Collections Management: #3 Tackling Payment Failures

Sam refreshed the dashboard.

"Payment failed".

Same customer. Same subscription. This is happening for the third time. He sends a usual email: "Your renewal payment failed again. Could you please check and retry?"

A couple of days passed, and there was still no response. Sam calls the customer, "Hey, could you update your card details or retry the payment?"

"Oh, yes, yes.. I'll do it today. Just remind me later this evening", the customer responded casually. That "remind me later" became multiple reminders. By the time the payment finally went through, Sam had invested more time following up on one failed transaction than on handling five smooth customers.

At that moment, he realised something important. Failed payments are a niche issue, but following up on them is the real problem.

Dunning to Rescue 

Dunning management in Zoho Billing takes over the moment a payment fails and handles payment recovery automatically. All you need to do is configure the rule for it.

Standard Dunning 

The standard dunning process enables you to configure retries for both online and offline subscriptions.

For online payments, such as card, ACH, and UPI mandates, Zoho Billing automatically retries the payment at predefined intervals, for example, on Days 1, 3, and 7. Whether the payment attempt is successful or not, the customer is eventually notified. The subscription remains active during these retries until it reaches the last and final attempt. Businesses can configure whether the subscription should remain active or be cancelled after all retries are complete.

For offline payments, such as cash or bank transfers, dunning doesn't retry. Instead, Zoho Billing automatically sends follow-up reminders at increasing urgency. Every delayed payment receives a structured and consistent notification sequence. Even for offline dunning, businesses can configure the final action to be taken on the subscription after it has been escalated to the customer.

Advanced Dunning 

Pause & Resume Dunning 

Sometimes, customers genuinely need time to update their payment details, talk to their bank, or resolve a card issue. Now, dunning can be paused for a specific invoice with the following conditions:

• The resume date must be earlier than the next billing date.

• The customer can manually resume the dunning process at any time before the scheduled resume date.

When dunning resumes:

• If the selected resume date falls between scheduled retries, the next retry will occur on the next scheduled retry date.

• If the resume date is after the final retry, Zoho Billing automatically triggers a retry within a day.

This helps businesses stay structured while giving customers time to breathe.

Stop Dunning 

At any point, you can decide to stop pursuing payment retry for an invoice under dunning. Zoho Billing allows you to,

• Stop the dunning process entirely, removing the subscription from the dunning flow.

• Mark the next retry as the final attempt for the auto-charge subscription. 

If the upcoming retry is set as the final attempt (whether successful or not), the configured action under the standard dunning rule for the final action will be triggered.

On-Demand Dunning  

Zoho Billing provides an option to send a link to update payment information when we notify customers of payment failure. This enables customers to update their information instantly without needing to navigate the interface. If a customer updates their card or fixes a billing issue and says, "Can you try charging again now?"

You don't have to wait for the next scheduled dunning to attempt the payment. Zoho Billing offers an On-demand Retry option, enabling businesses to try charging the customer immediately and directly from the invoice. This avoids waiting time and reduces the risk of failure.

Multi-Dunning Rules 

Not all customers should be treated as the same. Some require more time for grace, while others need quick closure. Zoho Billing supports multiple dunning rules, allowing businesses to assign different retry strategies to different subscriptions.

Each rule includes:

• A personalised retry schedule (number of retries + interval)

• Unique email template for communication.

• Criteria that determine when the rule applies.

• Priority order (Zoho matches rules based on priority)

You can set these criteria based on,

• Customers

• Subscriptions

• Plans or Product

• Invoice value

• Currency

• Billing Frequency.

A total of six unique rules can be created, including the default one. High-value customers can receive more retries and personalised emails, while other customers can have shorter cycles.

​
Reports Based on Dunning 

When payment fails or an invoice enters a dunning cycle, it's more about the retries than the visibility that a business should get. The Under-Risk report in Zoho Billing provides businesses with a real-time view of all transactions currently under the dunning process. It highlights which customers are at risk of churn or suspension, how long payments have been pending and which retry stage each invoice is in.

​
To track down customers who dropped off due to churn, Zoho Billing offers the Churned after Retries report. This report helps businesses re-engage with those customers, as the downgrade/churn was not intended to occur. This gives a high chance of winning them back.

​
What Dunning Management Does to Business 

With these capabilities, Zoho Billing shifts the handling of failed payments from a reactive to a proactive approach. Payment retries are automated, and customers receive notifications without requiring manual intervention. Businesses can pause, stop or define a final retry action. Sending personalised emails and providing time for customers based on their worth ensures reliability and trust.

On the whole, the automated dunning process helps businesses to keep the payment process organised and, at the same time, reduce the risk of losing control over failing payments.

 

Up Next: Collection as a Journey

 

 

• Topic Participants

• Hari | Zoho Billing

  

• Sticky Posts

• Community Learning Series | Digest #5 — September 2020

  Dear customers, We're happy to bring you the September edition of our #CommunityDigest! Keep track of your subscription KPIs right from your smartphone: Last month, we enhanced our Android mobile app to help our customers get daily updates on their business health. We got to know from a lot of customers that this has made their job much more easier because they no longer have to keep a reminder to manually check on the previous day's revenue or activations. If you have not downloaded it yet, here's

• Community Learning Series | Digest #4 - August 2020

  Dear customers, We hope you're staying safe and healthy. I'm happy to bring you the fourth edition of our #CommunityDigest with some brand-new updates from us. 1. Daily Business Updates (for Android users) The Zoho Subscriptions Android app has got a cool new update: You can now get a push notification to your smartphone that lets you know how many activations and cancellations have taken place, and what's the net revenue for the previous day. The best part is, you can tell the app when exactly you

• Community Learning Series | Digest #3 - July 2020

  Dear customers, We hope you're staying safe and healthy. We're glad to bring you the July edition of our #CommunityDigest. New community members can view our previous newsletters here. This time, we have two major updates and three interesting topics for you: 1. Zoho Subscriptions Developer Community Since the inception of Zoho Subscriptions, our team believed that the recurring billing platform we provide should be able to offer an extensive API library that empowers businesses to automate most

• Introducing: Community Learning Series | Digest #1 - May 2020

  Dear customers, We hope you are staying safe and healthy. Helping businesses manage their customer subscriptions more efficiently has always been, and always will be, our goal at Zoho Subscriptions. We strongly believe this is possible if we grow together as a community and share what we know with each other. To nurture this shared learning experience, here is our brand-new Community Learning Series! ​ Welcome to the first edition of our digest! Each edition of our community digest includes guides

• Recent Topics

• Zoho Calendar not syncing correctly with personal Google Calendar

  Coming to this forum as Zoho Calendar support team is not responding, any more. For the past 8 weeks, I have been having an issue with Zoho Calendar not syncing with my personal Google Calendar correctly. I subscribed to Zoho Calendar iCal in my personal

• MTA - BAD IP reputation by outlook/hotmail

  Messages to Microsoft email servers are bouncing back due to poor reputation. Message: 4.7.650 The mail server [136.143.188.206] has been temporarily rate limited due to IP reputation. For e-mail delivery information see https://postmaster.live.com (S775)

• Zeptomail API error 500 internal server error

  Hi Everyone, getting this eror continuously! Can anyone please guide around the same! Zeptomail API error 500 internal server error Best Regards

• Waiting multiple days to buy credits, causing my website to suffer

  So I own a fairly large website that gets a lot of registered users. I use transmail send activation emails, and also forgot password emails. I sent an email to zoho's presales team when I was only at 4K/10K emails sent, hoping to buy more credits before

• Follow up

  Hello, I sent a message 2 days ago but I don't receive any response and I cannot find my ticket here. this is the ticket: Your ticket has been created with the ticket ID 68925465 and subject "Fwd: Fishing-alert" looking forward to seeing your response.

• What's new in TransMail!

  Note: TransMail is now ZeptoMail. Click here to know more. Hello again, everyone! We've recently crossed the 6 months mark of TransMail's launch. In this time post our launch, we have been constantly working on updating our platform and adding new features

• June 2021 in TransMail!

  Note: TransMail is now ZeptoMail. Click here to know more. Hello again, everyone! Hope you and your loved ones are doing well. If you're doing less than fine, we truly hope that things only get better for you.  We've had a few updates in the past month

• TransMail has a new name—ZeptoMail!

  Tried navigating to TransMail's community forum but see a different name now? That's because TransMail has a new name. TransMail is now ZeptoMail! As we’ve grown from an internal service used mainly by other Zoho products to an up-and-coming competitor

• July 2021 in ZeptoMail!

  Note: TransMail is now ZeptoMail. Click here to know more. Hello again, everyone! Hope you and your loved ones are doing well.  We've had a few updates in the past month in ZeptoMail—some new features and some important announcements. Take look at what

• Send Email From the ZeptoMail BY API

  What is Zeptomail:- Transactional email service with reliable and fast delivery How we can Create a Connection for Zeptomail in Zoho CRM Go to the Setup Click on Connection Enter Connection Details:- Generate Consumer Key & Consumer Secret Using Zoho

• Customer email on Opencart 3

  When I place an order, 2 emails are sent: 1) administrator 2) to the user The administrator receives a beautiful letter, but the user receives a damaged letter (see screenshot). What could be the problem?

• [Announcement] Insert image from URL changes in Zoho Writer

  Hi Zoho Writer users! We'd like to let you know that we've changed the behavior of the Insert image from URL option in Zoho Writer for security reasons. Earlier behavior Once you inserted an image URL in a Writer document, the image would be fetched from

• Dynamic Signature - Record owner

  Hi everyone, I’m using Zoho Writer merge templates from Zoho CRM and have two questions: Owner signature: How can I automatically insert the CRM record owner’s signature in the merged document? I’m not sure where this signature is stored or how to reference

• Writer sing up problom

  Zoho writer sing up prolom face

• Unable to copy into a new document

  Whe I create a new Writer doc and attemp to copy and past I get this message. The only way to copy into a document is I duplicate an existing document, erase the text and save it under a different name and then paste the information. Not ideal. Can you

• [Webinar] Live demos and user Q&A with Zoho Writer product experts

  Join us on June 12, 2025 for live demos based on your use cases and real-world scenarios raised via form. This is also an opportunity to get your questions answered directly by product experts from the Zoho Writer team. Webinar agenda Live demos based

• Zoho Writer's built-in citation and bibliography generator

  Hey researchers and writers! Do you manually format citations and bibliographies, spending hours jumping between apps and tabs? If so, then check out Zoho Writer's built-in "Citations and Bibliography" feature. Imagine you're writing a thesis on the future

• Single and group checkboxes in Zoho Writer's fillable forms

  Hey Writer Fam, Are you making the most out of single and group checkboxes in fillable forms in Zoho Writer? Here is a handy tip to optimize your use of checkboxes, both single and group, and enhance your data collection process. Single checkboxes: Single

• Collaborate efficiently with Zoho Writer's track changes feature

  Hi Zoho Writer Community, Zoho Writer's track changes feature is a simple, built-in solution that helps you and your team work together efficiently. Instead of juggling multiple versions of a document or building up a long email chain of comments, each

• Zoho Writer's WordPress extensions

  Hey Zoho Writer users! Say goodbye to all your WordPress content publishing woes with Zoho Writer's WordPress extensions. Publish content with all your formatting and images, republish content when you update a document, and more—from a single window

• Time-saving table hacks

  Hey Zoho Writer Community, Do you find yourself using a lot of tables in your documents? We're here to share some of our time-saving hacks that will help you work more efficiently, organize your data, and make your documents look neat and professional.

• Automating document approval and signing with Zoho Writer and Zoho Sign

  Hey Zoho Writer Community! Here's another automation tip to make your processes more efficient! Question: Can I send a document for client approval first, then automatically send it for signing with Zoho Sign if they approve? Since it's the same person

• Customization hacks in Zoho Writer - Part 2

  Hey community, We're back with some more tricks to personalize your documents, save time, and get in the zone when you work in Writer. Check out part 1 of this post if you haven't already. Let's dive right in! Document ruler units Imagine you're creating

• Simplify your tax calculations with Zoho Writer

  Hello Zoho Writer Community! Tax season can be stressful, but with Zoho Writer, managing your income tax calculations becomes straightforward and efficient. Here’s an example of how you can use the tables and formulae of Zoho Writer to calculate income

• Enhance document navigation with headings and TOC

  Hey Zoho Writer Community! We're back with some useful features in Zoho Writer that can simplify your document creation and navigation process. Let's dive right in! Check out our video on how to make the most of Zoho Writer's heading and table of contents

• Use and download in PDF format of Zoho wirter Merge template using deluge

  Hello Zoho Developers. Here is some information about Zoho Writer. Writer is not just another online word processor, it's a powerful tool for editing, collaboration, and publishing. Even with its wide range of features, Writer's pared-down user interface

• Customization hacks in Zoho Writer - Part 3

  Hello everyone, Welcome back to Part 3 of our customization tips in Zoho Writer! In this third installment, we'll be diving into some essential customization settings that can enhance your document creation experience. Sender email address in mail merge

• Daytime saving timezones messing up writer pdf

  Hi, I need help for something I can't figure out. I created a Form to collect data and it is set up with my current Daylight Saving Time (GMT-3). This form is used to generate a contract (pdf Writer) with dates from an event that is being held in 4 months

• Issue with locked content in Writer

  Hi, I have seen the documentation which outlines how to lock specific content within a Writer document so that it can't be modified by collaborators, but I have come across an issue. When the editor locks a paragraph for example, then a collaborator can't

• Deprecation of certain URL patterns for published Zoho Writer documents

  Hi Zoho Writer users! We'd like to let you know that we have deprecated certain URL patterns for published and embedded documents in Zoho Writer due to security reasons. If the published or embedded documents are in any of these URL patterns, then their

• Using Mail Merge Template to Print Documents with One Subform Record's Fields per Document

  Hello, We have a Mail Merge template created in Zoho Writer which is not able to perform the functionality which is currently required to automate the documentation task portion of our process. The CRM module we are primarily using is based on a "Loans"

• Problem with Writer and Workdrive

  Hi team, I’m the super admin for our Zoho One org. WorkDrive is active, and Zoho Docs is deprecated for our org. However, Zoho Writer cannot connect to WorkDrive at all — we’ve cleared cache, tried incognito, and restarted several times. I was able to

• Set to Review for all

  We are testing the use of Writer as part of an internal review process for statement of work documents and have found that when the document is changed from Compose to Review by one person, that is not reflected for all others who view the document. Is

• I’ve noticed that Zoho Sheet currently doesn’t have a feature similar to the QUERY formula in Google Sheets or Power Query in Microsoft Excel.

  These tools are extremely helpful for: Filtering and extracting data using simple SQL-like queries Combining or transforming data from multiple sheets or tables Creating dynamic reports without using complex formulas Having a Query-like function in Zoho

• stock

  bom/bse : stock details or price =STOCK(C14;"price") not showing issue is #N/A! kindly resolve this problem

• SOME FEATURES ARE NOT IN THE ZOHO SHEET IN COMPARISION TO ZOHO SHEET

  TO ZOHO sir/maam with due to respect i want to say that i am using ZOHO tool which is spreadsheet i want to say that some features are not there in zoho sheet as comparison to MS EXCEL like advance filter and other Features which should be there in ZOHO

• Zoho sheet for desktop

  Hi is zoho sheets available for desktop version for windows

• Tip #18: 6 Trendlines and when to use them in your spreadsheet data?

  Charts are a great tool for visualizing and interpreting large chunks of data in spreadsheets. Zoho Sheet offers you 35+ chart options, along with AI-powered chart recommendations based on the data set you select. There are various chart elements that

• Perform customized calculations with the new LAMBDA functions!

  We released the LAMBDA function in Zoho Sheet in 2021, enabling customized calculations inside predefined functions. Now, we're extending LAMBDA's capabilities with six new functions. Each of these functions applies LAMBDA to the given input, performs

• Tip #17: Easily share spreadsheets with non-Zoho account users

  With efficient, collaboration-friendly options, Zoho Sheet is a popular choice among users. Sheet's external share links help you collaborate more effectively by sharing your spreadsheets with anyone outside your organization, including users who do not

• Next Page