Recurring and scheduled payments sometimes fail for everyday reasons: a card is declined, a bank account has insufficient funds, a card has expired, or a direct debit mandate is no longer active. When a payment fails, infoodle marks it as failed against the donor's form, records the gateway's response, and emails the notification address on the payment method so your finance team knows to act. Retrying is how a failed payment is attempted again: some gateways do this automatically, and you can also retry a card payment yourself from the Recurring Income screens.
Before you start
Role Permissions
- Access to Finance area: reach the Finance section and its menus.
- Manage, Read and report on transactions: open the Recurring Income screens, take a payment manually, and review payment errors.
For an explanation of each permission and how to assign it, go to Settings > Roles in your infoodle, where every permission is listed and described.
You will also need:
- A payment gateway that takes scheduled payments on a stored card or mandate, configured as a payment method. Retrying applies to Stripe, Ezidebit, eWAY, and GoCardless.
- At least one recurring pledge or scheduled payment recorded against a form.
How infoodle handles a failed payment
When a scheduled payment does not go through, infoodle:
- Marks that payment as Failed on the pledge so it stands out on the Recurring Income screens.
- Records the gateway's response, for example "Your card has insufficient funds" or "Your card was declined", against the form's payment history.
- Emails the notification address recorded on the payment method, listing the donor, form, amount, the gateway message, and a suggested next action.
The suggested action depends on the message. Insufficient funds suggests retrying the payment or updating the donor's card details. A declined card or a missing payment token suggests updating the donor's payment details.
[ Screenshot needed: the daily payments notification email listing a failed payment with donor, form, amount, message and suggested action ]
Automatic retries by your payment gateway
For direct debit gateways such as GoCardless, the gateway itself resubmits a failed collection on its own retry schedule, for example when a payment fails for insufficient funds. infoodle receives the result of each attempt, records it against the form's payment history, and notifies the payment method's notification address. You do not need to reschedule these retries yourself.
Card gateways do not resubmit automatically in this way. For a failed card payment, retry the payment manually from the Recurring Income screens, or ask the donor to update their card details.
Retrying a payment manually
If a scheduled card payment has failed, you can re-attempt it from the Recurring Income screens. This is useful once the donor has topped up their account or you have confirmed their card is working again.
Taking a payment manually attempts a real charge against the donor's stored card or mandate straight away. Only retry a payment you intend to collect.
- Click or hover on Finance on the main menu bar on the left, then click Recurring Income.
- Open the Next payments tab to see scheduled and failed payments that have not yet been collected. To find an older failed payment, open the History tab instead.
- Find the payment you want to retry by seeing Failed in the Status column.
- Click the menu icon under details in the failed payment row
- Click Take payment now on the failed payment's row.
- infoodle sends the payment to the gateway and shows the result. A successful attempt updates the status to Scheduled. A failed attempt keeps the status as Failed and shows the gateway's message.
Retrying makes a fresh payment request to the gateway using the donor's stored card or mandate. It does not replay a previous transaction. infoodle does not create a receipt or transaction when you retry: transactions are created later, at the reconcile stage. The reconcile stage is when the gateway has actually paid out the funds and you match that payout to the donor and their pledge, which is the point at which infoodle creates the transaction and any receipt. Every manual retry is recorded against the payment with the date and the person who took it. Automatic retries run by the gateway are recorded too, without a named person against them.
Reviewing and clearing payment errors
The Payment errors screen is used with Ezidebit. It lists failed Ezidebit payment attempts on a dedicated screen so you can work through them and follow up on each one. If you use Stripe, eWAY, or GoCardless, handle failed payments from the Recurring Income screens instead.
- Click or hover on Finance on the main menu bar on the left, then click Transaction processing.
- Open the Payment methods tab, then choose Review errors.
- Choose a date and click Show to list the failed attempts for that day. Each row shows the provider, the error, the gateway message, the amount, and a link to the form.
- Use the Go to next action menu on a row to follow up. Depending on the error, the options are Customer must complete new provider form, Activate donor in ezidebit, or Delete customer pledge.
- Click Clear Error once you have dealt with an error, to mark it as handled.
Clear Error only marks the error as handled and records that you processed it. It does not re-attempt the payment. To collect a failed payment, retry it from the Recurring Income screens or ask the donor to update their payment details.
Common questions
Does infoodle retry a failed payment automatically?
For direct debit gateways such as GoCardless, the gateway resubmits failed collections on its own schedule and infoodle records the outcome. For card gateways, retry the payment manually from the Recurring Income screens.
Does retrying charge the donor twice?
No. Retrying makes one fresh payment request for the amount that failed. A payment that has already succeeded is not re-attempted.
Will a retry create a receipt straight away?
No. infoodle creates the transaction, and any receipt, later, at the reconcile stage, once the gateway has paid out the funds and the payout is matched to the donor's pledge.
Why can't I retry a cheque or manual bank payment?
Retrying applies to gateways that take a payment on a stored card or mandate. Manual methods such as cheque and direct credit are recorded by hand, so there is nothing for infoodle to re-attempt.
Who is notified when a payment fails?
infoodle emails the notification address recorded on the payment method. You can change this address by editing the payment method.
Next steps
- If a card payment keeps failing, ask the donor to update their card details, then retry the payment.
- To understand the emails infoodle sends when a payment fails, see Recurring Payment Notifications.