This article is intended to help you resolve problems with payments that have failed to be collected from your clients.

Why might payments be rejected?

Common reasons that a payment is not able to be processed are:

  • Insufficient funds - there are not enough funds available for the transaction to be processed.
  • Credit card expired - the card has expired and can't be used any more.
  • Credit card declined - unfortunately sometimes the issuing bank does not disclose the reason that the payment has been rejected.
  • Incorrect bank account details - your client has provided an incorrect routing number (USA), sort code (UK), BSB (Australia) or account number.

How can my clients retry their payment?

When a payment fails, Practice Ignition will email your client to let them know. This email will be sent to the notification recipient email address for the client.

Here's an example email showing what the client will receive:

The client can then click through to a page allowing them to either try again using the same payment method, or select a different one and use that instead.

After the client retries their payment, we'll let you know by sending an email to the addresses set in Payment Gateway under Settings.

Where can I find a link to the retry page?

You can find a link by opening up the details for the rejected payment. You'll see a "View client retry payment page" link in the payment status section.

Can clients use credit cards and bank accounts when retrying?

Practice Ignition will look at the settings you chose when creating the proposal. This means that if you set your proposal to only allow bank accounts on the accept page, the client will only be able to retry using a bank account.

However if you've switched the proposal to another payment method type yourself, then that payment method type will be available when retrying.

How can I retry a client's payment on my own?

You can retry the payment by going to the collections tab in the Payments tab, then go to the Rejected list.

If you click on a rejected payment, a drawer will open showing the payment details.

Click the Actions button and you'll see options to Re-schedule or Cancel the payment.

You'll then be able to choose whether you want to try collecting payment again today, or on a future date.

Once you've chosen when to try collecting payment, the payment collection will disappear from the "Rejected" and move to "Pending Collection".

It will only re-appear in "Rejected" if payment collection is rejected again.

If you'd like to retry using a different payment method, first update the selected payment method for the relevant proposal, then re-schedule the payment collection.

Who at my company will be notified when a payment is rejected or a client retries their payment?

To choose who should be notified by email, go to Settings and then Payment Gateway. Under Notifications Email you can add one or more email addresses.

Rejected payments and recurring invoices

If a payment for a recurring service is rejected, you will still need to manually retry the payment once the issue has been rectified.

However, it's important to note that Practice Ignition will continue to attempt collection on all future scheduled invoices. 

For Example:

  1. Payment in April is rejected due to insufficient funds
  2. Your client adds funds to their account
  3. The payment  for May's transaction will process in May as scheduled (per your payment settings).
  4. The payment for June's transaction will process in June, and so on.
  5. If you have not retried the April payment by the time the next recurring payment is processed, it will remain in rejected until you do so. 

As a best practice, we recommend you reach out to your client and attempt to rectify the rejected payment before the next scheduled recurring date.

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