A report nobody wants to read
Most of your small commercial customers pay monthly by direct debit. Every month, a handful of payments fail: insufficient funds, a cancelled mandate, a closed account. The payment provider sends a report. Someone in accounts should work through it, but it is the week of the invoice run, so it waits.
Weeks later, a café has three failed payments and has been collected every week throughout. The owner has closed the business account and opened a new one. Another customer cancelled their mandate when they switched to a competitor but forgot to tell you, so you are still emptying their bin.
Why failures slip through
Direct debit is supposed to be the reliable option. It is reliable until something changes, and then nobody knows.
- Failure reports arrive days later and are read when someone has time.
- Failures are not linked to the round, so collections continue.
- Reminders depend on someone writing and sending them.
- Cancelled mandates can mean a customer has switched provider without telling you.
- Small debts are not worth much effort individually, so they accumulate.
What failed payments cost
Every collection on an unpaid account is a service you may never be paid for. Small debts become larger ones, and many of them are eventually written off.
Chasing takes accounts staff time, and calls about money can sour relationships with customers who simply had a card change. A cancelled mandate that goes unnoticed for weeks usually means a customer who has already left.
It also muddies the rest of your reporting. Revenue looks healthy on the invoice run, but part of it will never arrive, and the gap only becomes clear when the aged debt report is finally reviewed. By then the drivers have emptied the bins for months.
How we handle failures automatically
What we build connects your payment provider, accounts package and round schedule.
- Failure notifications are collected from your direct debit provider, for example GoCardless or your bank's service, through its API or report files.
- Each failure is matched to the customer account and classified: insufficient funds, cancelled mandate, account closed.
- Insufficient funds are retried under your rules. Customers are sent a reminder email and text with a card payment link, in wording you write.
- Cancelled mandates and closed accounts generate a task for the office to contact the customer, because they often mean a change in circumstances.
- Accounts that remain unpaid after your set period are flagged on the round schedule, so the office decides whether collections continue before the next lift.
- Payments received update your accounts package, and the flag is cleared automatically.
| Failure type | First action | If unresolved |
|---|---|---|
| Insufficient funds | Retry and reminder with payment link | Office call, service flag |
| Mandate cancelled | Office contacts customer | Check whether they have switched |
| Account closed | Request new mandate | Office call, service flag |
Whether to suspend collections for non-payment, and when, is your decision under your terms. The system flags the account; it does not stop service on its own.
Month end with the process running
The café's payment fails. The next morning the owner receives an email and text with a payment link, and pays by card that afternoon. The flag never appears. The customer who cancelled their mandate generates an office task. A quick call confirms they have switched providers, and a container recovery job is booked.
The accounts team sees a short list of unresolved failures instead of a report they never had time to read. The debt that used to build up quietly does not.
Are failed direct debits building up?
- Failure reports are read late or not at all.
- Collections continue on accounts with several failed payments.
- Cancelled mandates are discovered weeks later.
- Reminders depend on someone having time to send them.
- Small debts are regularly written off.