Summary
When a Direct Debit membership payment fails, FLOW can automatically retry collecting the payment before progressing the membership through your cancellation process.
The number of retry attempts is controlled by the Payment Retry Attempts setting within the System Configuration module.
-
Default value:
2 -
Set to
0: No retry attempts will be made. After the initial failed collection, the membership will follow your normal cancellation process.
You can adjust this setting to suit your organisation's payment collection policy.
How the Collection Process Works
Membership fees are typically generated and submitted to GoCardless approximately 10 working days before the billing date. The payment request remains pending until the scheduled collection date.
Within the payment history, you will see two important dates:
- Attempted At – The date FLOW generated and submitted the payment request to GoCardless.
- Updated At – The date GoCardless returned the outcome of the payment (usually the next working day after the scheduled collection date).
Successful Payment Example
Billing Date: 1st of the month
In a successful collection:
- The payment request is created and sent to GoCardless around 10 working days before the billing date.
- The Attempted At column shows when the request was submitted.
- The Updated At column shows the payment result, which is typically one working day after the billing date.
Failed Payment Example
Billing Date: 1st of the month
If the payment fails (for example, due to insufficient funds or a cancelled mandate):
- GoCardless returns a failed status, typically one working day after the billing date. This date appears in the Updated At column.
- On the same day, FLOW automatically submits a new payment request to GoCardless (provided retry attempts remain).
- The first retry is therefore scheduled immediately after the first failure.
- If that retry also fails, it generally takes 4–5 working days for GoCardless to return the failed status to FLOW.
- Once FLOW receives the failed result, it submits the next retry attempt (if additional retries are configured).
This process continues until:
- the payment is collected successfully,
- all configured retry attempts have been used, or
- the membership enters your cancellation process.
Payment Retry Timeline
The following example assumes the retry setting is configured to 2.
| Event | Approximate Timing |
|---|---|
| Payment request sent to GoCardless | 10 working days before billing date |
| Initial collection attempt | Billing date |
| Failure returned to FLOW | 1 working day later |
| First retry submitted | Same day the failure is received |
| Second failure returned | Approximately 4–5 working days later |
| Second retry submitted | Same day the second failure is received |
Note: The timing of subsequent retries depends on how quickly GoCardless returns the payment status to FLOW.
Payments Below £1
GoCardless cannot collect Direct Debit payments below £1.
If the outstanding balance is less than £1 (for example, after applying account credit or a pro-rata adjustment), FLOW will automatically defer the amount until a future billing cycle when the total outstanding balance reaches at least £1.
Example
A customer owes £19.71 but has £18.92 account credit.
Outstanding amount to collect:
£19.71 − £18.92 = £0.79
Because £0.79 is below the GoCardless minimum collection amount, no Direct Debit is submitted.
Instead:
- The £0.79 is carried forward to the next billing period.
- If the total amount due is still below £1, it will continue to roll forward.
- Once the outstanding balance reaches £1 or more, FLOW will include the deferred amount in the next Direct Debit collection.