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This document addresses the concept of Dangling transactions in Chargebee and the methods for effectively managing them. A dangling transaction arises when a payment is successfully processed by the payment gateway but encounters an error within Chargebee, preventing the creation or updating of a customer's subscription or invoice. Although these situations are rare, they can lead to discrepancies in your records. In this document, we will delve into the causes of dangling transactions and provide comprehensive strategies for resolving these issues to maintain the accuracy of your billing and customer data.
In Chargebee, dangling transactions may appear with a status of Success, but their resolved status remains Open.
This indicates that the transaction is not correctly associated with a customer or invoice, meaning it is not fully reconciled within the Chargebee system. Chargebee attempts to resolve these issues through its automatic reconciliation process as explained below.
Chargebee's Automatic Dangling Transaction Reconciler process attempts to reconcile transactions by matching them with the correct invoice based on the transaction amount and currency. If a match is not found, but the transaction has a customer ID attached, the amount is added to the associated customer's excess payments balance. The complete reconciliation workflow is outlined below:
Chargebee tries to automatically reconcile Dangling transactions using a daily reconciler process. Let us understand the workflows behind the automated reconciliation process for these transactions:
Chargebee may occasionally be unable to reconcile a dangling transaction, particularly when the transaction lacks an associated invoice or customer, or if an error occurs during a refund attempt through the payment gateway. In such cases, manual intervention is required to resolve the transaction within Chargebee's system.
If a dangling transaction does not have a customer or invoice linked to it, and the automatic reconciliation process fails, your assistance will be needed to reconcile it, as outlined in the following section.
You can reconcile dangling transactions manually using either of the following methods:
You can use the Reconcile transaction API to update the Customer ID, provided it is not attached to the Dangling transaction, which will recalculate the customer's excess balance.
This section involves two sets of steps:
There are two ways to locate and identify Dangling or Needs Attention transactions:
Using the NeedsAttentionDangling filter. Simply, go to the Transactions page and select the NeedsAttentionDangling filters from the All Transactions drop-down menu on top.
From the banner on top of the Transactions page. Follow the steps below:
a. Login to the Chargebee app and go to Logs > Transactions .
b. When any Dangling transactions are created in the Last 30 days, a banner appears, indicating that your attention is required.
c. Click See Transaction to view the list of all Dangling transactions.
When it is a Dangling transaction that is not attached to any customer / Invoice and is not yet refunded. You can follow these steps:
On the Transactions page, click on the transaction to open the transaction detail page
Click Add payment to customer from the right pane.
On the following pop-up, search for the customer either using the name or ID and select it.
Click Confirm.
Once the customer is attached, Chargebee recalculates the customer's excess balance by adding the transaction amount to it and reconciling the transaction.
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