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 Hara Sudhan. S

  

• 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

• Automated entries past the current month in a calendar report

  Hi all, I have an automation problem. I have a form which on successfull entry adds either 5 or 10 more of these entries with a slight change so our customers can see it throug a calendar report on the webiste. The entry put in manually shows up perfectly

• Billing Status Update

  Hello Latha, I’m working on a new automation (deluge) to fulfill one of our requirements. In this automation, there is a step to update the Work Order billing status from “Not Yet Invoiced” to “Non-Billable.” I tried to find the API information relevant

• What's New in Zoho POS - April 2026

  Hello everyone, Welcome to Zoho POS’s monthly update, where we share our latest feature updates, enhancements, events, and more. Let’s take a look at how April went. Access and manage other web applications in Zoho POS with Web Tabs You can now access

• Many Zoho POS Issues

  Can not apply credits from a customers account as a form of payment. It shows that you can but there is a bug that does not execute the action. Reported many times. Can not view Sessions from Zoho POS WebView, throws a JQUERY error Workflows and actions

• HOW I CAN GET BETA VERSION FOT TESTING

  HI. ZOHO I AM INTERESTED IN YOUR BETA SOFTWARE TO EXPERIENCE NEW FEATURES.

• Multiple EAN code for product

  option to add multiple EAN code for product???

• Issue adding/changing mobile number for OTP

  Hi Zoho Community, I’m trying to add or change my mobile number, but I keep getting this error: “We’re unable to send OTP to this mobile number. Please contact support-as@eu.zohocorp.com” Because of this, I can’t verify my number or continue the setup.

• Zoho Payroll Canada does not work

  We submitted payroll within the required timelines. The money was withdrawn from our account and our employees have not been paid. Impossible to get a hold of someone at Zoho. I can’t believe the company operates like this. What a bloody disgrace. Shame

• Enhance Appointment Buffers in Zoho Bookings

  There was previously a long-standing feature request related to enhancing the way appointment buffers work in Zoho Bookings, but it looks like the original post has been deleted. I am therefore adding a new request that Zoho Bookings adjust how appointment

• Functionality based URL to find records due today or in the next week

  I need to construct a URL to filter a view to records where the evaluation is due soon (i.e. in the next 7 days). To me, that includes today, but Zoho has a different opinion. Zoho defines 39 as NEXT_7_DAYS but this gives unexpected results. https://creatorapp.zoho.eu/...#Report:My_Evaluations?Evaluation_due_by_op=39

• Allow customers to choose meeting venue and meeting duration on booking page

  My business primarily involves one-to-one meetings with my clients. Given the hybrid-work world we now find ourselves in, these meetings can take several forms (which I think of as the meeting "venue"): In-person Zoom Phone call I currently handle these

• Event Time Zone in meeting invites are confusing users

  When sending calendar invites to internal and external users, the first section "Event Time Zone" is confusing people and they are automatically declining events. Can this section please be removed??? It already shows the correct time zone next to the

• Forwarding without verification

  Hi, I use Tripit to keep track of all my business travel. I've recently moved over to Zoho and wanted to set up a forwarding rule to send various travel confirmation emails automatically to plans@tripit.com Obviously this is an email address I don't control,

• Filter by user in Pivot Chart

  I have a Pivot chart where the data should be filtered by user. The user enters the system and should see only the data that correspond to it. Can anyone help me?

• All new Address Field in Zoho CRM: maintain structured and accurate address inputs

  Availability Update: 29 September 2025: It's currently available for all new sign-ups and for existing Zoho CRM orgs which are in the Professional edition exclusively for IN DC users. 2 March 2026: Available to users in all DCs except US and EU DC. 24

• Whatsapp Limitation Questions

  Good day, I would like to find out about the functionality or possibility of all the below points within the Zoho/WhatsApp integration. Will WhatsApp buttons ever be possible in the future? Will WhatsApp Re-directs to different users be possible based

• Internal mails on our company domain (managed by Zoho) do not get delivered

  Hi last week Thursday and Friday a colleague had sent me two emails which did not show up at all in my inbox, spam or anywhere else. What this a problem with Zoho mail in general or did this affect just us? From the forum is reads like many problems had

• #2 The Tax Talk Nobody Wants to Have

  "We are also able to manage our GST invoices without worrying about compliance issues. With Zoho Invoice, we are happy, our tax consultant is happy, and so are our customers," rejoices Shivprateek Habib, Partner, Flutterboots Services LLP. That's usually

• Bulk upload images and specifications to products

  Hi, Many users have asked this over the years and I am also asking the same. Is there any way in which we can bulk upload product (variant) images and product specifications. The current way to upload/select image for every variant is too cumbersome.

• Workflows fail silently in Zoho CRM and there is no native way to know

  Workflow automation is honestly one of the biggest reasons my clients choose Zoho. But there is one problem I keep running into across almost every implementation. When a workflow fails, nobody finds out. Email alerts hit daily limits and just stop. Custom

• Zoho Commerce and Third-party shipping (MachShip) API integration

  We are implementing a third-party shipping (MachShip) API integration for our Zoho Commerce store and have made significant progress. However, we need guidance on a specific technical challenge. Current Challenge: We need to get the customer input to

• Is there a way to update bounce domain after verification process has started

  Hi Zeptomail Team, I've created a domain and we did not update the bounce domain to our custom record... the validation has already started and I am now unable to update the bounce domain. Is there any way to get this updated on the backend without deleting

• Pre-orders at Zoho Commerce

  We plan to have regular producs that are avaliable for purchase now and we plan to have products that will be avaliable in 2-4 weeks. How we can take the pre-orders for these products? We need to take the money for the product now, but the delivery will

• How to Customize the Member Portal Login Page?

  Hi everyone, I am currently using the default member portal login page for Zoho Commerce, but I feel it looks quite plain and doesn’t align well with my brand's style. I would like to make it more visually appealing, possibly by: Adding custom colors

• Picklist values out-of-date in Campaigns

  Hi I use a CRM (Global) picklist set of values for my field "Connection Strength" (see screenshot 1). . I use Campaigns to follow-up and change the Connection Strength value depending on their stage. The picklist values that appear in the dropdown for

• Refering cell from other sheet

  Hi, If we want to refer any cell in the same sheet its very easy, like suppose if I want to refer cell A2  in P7 I just need to type =A2 in P7, similarly how can I refer a cell present in different sheet ( I mean refer cell A2 from Sheet1 into Sheet2) Thanks

• How to keep track of bags, cans, drums of inventory?

  We buy and sell products that are packaged in bags 🛍️, cans🥫, drums🛢️, etc. with batch numbers. When we get a shipment of one of the products, how do we track we received (say) 10 cans each of 5L of a product and maybe we received 10 cans of another

• Global/Overall Reports & Dashboards in Zoho Sprints

  Hi, Do we have an option to refer Global Level Reports & Dashboards in Zoho Sprints? We could see that we have Project specific Reports & Dashboards inside every Project. However, for a management level we want Reports & Dashboards visibility at a Global

• Important Update: New Fields Addition in Zoho Sprints Integration

  We'd like to inform you of an upcoming update to the 'Timesheets' module in the Zoho Sprints integration from June 3, 2026. To enhance time tracking and reporting accuracy for the Zoho Sprints integration, three new fields - Log Type, Meeting ID, Release

• Custom Buttons & Links Now Supported in Portals

  We’ve just made portals in Zoho Recruit more powerful and customizable than ever! You can now bring the power of Custom Buttons and Links to your Candidate, Client, Vendor, and Custom Portals, enabling portal users to take direct action without recruiter

• Packaged Weight And Dimensions

  Hello, we have item weight and dimensions, please add packaged weight and dimensions. Thank you

• Nome do Agente não aparece nas conversas do whatsapp para o nosso cliente

  Nome do Agente não aparece nas conversas do whatsapp para o nosso cliente! Isso é ruim pois so,os em 5 agentes e o cliente fica sem saber com quem ele está falando, pois tentei procurar configurações que pudessem ter esta opção, mas até então não encontrei.

• Marketing Plus : quatre ans à réinventer la simplicité des opérations marketing

  Pourquoi et comment ? Il y a exactement quatre ans, nous avons démarré simplement, avec une seule vision: unifier et simplifier les opérations marketing pour les équipes marketing de tous les secteurs. Chez Zoho, nous proposons des outils dédiés à chaque

• hide resolution from help centre

  to my surprise, i just found out that the resolution text is public in the helpcenter, even if 'notify customer' is off. is there a workaround to that? how do others deal with this? How zoho support does this and I don't think its used by Zoho in the first place. the resolution is meant to be private, not public

• Zoho Desk - Event Calendar View

  Hi Desk team, Are there any plans to introduce a calendar or timeline view for Events in Zoho Desk? It would be very helpful if we could see Events visually in a calendar and/or timeline. This is very helpful when desk side support activities need to

• Pasting Images in Zoho Desk ignores cursor location

  My team has reported an issue which started recently where when we paste an image into a new or existing reply or comment, the pasted image seems to ignore the current cursor location instead paste itself at the last character present in the reply/comment,

• Enrich your contact and company details automatically using the Data Enrichment topping

  Greetings, I hope you're all doing well. We're happy to announce the latest topping we've added to Bigin: The Data Enrichment topping, powered by WebAmigo. This topping helps you automatically enhance your contact and company records in Bigin. By leveraging

• Financial manger

  why is transaction locking for zoho I Can't closing period

• API usage

  My application has bad implementation and code that is resulting in very high API usage. This is my first time experiencing something like this. Does anyone know how I can troubleshoot and fix this?

• Disabled page

  Hello, When I try to to run Inventory Valuation Summary and FIFO Cost Lot Tracking reports, I get This page is disabled error. I tried everything in settings, cant find the settings to enable. Help me.

• Next Page