Automatic payments and dunning¶

A contract can charge its recurring invoices automatically against a stored payment method, and retry on a fixed schedule when a charge is declined. It can also be collected by SEPA direct debit through your bank.

Setting up automatic charging¶

Configure and enable a payment provider that supports saving payment methods (Online payments).
Let the customer save a payment method — a card or a SEPA mandate held by the provider — for example from the customer portal.
Open the contract and select that method in the Payment Token field. Only tokens belonging to the contract’s customer are offered.
Set Invoice Posting to Post automatically.

From then on, every recurring invoice generated for that contract is posted and charged off-session.

Important

A charge is only treated as successful when the payment transaction actually reports Authorized or Done. A provider that declines an off-session payment does not raise an error, so the absence of an error is never taken as a payment.

Dunning¶

Every charge attempt is recorded as a dunning attempt on the contract’s Dunning Attempts tab, with its attempt number, timestamp, state, decline code and reason.

Attempt state	Meaning
Pending	The charge is under way, or the provider has not answered yet. For a contract collected by SEPA direct debit, the invoice is waiting for a remittance, or for the bank statement to be reconciled.
Success	The invoice was paid.
Soft Decline (retry)	The charge failed and a retry is scheduled at Next Retry At.
Hard Decline (stop)	No further retry is made.

The retry cadence is fixed: after the first failure the charge is retried after 1, 3, 7 and 14 days. When those four retries are exhausted, the attempt becomes a Hard Decline.

The contract’s Dunning State summarises where it stands: OK, Retry pending or Hard decline. The Payment Issue filter on the contract list finds the contracts that need attention.

screenshot: sales-subscriptions-dunning-attempts

menu: Subscriptions ‣ Contracts ‣ (a contract) ‣ Dunning Attempts
shows: The Dunning Attempts tab of a contract with three attempts: attempt number, attempted-at timestamp, state badge, decline reason and next retry date.
highlight: The state badges and the Next Retry At column (red frame).
data: Contract SUB/2026/0012; one success, one soft decline with a retry scheduled.
module: subscription
notes: English UI, light theme, 1440px width, crop to the notebook. Use throw-away payment data.

Collecting by SEPA direct debit¶

A contract can also be collected by SEPA direct debit through your bank, without card or online payment provider. The recurring invoices are gathered in collection remittances (debit orders), you upload the file to your bank, and the invoice is settled when the debit shows up on the bank statement. It is the usual way to collect subscriptions of Spanish customers.

Note

The feature is provided by the Subscriptions - SEPA Direct Debit module, installed automatically when the Subscriptions, Account Banking SEPA Direct Debit and Account Payment Order Return modules are installed.

Set up the contract¶

The customer needs a valid SEPA mandate. The customer can sign it online.
Create a contract for the customer. The first valid mandate of the customer is proposed in SEPA Mandate, and, if the customer’s payment mode uses SEPA Direct Debit for customers, it is proposed in Direct Debit Payment Mode.
Check both fields. The payment mode must be a direct debit mode of the contract’s company, and the mandate a valid mandate of the customer (or of one of its contacts). You need both or none: saving only one stops with SEPA direct debit needs both a direct debit payment mode and a mandate.
Set Invoice Posting as usual.

When a mandate is selected, the Payment Token field is hidden: the card path is not used for this contract. The invoices generated for the contract carry the payment mode and the mandate.

screenshot: sales-subscriptions-sepa-contract

menu: Subscriptions ‣ Contracts ‣ (a contract)
shows: The Payment group of a contract with the Direct Debit Payment Mode "Collection remittance (SEPA) - CaixaBank" and the SEPA Mandate reference filled in, and no Payment Token field.
highlight: The Direct Debit Payment Mode and SEPA Mandate fields (red frame).
data: Contract SUB/2026/0012 for a customer with a valid SEPA mandate.
module: subscription_sepa_direct_debit
notes: English UI, light theme, 1440px width, crop to the Payment group.

Remittance settings¶

Go to Accounting ‣ Configuration ‣ Settings and scroll to the SEPA/PAIN section, Subscription remittances:

Setting	Description
Remittance Days	Days of the month, separated by commas (for example `1,15`), on which the invoices to collect are gathered into a draft debit order. Leave it empty to add each invoice to the draft debit order as soon as it is posted. A day that does not exist in a month (29 to 31) is skipped that month.
Collect Invoices Due Within (Days)	Only the invoices due up to this number of days after the remittance day (7 by default) are collected.
Generate the Remittance File	Also confirm the draft debit order and generate its file. The file still has to be uploaded to the bank by hand.
Remittance Responsible	The user who receives the to-do Subscription remittance ready: upload it to the bank.

How an invoice is collected¶

The invoice is posted, automatically or by hand (if Invoice Posting is Leave as draft for review, the invoice enters the collection when you post it). A dunning attempt in the state Pending is created and the invoice waits for the remittance.
The invoice goes into a debit order. Without remittance days, it is added at once to the draft debit order of the payment mode (a new one is created when none is open). With remittance days, the daily scheduled action gathers, on those days, the posted invoices whose last attempt is pending, that are not in an active order yet and are due within the lead time, into draft debit orders. A note is posted on the order, and the responsible user gets the to-do.
You upload the file. Open the debit order, confirm it and generate the file (unless Generate the Remittance File did it), upload the file to your bank and click File Successfully Uploaded. The invoices are In Payment.
The attempt succeeds when the invoice is paid. After you import and reconcile the bank statement, the scheduled action sets the attempt to Success and the contract’s Dunning State back to OK. Uploading the file is not enough: the attempt stays Pending until the debit is reconciled.

Important

The scheduled action Subscription: SEPA Direct Debit Remittance is delivered inactive. Enable it in every case, even without remittance days: it also settles the attempts of the paid invoices.

When the bank returns a debit¶

Confirm the payment return (typed or imported from the report of the bank): the return reason is recorded as the decline code of the attempt of each invoice of a SEPA contract, and the dunning applies:

soft return (for example AM04, insufficient funds): the attempt becomes Soft Decline (retry), and the invoice is collected again after 1, 3, 7 and 14 days as described above: the scheduled action Subscription: Dunning Retry creates a new attempt, and the invoice goes into a new debit order, at once or on the next remittance day. After the fourth retry the attempt becomes a Hard Decline;
hard return (for example MD01, no mandate, AC04, closed account, or MD06, refund requested by the customer): the retries stop at once. The attempt becomes Hard Decline (stop), the contract’s Dunning State becomes Hard decline and the accountant gets the high-priority alert. Review the mandate with the customer before you collect again.

Whether a return is soft or hard is read from the Return Type of the return reason when it is set (the Spanish localization sets it, see Spanish remittances). Otherwise, these codes are treated as hard: AC01, AC04, AC06, AC13, AG01, AG02, AM05, BE05, CNOR, CUST, DNOR, DUPL, FF01, MD01, MD02, MD06, MD07, MS02, RC01, RR01, RR02, RR03, RR04 and SL01. Any other code, or a return without reason, is soft.

Scheduled actions¶

Three scheduled actions support automatic payments. They are delivered inactive and must be enabled in Settings ‣ Technical ‣ Automation ‣ Scheduled Actions:

Subscription: Dunning Retry — every 4 hours; re-attempts the charges whose retry date has passed.
Subscription: SEPA Direct Debit Remittance — daily; gathers the invoices collected by SEPA direct debit into debit orders and sets the attempts of the paid invoices to Success.
Subscription: Emit Alerts — daily; raises a to-do activity for the salesperson when a trial ends within three days, and a high-priority activity for the accountant on a hard decline.