Docs
In this day and age of digital finance, payment failures are unexpected; and the reasons are not always in your control. Transactions could get declined for various reasons starting from insufficient funds to expired cards or even connectivity issues. Dunning is the process of retrying payment attempts and sending payment reminders to customers when a transaction gets declined.
With Chargebee's Dunning feature, you can send email reminders to your customers asking them to update payment details and schedule payment retries at intervals to ensure revenue can be recovered. After the final payment retry attempt, you can configure what should be the status of the subscription. Chargebee's Dunning applies for:
While you do your best to handle retries for best payment recovery, not all failed payments get recovered in the same pattern. Or more importantly, your account with the payment gateways could be block-listed for reasons such as:
Chargebee's Smart retry logic retries payments at dynamic intervals based on the type of gateway transaction errors, and it acts on the hard or soft declines accordingly.
In Chargebee, you can configure dunning email notifications. These emails will be sent to your customers informing them about the payment failure and reminding them to make the payment or update the payment method.
Updating to the new version of dunning will not affect your existing settings; the existing settings will be seamlessly carried over.
Smart retry is an intelligent, built-in dunning logic that initiates payment retries based on the type of gateway transaction errors. Chargebee classifies gateway transaction error codes into hard and soft declines.
Hard declines will not be retried until an update in payment method happens and for soft declines, based on the error category and the chances of recovery, Chargebee will suitably decide an opportune time to retry. This not only helps recover your revenue promptly but it does it in the best and safest possible way.
Dunning for Online Payments is when Auto Collection is turned ON for a subscription and the initial attempt to collect the payment fails, Chargebee will retry payment collection and send emails to your customer informing them about the failed payment.
Based on your customer's payment method, you can setup:
These settings are applicable for your customers, who use payment methods, such as Cards, PayPal and e-wallet payments like Amazon Pay , Apple Pay , etc.
Log in to your Chargebee site and navigate to Settings > Configure Chargebee > Dunning for Online/Offline Payments > Dunning for cards, e-wallet payments.
Activate Dunning: Enables dunning for cards, e-wallet payment methods. If this option is disabled, Chargebee will not retry to collect payments for card, e-wallet payment methods when the initial attempt fails, and the final action will be executed.
Dunning Period: Dunning period is the time period (in days) during which an invoice will stay in dunning before the final action is carried out on the subscription and invoice.
Chargebee will retry to collect payments during the dunning period. You can configure email notifications to be sent out to the customer within the dunning period.
Final action will be executed at the end of the dunning period.
Choose Automatic Retry Mode: These options decide how frequently Chargebee should retry to collect the payment from your customers. Here are the options to choose from:
Smart [up to 12 retries]:
Chargebee will determine the retry frequency based on transaction patterns and the type of gateway transaction errors, without you having to configure it. Click here to learn more about Smart Retry.
Based on the type of gateway transaction errors, Chargebee will retry up to 12 times to collect the payment.
Along with this, if you want to set specific days/dates to retry and collect the payment from your customer, contact support .
This feature is available only for specific plans. Visit Plans and Pricing for more.
Custom: You can set up the frequency of retries to collect the payment, in days. The max number of retries you are allowed to set is 5.
Say, the dunning period is set to 8 days and the retry frequency is '1,4,8'. This means that the payment retries are scheduled for 1 day, 4 days and 8 days from the day of initial payment failure.
If the initial payment fails on Jan 1st,
When dunning period ends, what happens to subscriptions?: If the invoice is still unpaid when the Dunning Period ends, you can define the final action taken on the subscription. You can choose to let the subscription remain active or cancel the subscription at once.
When dunning period ends, what happens to invoices?: If the invoice remains unpaid at the end of the dunning period, this option lets to choose how the invoice should be handled.
You can:
Apply dunning setting whenever 'Future' and 'Trial' subscriptions become active: When the option is enabled and the payment fails for a subscription on the day it moves to ACTIVE state from trial state or future state, the invoice will go through dunning
Dunning for one-time invoices: Enabling this option will start dunning for one-time invoices as well. The final action mentioned in 'When dunning period ends, what happens to invoices?' will be carried out. However, the subscription will remain uninterrupted.
Dunning for advance invoices: Enabling this option starts dunning for advance invoices.
When the terms in the advance invoice are underway, then the final action mentioned in 'When dunning period ends, what happens to invoice/subscription?' are carried out.
However if the terms in the advance invoice haven't begun as yet, the subscription does not get cancelled (even if set to cancel in the dunning process). Instead, a cancellation is scheduled for the end of the current term and the full amount gets refunded as a credit note. If the payment has not been collected as yet, an adjustment credit note is created. If the payment has been partially collected, the amount that has been collected is refunded as a refundable credit note, while the remainder is refunded as an adjustment credit note.
This setting is for your customers who use direct debit payments such as SEPA (via GoCardless or Adyen), ACH (via Stripe) or Authorize.Net) to make payments.
When the status of the transaction is in_progress , Chargebee will not retry to collect the payment or send email notifications.
To setup dunning for direct debit payments, navigate to Settings > Configure Chargebee > Dunning for Online/Offline payments > Dunning for Direct Debit Payments and here you will find the following options to configure dunning for direct debit payments in your Chargebee site:
Activate Dunning: Enables dunning for direct debit payments. If this option is disabled, Chargebee will not retry to collect payment when the initial attempt fails, and the final action will be executed.
Dunning Period: Dunning period is the time period (in days) during which an invoice will stay in dunning before the final action is carried out on the subscription and invoice.
Chargebee will retry to collect payments during the dunning period. You can configure email notifications to be sent out to the customer within the dunning period.
Final action will be executed at the end of the dunning period.
What happens to subscription when dunning period ends?: This is the final action taken on the subscription if the invoice is still unpaid when the defined Dunning Period expires. You can choose to let the subscription remain active or cancel the subscription once.
When dunning period ends, what happens to invoices?: If the invoice remains unpaid at the end of the dunning period, this option lets to choose how the invoice should be handled.
You can:
Apply dunning setting whenever 'Future' and 'Trial' subscriptions become active: If the payment fails for a subscription on the day it moves to ACTIVE state from trial state or future state, you can enable dunning for such subscriptions
Enable dunning for one-time invoices: Enabling this option will start dunning for one-time invoices as well. The final action will be carried out. However, the subscription will remain uninterrupted.
Chargebee allows you to collect payments offline via cash, checks, bank transfers etc. Dunning for offline payments allows you to send email reminders to the customer.
If offline dunning is enabled for a customer and subsequently the Auto Collection option is turned ON for them, Chargebee will stop dunning. To continue using dunning after the Auto Collection status is modified contact support .
Log in to your Chargebee site, and navigate to Settings > Configure Chargebee > Dunning for Online/Offline Payments > Dunning for Offline Payments > Enable. Once enabled you'll find the options to setup:
Dunning Period: Dunning for offline payments is initiated the day the invoice is generated.
During the dunning period, Chargebee will send email notifications configured for offline dunning.
At the end of the dunning period, if the invoice is still not paid, final action will be executed.
If offline dunning is disabled, Chargebee will not send email notification and the invoice will continue to remain in the payment due state.
When dunning period ends, what happens to subscriptions?: If the invoice is still unpaid at the end of the dunning period, you can choose to either cancel the subscription or retain it as active.
When dunning period ends, what happens to invoices?: If the invoice remains unpaid at the end of the dunning period, this option lets to choose how the invoice should be handled.
You can:
Apply dunning setting whenever 'Future' and 'Trial' subscriptions become active: If the payment fails for a subscription on the day it moves to ACTIVE state from trial or future state, you can enable dunning for such subscriptions
Enable dunning for one-time invoices: Enabling this option will start dunning for one-time invoices as well. The final action mentioned in 'When dunning period ends, what happens to invoices?' will be carried out. However, the subscription will remain uninterrupted.
If your business is based out of Europe or has a significant customer base in the EEA , it is recommended that you authenticate payments via 3D Secure. This is to ensure that you are SCA compliant and in line with the PSD2 regulation.
To be compliant, complete Chargebee's SCA checklist. On completion, you can also recover failed 3DS payments with ease.
3DS failures are hard declines and need customer intervention. Therefore, even if you have configured Custom Retry or Smart Retry in Chargebee, we will retry 3DS failures only the day before the dunning period ends, if no action has been taken by the customer throughout the dunning period.
When Auto-collection is turned ON for a subscription and the payment attempt fails, Chargebee initiates the dunning process. In the Invoices index page, you can click individual invoices to view retry related information for that invoice.
You could find the Retry Attempts log with details such as the number of retries made, when the last attempt was, the status of the attempt and the reason for failure. Further, you can click Details option present against each retry attempt to know more about it.
You can also click the Collect Now button to initiate a payment attempt, which will be listed in the Payments and Credits log. Meanwhile, if you use Collect Now with Smart Dunning enabled, it will be considered a dunning attempt and relevant information will be included in the Retry Attempts log.
Classic UI users
Instead of the Retry Attempts log, you would find the retries and payment attempts under Payments log and Activity Log.
With Smart Dunning enabled, using the Collect Now action to manually initiate a payment retry also counts as a retry. The same will be logged in the Retry Attempts details and the number of retries left will be adjusted accordingly. Although, retries left will not change in the case of using Collect Now with Custom Dunning enabled.
Chargebee will repeatedly attempt to collect payment from the customer based on your dunning configuration. However, if you would like to make an exception for your customer, or you were informed that the payment will be made on a specific date, you can Stop or Pause dunning for the invoice in Chargebee.
Classic UI users
You would find the Manage Dunning option on the action pane of a payment due invoice.
When you click Manage Dunning option, you can choose whether to Stop or Pause dunning:
If you pause dunning till a specific date, Chargebee will try and collect payment on the expected payment date.
There are two scenarios to consider when setting an expected payment date:
Expected payment date falls within the dunning period: Chargebee will put retry attempts and emails on hold until the expected payment date. On the expected payment date, Chargebee will attempt to collect the payment. If the payment doesn't go through, Chargebee will continue dunning with the remaining retries and email notifications.
Expected payment date falls after the dunning period: Chargebee will put dunning retries and email notifications on hold until the expected payment date. On the expected payment date Chargebee will attempt to collect the payment for one last time. If the payment doesn't go through, Chargebee will execute the final action set for the subscription (cancel or retain as active).
Pause Dunning will not extend the dunning period.
You can resume dunning for a dunning paused invoice at any point during the pause period. Chargebee will resume the dunning retries that remain after the pause period and not attempt retries that have elapsed during the pause period.
If you choose to stop dunning, Chargebee will neither retry to collect payments nor send dunning email notifications to your customers. Once stopped, you cannot restart dunning for the invoice again. The invoice will be marked as Not Paid. However, the subscription will remain uninterrupted.
When you stop dunning forever, you can capture an Expected Payment Date and this information will be saved for further reference.
You can configure emails to be sent out to your customers informing them about the payment failure as well as reminding them about the unpaid invoices and any necessary action to be taken at their end, if any.
The emails can be sent irrespective of the dunning attempts, which means you can send multiple emails to your customer within the dunning period.
Chargebee's Dunning v2 works exclusively with Email Notifications v2 .
Configure the email notifications for dunning by navigating to Settings > Configure Chargebee > Email Notifications > Dunning for Online Payments/Dunning for Offline Payments.
Here you'll find a list of emails that can be edited and configured before sending them to your customers during the dunning period.
You can enable the email notification, edit the content and even configure when the emails should be sent over.
Chargebee will continue to send dunning reminder emails to your customers until the invoice is paid or until the dunning period expires.
Email reminders for Direct Debit payment retries will follow the same schedule as that of online dunning reminders.
However, Chargebee will not send email reminders for Direct debit payment transactions that are in-progress. Scheduled emails will be sent if the transaction fails.
