The failure report nobody enjoys
Your direct debits are collected a few days after the bill run. Most go through. A few come back: insufficient funds, instruction cancelled, account closed. The failure report arrives from your bureau or payment provider, such as GoCardless, as a file or an email. Someone in finance matches each one to a customer, sends an email, and makes a note in a spreadsheet to check again next week.
Next week, they are busy with the carrier invoices. The spreadsheet is looked at a fortnight later. Some customers have paid by bank transfer without saying, some have not, and one has cancelled their mandate because they are moving to another provider and did not tell you. By now the next bill has been raised, and that one will fail too.
Meanwhile the account manager has no idea there is a problem, and books a renewal meeting with a customer who owes two months.
Why chasing is inconsistent
- Failure reasons come from the payment provider in its own codes, and each needs a different response.
- The failure report, the invoice and the customer contact are in three different systems.
- Nobody owns the chase from start to finish; it is a finance task squeezed between others.
- A cancelled mandate is often the first sign a customer is leaving, but it is treated as a payment problem only.
- Service suspension, where your terms allow it, needs care and a human decision, so it is avoided altogether.
What late chasing costs
| Delay | Effect |
|---|---|
| Failure not chased for weeks | Debt grows by another month's bill |
| Cancelled mandate not noticed | Port-out arrives with money owed |
| Account manager not told | Renewal offered to a customer in arrears |
| Retry not attempted | Payment that would have worked is missed |
| No consistent record | Disputes about what was sent and when |
Telecoms is an ongoing service. Unlike a one-off sale, every week of delay adds the next month's usage and rental to what is owed.
You are also paying your own suppliers for that customer's lines, seats and call traffic the whole time, whether or not they pay you. A few slow accounts can sit on your cash for longer than anyone would choose, simply because nobody had the time to chase them in the first week.
The collections flow we build
- Failure notifications are read from your payment provider, by API or report file, as soon as they are available.
- Each failure is matched to the customer and invoice in your billing platform and given a reason category: retryable, needs new mandate, account closed, disputed.
- Retryable failures are retried at a sensible interval where your provider supports it. The others start a chase sequence by email and SMS, written in your tone and with a payment link or a new mandate link as appropriate.
- A cancelled mandate alerts the account manager straight away, because it may be a sign the customer is leaving.
- Anything unresolved after the sequence goes to a named person in finance with the full history. Any service action is a decision for that person under your own terms, never automatic.
- Paid, promised and disputed invoices are recorded so the chase stops at the right time and the history is clear.
We keep the chase wording in templates your team can edit, and every message sent is recorded against the customer.
Month end, with it in place
Failures are handled the day they arrive. Most resolve through a retry or a mandate link without anyone picking up the phone. Finance works a short list of real problems. Account managers see arrears on the account before they walk into a renewal meeting.
And when a cancelled mandate turns out to be the first step of a customer leaving, you hear about it while there is still time to call them.
The records also help at the other end. When a customer disputes a late payment charge or asks why a reminder was sent, your team can see every message, when it went and what it said, instead of searching sent folders.
Are these familiar?
- Failed direct debits are tracked in a spreadsheet.
- Chasing happens when someone has time.
- Account managers find out about arrears from the customer.
- Cancelled mandates are not treated as a warning sign.
- You are not sure what was sent to a customer, or when.