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When a direct debit fails

Updated
A failed direct debit reaches you days after the payment date, so the member has usually trained a few times since. Nothing has gone wrong with your setup.
Why did it fail? RETRYABLE Insufficient funds The money was not there onthe day. The mandate is stillvalid, so the same instructioncan be sent again. Retry in a few days NOT RETRYABLE Mandate cancelled The member cancelled it attheir bank. Every futurepayment fails at once. Noretry can ever succeed. They must authorise a new one

What you see

Exactly what you see for a failed card. The member appears in Overdue, their membership shows as past due, and you get the failed payment notification. The reason from the bank comes through with it: insufficient funds, mandate cancelled, account closed.

What to do

  1. Open Overdue and Retry payment. If the problem was funds, a retry a few days later often clears it.
  2. If the mandate was cancelled, a retry cannot work. The member has to authorise a new one, which they do from their own billing page. Message them and ask.
  3. If they have left without saying so, this is the moment you find out. See How a member cancels for the flow they should have used.

The one that is different

Mandate cancelled has no equivalent on a card. A member can cancel the instruction at their bank without telling you or us, and every future payment then fails at once rather than one at a time. If a member's payments fail repeatedly with the same reason, stop retrying and talk to them.

Reducing it

  • Members whose payments fail once tend to fail again. Watch the repeat names in Overdue rather than the one offs.
  • Aligning everyone to the same collection day makes a failed run obvious, because you see the whole month's failures together instead of dribbling through.

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