To run a successful sustainer giving program donor payments need to process as expected. Organizations that catch failing payments in the first 30 days are likely to prevent donor lapses and loss of promised funds.

When a recurring commitment is added to the contact record, those payments automatically process at the frequency your donor selected until they end their commitment.
Read more about adding recurring commitments

Ideally, you track changes to recurring commitments and provide ways for your donors to update their amounts and payment information themselves. Still, sometimes a payment fails or is delayed.
Read more about making changes to recurring commitments

Understanding payment status and retries

The standing of any recurring payment is identified by its Status. The Status tells you how your donors are doing and, if monitored regularly, can help you prevent losses in the long term. Recurring payments that process successfully are Active. In the event a payment does not process, we Retry to process it so your organization can receive the funds if possible.

Retries for annual and weekly commitments occur on different cycles. The goal in either case is to minimize the chance of another failure and save your supporters overdraft fees.

• Annual commitments that fail are retried five days after the first failed attempt (original due date) and further retry attempts recur at intervals of five, ten, and ten days (for a maximum of 30 calendar days), before the commitment becomes inactive

• Weekly commitments that fail are retried seven days after the first failed attempt (original due date) and further retry attempts recur at seven day intervals up to six retries, before the commitment becomes inactive

• Monthly commitments that fail are retried one month after the first failed attempt (original due date) and further retry attempts recur on a schedule of once every five days, for a total of two retries, or three total attempts, per installment. After three failed installments, including retries, the commitment will be marked as Inactive--Failed. A total of 9 charge attempts will be made for the sustainer.

On a given contact record or a report that includes recurring commitments, scheduled commitments have one of five statuses:

• Active - The most recent installment processed successfully.

• Failing - The most recent installment has not processed successfully. You cannot modify the next payment date until a successful contribution has been made as part of that recurring commitment.

• Inactive--Failed - After a commitment completes its scheduled cycle of retries and all attempts have failed, the status of the recurring commitment becomes Inactive--Failed. An Inactive--Failed commitment cannot be revived. A new Recurring Commitment will need to be added if the donor wishes to continue giving.

  • Credit Cards, PayPal, and Apple Pay - If a contribution fails to process through our system, we retry on a schedule of once every five days, for a total of two retries, or three total attempts, per installment. After three failed installments, including retries, the commitment will be marked as Inactive--Failed.

  • Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT) - Depending on the specific reason for a failure provided by the payment processor, EFT payments may be retried following the same schedule used for credit card retries. The timeframe for an EFT retry may exceed five days if a transaction is declined during the settlement process, which typically takes five business days. It is unlikely that we will receive a Declined notification until more than five calendar days have passed. The retry will be scheduled for the following day if more than 5 calendar days have elapsed. Sometimes payments fail for reasons that are ineligible for retries and are immediately be marked as Inactive--Failed after a single unsuccessful installment.

• Inactive--Canceled - The Recurring Commitment was manually canceled, either by someone at your organization or by the donor via a Self-Service page.

• Completed - The Recurring Commitment has been fulfilled. This status only applies to Recurring Commitments that have an end date.

Read more about tracking settlement status on contributions

Viewing failed payments in Fundraising Management

Your Fundraising Management dashboard alerts you to any recurring commitments with failing payments on the Monthly Giving tile. Select the failing gift notification to view a Recurring Commitment Processing Report filtered to your failing gifts.

Using reports to track payment processing

Payments from recurring commitments that successfully process will always appear as a new row in your Contributions Report or in the Contribution section of the contact record. The best way to see the status of all your recurring payment processing is with your Recurring Commitment Processing Report. Filter or group the report by Outcome to view payments that Succeeded or Failed. This report itemizes processing attempts, so there may be more than one row per recurring commitment.

Tracking payment processing from the Details page

View payment processing history on the Details page for each recurring commitment. Open the commitment from the Processing Report or from the Recurring Commitment section of the contact record and scroll to the bottom of the Details page to see the list of any failed processing attempts.

Below the Failed Processing Attempts section, you’ll see a list of successful Historical Contributions.

Correcting failing payments

Manually correct failing recurring gifts from the Details page of the Recurring Commitment. Open the commitment from the contact record Overview page (or the Recurring Commitments section of the All Details view or from one of the recurring commitment reports).

If a donor asks you to update payment information on their behalf, use Update Payment Information to edit and process their next payment.

You can always contact donors individually about a failing payment and manually update their record. You can also save the time and effort by setting up automatic notifications and empowering donors to correct their own payment information.

• Automatic Credit Card Updater
  
  Updating credit card numbers or expiration dates when a donor gets a new card is a proven way to reduce failing commitments and save donors time. If you use Bonterra Payments, you automatically received this service when you set up your account, and there's no additional fee.
  
  If you use Paragon Payment Solutions, you can add Card Account Updater to your account by contacting Paragon directly. There is an additional fee for this service. 
  
  Read more about changing a recurring commitment.

• Set up a Triggered Email to notify donors of failing payments
  
  Customize a Triggered Email to notify your donors when one of their payments fails. These emails are transactional. They are a direct response to an action attempted on behalf of your donor, such as payment, and can be sent regardless of donor subscription status.
  
  Personalize Triggered Emails using conditional content that prompts donors to resolve the issue with an alert from their credit card company or recommends they visit a self-service page where they can update payment information themselves.

Read more about using triggered emails for failing payments

• Create a self-service page

An easy and effective way to get donors to fix failing payments is to create a self-service page they can use to review all their contributions and change their donation amount or payment information. Link to this page in all of your communications, including Triggered Emails.

Read best practices for customizing self-service pages

• Use Automations for renewals or recapturing lapsed donors

To prevent future payment failures, create an automation that reminds sustainers that their credit card is about to expire and provide them with a link to a self-service page where they can update their payment information. Or, use the Lapsed Donor template to create an automation that encourages recurring donors to return after cancellation or missed payments.

Read more about Automation
Read more about Automation templates

Monitoring corrections in payments

Learn when a donor corrects payment information through the Recurring Commitment Changes Report. This report shows you when any change is made to a Recurring Commitment, what the change was, and how the change was made.

Monitor the Status of the commitment using this report. Commitments with a recent Payment Information update are Active, rather than Failing. It may take a few days for the Status to update as payments are reprocessed on a standard schedule regardless of a payment update change.

Learn whether payments are processing correctly with the Recurring Commitment Processing Report. This report displays each processing attempt for each commitment on a separate row.