Step 4 - Order Complete Screen shows before payment is Received Cont. 
Author: Brian G.I realize there has been quite a bit of discussion on this topic.
My suggestion is this: Since have two purchase methods defined for shopping carts (pay now, pay later).
1. Pay Later implies: generate the order, send notice/emailer to purchaser for payment. Fine as is works great.
2. Pay now implies: Before an order is considered complete the purchaser has completed payment as well. This is where the product fails.
In that scenario sending off the order or telling them the order is complete before payment is confirmed makes no sense that websitex5 even has a pay now puchasing option.
To correct the issue:
If the user selected pay now as their purchase option:
Then before proceeding to step 4 there needs to be an interim page to allow the purchaser to pay now.
Upon payment confirmation provide notice the order is complete and mail send the order details.
If the payment fails then at that point BEFORE DECLARING THE ORDER COMPLETE if the payment fails they would have the opportunity to contact the seller to remedy why the payment failed and have the opportunity to try the payment submission again.
In that manner you would have the two purchase methods like you do (pay now or pay later).
Which for pay later its fine the way you have it
If its pay now however they need to have the ability to do that before their order is considered complete. Otherwise it inconviences the purchaser unduly as well as the seller.
Author
There is a small degree of technical know how that would be needed by the website designer to implement. Which is possibly why the flow is as it is. You would need to know how to make a call to your chosen payment service and get the return status to properly process. A widget created to insert could probaly solve that. A widget with code to process the payment and get the return code status then proceed to step4 on success would be great. Id just like to let the buyer be able to complete their purchase and then get their order number mailer so it could then be considered their receipt. Currently as it is - the order is just an order since you cant process the payment before the order is emailed.
I can understand that the objective of this software however is to ease the need for knowing how to code. So putting the payment at the end I do understand. Given there are quite a few payment services - coding for all variations can be difficult. Which is why a widget tailored to specific payment services (paypal for example) inserted between step 3 and 4 would be a nice method to implement paynow before sending mailers telling users their order is complete. In any event I usually code pages by hand so this program to me is awesome for saving time creating pages.
I have found a workaround of the step3 to step4 when using Pay now method. Which is to put notices on the payment method and email message informing the user payment has to be processed before the order will be processed. So when they see the pay now button they also see emblazoned above that right next to the order informing them that the order is NOT a reciept. Got to make that clear to them so they cant come back claiming that the order proves receipt. The workaround wont prevent having to go to paypal - checking if they paid, then matching that up to the order, noting that it was paid and then finally processing their order. But its a valid albeit painfull workaround. Im still reluctant to put the shop out there however since so much undeeded work could be alleviated by simply allowing an interim step in between step3 and 4 to allow payment processing. So Im going to keep checking on how I can accomplish that.