calculations is different for U.K. merchants than it is for U.S. merchants. In the United States, the default rounding rule is TOTAL and the default rounding mode is HALF_EVEN. This rounding policy is commonly referred to as banker's rounding.
In the United Kingdom, the default rounding rule is PER_LINE and the default rounding mode is HALF_UP. The rounding rule ensures that taxes are calculated separately for each item in an order, and the rounding mode affects the way that each calculated amount is rounded. For more information about these rounding policies, please see the Google Checkout Rounding Policy document.
Note: Merchants that do not use the default U.S. rounding policies should not use the Merchant Calculations API to calculate taxes for their orders. This limitation primarily affects U.K. merchants since the U.K. has different default rounding policies than the U.S.
By default, if a U.K. merchant does not specify valid shipping areas for a shipping method, any U.K. shipping address will be accepted. For example, the Isle of Man is not in the United Kingdom and, therefore, is not in the default shipping area.
U.K. merchants should not use an American Express card as the test credit card for their Sandbox buyer account.
April 10, 2007
Note: This update is only relevant to merchants who have implemented the Notification API.
The Responding to Notifications section has been updated to correctly indicate that you must return an HTTP 200 response code when you receive and successfully process a notification from Google. In addition, this section specifies that if your application is unable to parse or process a notification, it must return either a 4xx or 5xx HTTP response code (500, 501, etc.). This section no longer discusses the <notification-acknowledgment> tag. While that tag is still supported, you do not need to return a <notification-acknowledgment> to indicate that you handled a notification successfully.
This update does not reflect a change in API behavior. Rather, the documentation has been updated to accurately describe API behavior.
March 22, 2007
This update to the Developer's Guide defines several tax and shipping features that are additions to the Google Checkout schema. The following list identifies these features:
International Tax and Shipping Features - This update defines several new tags, including the <postal-area> and <world-area> tags, that allow you to specify geographic regions outside of the United States for tax rules and shipping options. These modifications let you offer shipping methods for international addresses. These changes also enable you to charge taxes for orders made or shipped outside the United States.
For more information about how these tags are used in shipping options, please see the Shipping Restrictions and Address Filters section of the Developer's Guide. In addition, a separate feature document titled Checkout API Tags for Specifying Geographic Areas provides detailed explanations and examples of how to use these tags.
Restricting Shipping Options for Post Office (P.O.) Box Addresses - This update defines the <allow-us-po-box> tag, which allows you to prevent a shipping option from being offered if the shipping address is a P.O. box in the United States. You can use the P.O. restrict feature for both flat-rate and merchant-calculated shipping options.
Please see the Shipping Restrictions and Address Filters section of the Developer's Guide or the separate feature document titled Checkout API Tags for Specifying Geographic Areas for an example of how to use this tag.
Using Address Filters to Limit Shipping Methods - This update defines the <address-filters> tag, which enables you to specify a geographic area where a particular merchant-calculated shipping method is available or unavailable. Address filters are only used for merchant-calculated shipping options, and they work differently than shipping restrictions. The Shipping Restrictions and Address Filters section discusses how these tags are used. In addition, for the small group of merchants who need to use both of these types of filters, a separate feature document titled Google Checkout Shipping Restrictions and Address Filters explains how to use both types of filters.
Selecting a Rounding Policy for Tax Calculations - Google Checkout uses banker\'s rounding as its default rounding policy for all financial calculations. This update defines a schema change that allows you to select the rounding policy that Google Checkout will use to calculate taxes and order totals. This change also enables you to choose whether Google will apply rounding rules to each item in an order before the order total is calculated or if Google will calculate the order total before applying rounding rules.
For more information, please see the Additional Tax-Related Features section of the Developer's Guide or the separate feature document titled Google Checkout Rounding Policy.
With this revision to the Developer's Guide, you will start to see links to short, feature-specific documents within the Developer's Guide. Each of these documents will provide more in-depth analysis of a specific Checkout feature. The goal of these documents is to enable developers to navigate the Developer's Guide more easily as Google Checkout continues to add new features.
This version of the Developer's Guide links to three of these new documents:
This update includes document-wide changes that aim to streamline explanations and to make the options you have for integrating Checkout more clear. Many of these changes are concentrated in the Technical Overview and the description of the various Checkout integration options. In addition, this update seeks to better explain how to submit server-to-server Checkout API requests.
Developers familiar with the document will recognize server-to-server posts were previously described as an alternate technique for submitting Checkout API requests. However, the server-to-server approach is an important one to consider and may be easier for some merchants than generating digitally signed shopping carts using HMAC-SHA-1 signatures. Server-to-server posts also may provide much lower latency for buyers with slow Internet connections.
February 27, 2007
The Credit Card Test Cases section explains a new feature for the sandbox environment that lets merchants submit orders that will return a specific type of Address Verification System (AVS) response or credit verification value. The test cases also let merchants specify that the credit card for a sandbox order should be authorized or declined. The Credit Card Test Cases section describes new functionality in the sandbox environment but does not involve any API changes.
The URLs that merchants should use to submit Checkout API requests using server-to-server cart posts have been updated. Merchants must complete migration to the new URLs by July 31, 2007. The old URLs will be deprecated on August 1, 2007. Server-to-server cart posts are described in the Alternate Technique for Posting Carts section of the Developer's Guide.
February 22, 2007
The Reauthorizing a Customer's Credit Card section has been updated to specify which notifications Google Checkout will send following a request to reauthorize a customer's credit card. This update only clarifies existing behavior and does not reflect any changes to the API.
February 2, 2007
Google has increased the amount of time that sellers have to capture guaranteed funds for an order. Previously, sellers needed to charge buyers within 72 hours of a successful credit card authorization. Now, sellers have seven calendar days – 168 hours – after a successful authorization to charge the customer. The sections of the document that mention the length of the authorization period have been updated to reflect the new seven-day window. This update reflects a change to Google Checkout policies but does not involve API changes of any kind.
The Credit Card Authorization and Capture section has a new subsection, Reauthorizing a Customer's Credit Card, that explains a new Google Checkout API feature that lets sellers reauthorize a customer's credit card after the initial authorization period expires. This feature allows merchants to wait until items are available before charging customers for those items, providing a better experience for customers who preorder items or order out-of-stock items. Explicit reauthorizations also benefit merchants that have a policy of shipping an item before charging the customer for that item.
The Developer's Guide contains several other updates that explain the explicit reauthorization feature:
The Amount Notifications section describes the <authorization-amount-notification>, a new notification that is sent in response to a successful request for an explicit credit card authorization.
The Checkout API section describes the new <order-processing-support> and <request-initial-auth-details> tags. Merchants can use these tags to instruct Google to send an <authorization-amount-notification> after a customer submits a new order and Google Checkout authorizes the customer's credit card.
The Order Processing Commands section describes the new <authorize-order> command, which instructs Google Checkout to explicitly reauthorize a customer's credit card for the uncharged balance of an order.
The XML Element Definitions section contains definitions for all of the new XML tags used for explicitly reauthorizing orders.
January 4, 2007
The URLs to the Google Checkout sandbox server have been updated throughout the document. For example, the URL http://sandbox.google.com has been replaced by http://sandbox.google.com/checkout. Other sandbox URLs have changed in a similar manner, interjecting "checkout/" between "http://sandbox.google.com/" and the remainder of the URL. The old URLs will continue to work until January 17. This change reflects a change to the location of Google Checkout's sandbox server but does not affect the integration and testing process in any way.
The name attribute for the <alternate-tax-table>, <flat-rate-shipping>, <merchant-calculated-shipping> and <pickup> tags has been updated to specify that the name must be at least one non-space character long and may not contain more than 255 characters. These updates explain existing API requirements and do not reflect a change to established functionality.
December 7, 2006
A new document, Understanding Google Checkout Support for Third-Party Conversion Tracking, explains how merchants can use third-party web beacons to track Google Checkout conversions. This document explains a new Google Checkout feature. The Third-Party Conversion Tracking link in the left margin points to this new document.
The Shipping Restrictions subsection of the Shipping section has been updated to note that if you do not specify shipping restrictions, Google Checkout's default behavior is to allow shipping to all U.S. postal addresses. This change does not reflect any change to existing functionality; rather, it clarifies the behavior that you will see if you do not specify shipping restrictions.
The document has been updated to specify that if you implement either the Merchant Calculations API or the Notification API, you must use port 443 – the default port for HTTPS – for your production web services that handle merchant calculation requests or notifications. In your Sandbox environment, you can use either port 443 or port 80 for those services. The Merchant Calculations API section, the Receiving and Processing Notifications section, and the definition of the <merchant-calculations-url> tag have all been updated with this information. These updates do not reflect a change to existing functionality; rather, the updates explain existing API requirements.
The Charge Amount Notification section has been updated to more clearly indicate when Google Checkout sends a charge amount notification. That section also now explains how you can set your preferences so that Google automatically charges your customers when they submit new orders. This change clarifies current Google Checkout behavior and does not describe any actual changes to Google Checkout functionality.
November 16, 2006
A basic HTML API has been introduced to allow merchants to send order information to Google Checkout using name/value pairs rather than XML. The basic HTML API is recommended for merchants who do not want to generate XML. Please note that merchants cannot digitally sign orders in HTML implementations, so merchants who use this implementation should plan to review orders manually.
The documentation for the HTML API is in a new document that is separate from the XML API documentation.
November 9, 2006
The <merchant-item-id> tag is an addition to the Google Checkout schema. This tag lets you attach a value that you use to uniquely identify an item, such as a stock keeping unit (SKU), to an item in an order. The tag can be included in Checkout API requests as a subtag of the <item> tag. If you include the <merchant-item-id> tag in a Checkout API request, Google will also include the tag in merchant calculation callbacks and new order notifications. This tag is optional and will not impact your existing systems.
The <merchant-item-id> value appears in the order information displayed in the Merchant Center.
A new developer tool, the Checkout Button URL Generator, has been added to the links in the left-hand menu. The tool enables developers to quickly generate the URLs for Google Checkout buttons that will appear on their websites.
October 12, 2006
The Getting Started with Google Checkout section has been updated to reflect the fact that you can now use Gmail addresses for Sandbox accounts. This is a minor feature change that will be available to new Google Checkout partners.
The sample code in the Google Checkout Buttons section has been updated to demonstrate that a Checkout button is contained within a form on your page and that the form also includes encoded shopping cart data. This change is intended to clarify how to place Google Checkout buttons on your site.
The description of the variant button parameter in the Google Checkout Buttons has also been updated to link to the Google Checkout Content policies, which explains which types of items may not be sold through Google Checkout.
The Using the Integration Issues Console in the Merchant Center section has been updated to indicate that the Merchant Center will maintain error data for seven days or your most recent 1000 errors and warnings, whichever is less. This document change is intended to help you better understand the resources available in the Merchant Center.
The definitions of the <comment>, <message> and <reason> tags have been updated to indicate the maximum allowed length for each tag. This update is intended to help you better understand how the API tags work. The API itself has not changed.
Using Google Analytics with Google Checkout is a new section that provides an overview of Google Analytics. This section also links to a separate document that explains how you use Google Analytics to track orders in Google Checkout. This update regards a feature enhancement but does not involve any changes to the Checkout APIs.
September 28, 2006
Note: There are a lot of changes to the Developer's Guide this week. Due to the number of changes, the table of contents only identifies new sections (using New! tags). A list of major changes is provided below. In addition, several small sections in the document have been incorporated into other sections.
The new Using the Integration Issues Console in the Merchant Center section explains how you can use the Merchant Center to diagnose errors and warnings in your API requests.
The new XML Element Definitions section defines all of the XML elements used in the different Google Checkout APIs. This section replaces all of the XML element definitions that previously appeared within sections. The XML Element Definitions section contains a table for each XML tag. Each table contains the following information:
The XML examples in the document have been updated so that each XML tag links to the table in the XML Element Definitions section that explains that tag.
The sections discussing the four APIs – Checkout, Merchant Calculations, Notification and Order Processing – have been reordered in an attempt to better reflect the order in which you would use these APIs to create and process an order.
Many HTML styles have been updated throughout the Developer's Guide. The following section headers may help you to identify major and minor sections of the guide.
September 14, 2006
The description of the Refund and Cancel Order Flow has been updated to clarify that a buyer can request a refund for an order at any time after the order has been charged. The buyer would request a refund directly from the merchant.
The Order States table has been updated to reflect the fact that merchants may submit <charge-order> commands while an order is still in the REVIEWING financial order state. The section also includes a list of rules that Google follows when processing such a command.
The Charge Amount Notification section has been updated to emphasize that even if you submit a <charge-order> command, you should not assume that Google has charged your customer until you receive a <charge-amount-notification>. The Refund Amount Notification section has also been updated; refund amount notifications are sent in response to <refund-order> commands.
September 12, 2006
The <platform-id> tag has been added as a subtag of <merchant-checkout-flow-support>. This tag should only be used by eCommerce providers who make API requests on behalf of a merchant. This tag is documented in the Checkout API section of the Developer's Guide.
August 24, 2006
The Responding to Notifications section has been updated to explain that merchants should only send a <notification-acknowledgment> and an HTTP 200 response code for notifications that they successfully process. Merchants should not send a <notification-acknowledgment> and should respond with a 4xx or 5xx HTTP response code for notifications that they do not process successfully.
August 17, 2006
The Credit Card Authorization section was updated to explain a new setting that lets you instruct Google Checkout to charge a customer for an order as soon as the order becomes chargeable.
Appendix C was added to show where the XML elements in a Checkout API request are displayed in the Google Checkout user interface.
August 10, 2006
The Taxes section was updated to include a new subsection that explains that Google Checkout determines the tax rate for an item by selecting the first tax rule in the XML for which the tax-area matches the shipping address.
The sample Checkout API requests in Appendix A were also updated to adhere to these ordering rules.
The descriptions of the CHARGEABLE order state and the charge-order command were both updated to note that after an order is changed to the CHARGEABLE state, the merchant has 72 hours to capture funds by issuing a charge-order command.
August 3, 2006
The new Guidelines for XML API Requests section describes different requirements for posting XML requests to Google Checkout.
The Taxes section of the Developer's Guide was restructured to highlight the differences between default tax rules and alternate tax rules. The section also now includes a list explaining other tax-related features in Google Checkout, including a discussion of banker's rounding, the rounding policy that Google Checkout uses to round taxes to the nearest penny. The rounding policy has not changed, and this update is intended to help you to better understand the rounding policy.
The new Submitting Valid Checkout API Requests section explains several enhancements to the way that Google Checkout verifies that a Checkout API request is valid.
July 27, 2006
There are several changes to the Developer's Guide to clarify when in the Google Checkout process a merchant should ship ordered items to the customer. All merchants should make sure that the customer's payment has been authorized before shipping items. If you are only shipping some of the items in an order, you can also issue partial charges when shipping those items.
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