Recurring payments are wonderfully low-effort right up until a card expires or a donor cancels with their bank instead of with you. A few minutes of monitoring each month keeps regular giving healthy and keeps dispute fees at zero.
Stale failed payments can restart themselves
Banks now update expired card details automatically, so a recurring payment that’s been quietly failing for months can suddenly start collecting again. A surprised donor often disputes the payment with their bank, which costs you the donation plus a £15 dispute fee. Cancel long-failing payments; don’t leave them sleeping.
Staying on top of it
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First, on every payment group that takes recurring payments, set up a failed-payment notification: on the group’s Summary tab, find the Jobs section and create a notification. Choose ‘Payment group payment failed’ in the first field, ‘Send an email’ in the second, and in the third pick the person responsible; they need payment group permissions, and you may need to search from the root group to find them. Repeat the process to notify more than one person.
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When a failure notification arrives, contact the donor: would they like to update their card and continue, or should you cancel the donation? Either way, something happens while the trail is warm.
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Review the Pledges tab periodically, filtering to payments not received. Orange icons are fine, those are payments not yet due or in the middle of collection; a red exclamation mark showing ‘Not received’ is a failure, and the blue pencil next to it tells you why that collection failed.
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To see the fuller story for one person, click the blue pencil next to their name and open their Pledges tab: a run of successful collections followed by three failures usually means an expired or cancelled card.
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For anything long-failing, cancel the donation properly so nothing is left to reawaken; the steps are in how to change or cancel a booking or donation.
Good to know
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The same Jobs panel offers other useful notifications, including new registrations and ones awaiting approval, and each can go to several people.
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If a dispute does happen, the costs and the recovery are covered in refunds, write-offs and chargebacks.
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This is a per-group job: check the Jobs section on each payment group that takes recurring donations or subscriptions, not just the main giving page.
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