Retrying failed payments (GoCardless for Xero)
Payments can fail for a number of reasons, the most common one being that the customer did not have the funds available. If a payment fails GoCardless will notify you via email. The invoice will appear in the Needs attention section of your invoices tab and be marked as unpaid in Xero.
Using Success+, GoCardless can intelligently retry payments on your behalf automatically. For more information on this and how to get set up, please see our Intelligent retries article. Intelligent retries are currently only available for Direct Debit invoices.
To manually retry failed payments, you can follow the steps below:
- Go to Invoices and filter the All invoices option to Needs attention
- You'll see a Manage button in the Actions column for each failed invoice.
- Click the button to see available payment retry options.
The following payment retry methods are available:
- Retry with Direct Debit: We'll automatically attempt to collect the outstanding amount from the customer's existing mandate on the next working day.
- Retry with Pay by Bank: We'll email the customer a one-off payment request so they can pay directly from their bank, with instant confirmation once they do.
- Split into instalments: Collect the balance across several smaller payments instead of one lump sum. Learn more about instalment schedules.
If the retry option does not appear, check that the customer has an active mandate in place. It's possible the customer has cancelled their mandate, and you'll need to ask them to complete a new authorisation form before any further Direct Debit payments can be collected from them.
For more information on failed payments, please read this article.