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If a contract payment has not come through, the money has not left your customer's account and nothing has been lost. Commusoft records the failure against the invoice and on the contract, so you can see what happened and collect the payment another way. This article explains why payments fail and what to do next.
Why this happens
A contract payment can fail for a few reasons, and most of them sit with your customer's bank or card rather than with Commusoft.
The payment was rejected: insufficient funds, a closed account, or a card that has expired or been declined
The mandate has been cancelled: your customer cancelled their Direct Debit, ACH, or PAD at their bank, so there is no longer any authorization to collect
The amount is above the scheme limit: GoCardless sets a maximum transaction amount for each payment scheme, and an invoice above that limit is rejected
Important: Commusoft does not retry a failed contract payment, automatically or manually. The payment has to be collected another way, which is covered below.
Note: Nothing alerts you when a customer cancels a mandate at their bank. The mandate status changes to Cancelled in Commusoft and appears on the contract timeline, but no notification is sent, so a failed payment is often the first sign.
How to fix it
Step 1: Confirm the payment has failed
âĄď¸ Open the customer's contract > Timeline
The failure is recorded on the contract timeline. The invoice itself shows as Unpaid / Payment Failed, and you can also see it on your customer's billing screen.
If the payment failed communication is enabled on your contract template, your contract contact will also have been emailed about the failure.
Step 2: Collect the payment
Send your customer a link to the invoice portal so they can pay that invoice themselves.
Your customer can also update their payment details from there. Ask them to do that if the failure was caused by an expired card or a closed account.
Note: Paying in the portal settles that one invoice. It does not fix the underlying payment method, so check step 3 as well or the next collection will fail too.
Step 3: Check the payment details for future collections
âĄď¸ Open the customer's contract > Payment collection
Check the mandate or card is still valid before the next invoice is due.
If the mandate shows as Cancelled, your customer needs to approve a new one. Edit the payment collection on the contract and enter the bank details again to send a fresh request.
If a card has expired, update the stored card details.
Note: A cancelled mandate does not change the contract status. An active contract stays active and a pending contract stays pending, but no further payments are collected until a new mandate is in place.
If the issue persists
If payments keep failing and the payment details are valid, check whether the invoice total is above the GoCardless transaction limit for your scheme. Limit increases are requested from GoCardless directly, not from Commusoft. You can also search the payment reference in the GoCardless platform to see what happened at their end. If you are still stuck, contact our Client services team with the contract and invoice details.