Summary
Payment Retry Terms allow for actions to execute after an attempt to collect payment fails. Actions allow various processes to take place, for instance sending a credit card failure notice to the customer informing them of the issue, suspending an account a specified number of days after the payment failure date, etc. Multiple actions can be performed on the same date if needed. Payment Retry Terms are similar to Payment Terms, but are triggered based on payment processing failure dates and not invoice overdue dates.
Order of Operations
Payment Retry terms are triggered during a Bill Run, as long as the Bill Run setting 'Run Payment Retry Terms' is enabled. Payment Retry Terms will be executed by the Bill Run prior to attempting to bill customers. This approach ensures that retry term actions will take effect before billing occurs, e.g. charge a late fee or deactivate an account for overdue payment. If billing were to occur first a payment may succeed and prevent a late fee from being applied to an account or an account which should be canceled due to late payment would instead be billed before the retry term triggered the cancelation.
If a valid payment is processed, retry terms are reset for the related account and they will process as normal during a bill run. Likewise, if payment retry processes an account and is able to process the card, the process is reset as well.
Adding Payment Retry Terms
Navigate to Setup / Accounts / Credit Ratings
Select the appropriate Credit Rating from the list which you would like to add Payment Retry Terms to
Click the Add button on the right below the Payment Retry Terms section
Enter your desired configuration (red fields are required):
Days Since First Decline - enter a numerical value in this field. This will represent the number of days since payment was declined. This value should be 1 or greater (e.g. payment should be overdue for at least one day). Setting up additional retry terms permits you to execute multiple actions all at once or over a period of time (at 5 days perform X action, at 10 days perform Y action, etc.)
Action - available options are populated from your Actions table. Select the appropriate option for the drop down list (e.g. 'Charge Late Fee', 'Send Email', etc.). If your script (Action) requires additional information to be entered (via a profile question) this information will be displayed under a component section of the individual retry term
Active - Active means the action is enabled, i.e. it will execute provided bill runs are configured with the 'Run Payment Retry Terms' setting enabled. You can disable individual actions as needed without the need to delete a configured payment retry term to prevent specific actions from firing
Click Save to return to the Credit Ratings setup screen or Save/New to continue setting up additional retry terms for this credit rating
REMEMBER: Once all payment retry terms have been configured and set to Active, make sure that you have the 'Run Payment Retry Terms' options enabled on your Bill Runs (shown below).
Default Payment Retry Term Actions
Charge late fee
Open ticket
Send email
Set user status
Each of these Actions have different profile questions whose details will be displayed under the Components section of each Payment Retry Term (shown in the image below).
Charge Late Fee
Enter a whole number for the value (i.e. 5 = 5%).
Open Ticket
Populate the fields above with the ticket values you desire. See the Ticket Overview article for descriptions of the above fields.
Send Email
Select the email message to send to the user when the 'days since first decline' value is reached. Click the plus icon to add a new message on the fly. For more information on creating email messages see the Bulk Emailing article.
Set User Status
Enter the User/Account Status you wish to switch the user to when the 'days since first decline' value is reached. For instance 'Disabled'. If you need to add or edit account statuses in EngageIP see the Managing Account Statuses article for instructions.
Checklist for Payment Retry Terms and Payment Terms
Ensure that the correct payment method is associated with the account. In the case of Payment Retry Terms; Credit Card
In the case that you need to send an email to a contact on the account (Billing, Administrative, etc.) ensure that the appropriate contact type has "Email Contact" checked
The Profile Question associated to the Action of "Email" should have no spaces in the title
Ensure that the Profile Question has the following fields checked/complete:
Name
Question
REQUIRED (checked)
ENTERED and DATA TYPE : Text
Ensure the email message fields are properly populated:
Name
Subject
Body
FROM Name
FROM Address
CONTACT TYPE (the Customer contact that will receive the email)
Ensure that when configuring a Bill Run, ensure the following conditions are met:
The Payment Methods you are charging are checked off in the Bill Run configuration (i.e. Credit Card, E Check Token, Credit Card Token, ACH)
If you have Payment Terms associated to an account: Run Payment Term is checked
If you have Payment Retry Terms associated to an account : Run Payment Retry Terms is checked
When configuring the order in which actions will take place in Payment Terms and Payment Retry Terms use a value greater than zero, e.g. 1 or greater 'days since first decline', zero days would not be 'overdue'
When configuring a Card Processor under the Setup page ensure that TEST MODE is unchecked after you have finished testing Credit Card processing
Alert: TEST MODE should only be modified on a Dev/Test environment so that live users/customers are not impacted