Recurring plan statuses and failed payments

Recurring plans live under Recurring Plans. Each one has a status that tells you whether it is charging normally, struggling, or finished.

The four statuses

Active. The plan is charging on schedule. Nothing to do.

Failing. At least one charge has been declined. The plan is still live and will retry on its own. Under the status you will see how far through the retries it is: Attempt 1 of 3, Attempt 2 of 3, or Suspends on next failure.

Paused. No charges are being attempted. A plan lands here either because an admin paused it, or because it ran out of retries and Donately suspended it. The two look identical in the list, so check the plan's activity to tell them apart.

Cancelled. Finished, by an admin or by the donor. No further charges.

The list has saved views for Active, Failing and Paused, which is the quickest way to see what needs attention.

One quirk to expect if you work with exports: the CSV carries the stored value rather than the display label, so a Failing plan exports as past_due.

What happens when a card is declined

Donately retries a failed charge up to three times. After the third failure, the next attempt suspends the plan and no further charges are made until something changes.

So a plan showing Attempt 2 of 3 has one retry left, and one showing Suspends on next failure is on its last chance.

Open a plan and look at Plan Activity for the detail. Each failure is listed, and Donately tells you what kind of problem it is:

• Temporary, no action needed yet. A transient decline that may well succeed on retry.
• The donor needs to update their payment details. Expired card, insufficient funds, and similar. This one needs the donor.
• This plan cannot charge again as it stands. The card is gone or permanently blocked. Donately is explicit that the remaining retries cannot succeed and the donor has to set the plan up again.
• We're already looking into this one. A problem on our side.

That prognosis is the useful bit. It tells you whether to wait, to contact the donor, or to stop chasing.

Telling donors their payment failed

Donately does not email the donor when a charge fails. Set this up in Stripe, which does it automatically and well:

1. Sign in to your Stripe dashboard.
2. Go to the revenue recovery email settings.
3. Enable sending emails when card payments fail.

Stripe then emails the donor after each failed payment, prompting them to fix it, which resolves most failures without you doing anything.

Getting told yourself

Turn on the Recurring donation failed notification so you find out without watching the list. It is a daily digest, and every plan includes it. See Admin notifications.

What you can do to a plan

Open a plan for its Actions:

• Edit Plan changes the amount, the frequency, an end date, the campaign or fundraiser, the on-behalf-of name, the comment, anonymity, and whether receipts are sent.
• Update Card replaces the card on file. The new card is used from the next billing date. Card details go straight to Stripe and never touch Donately's servers. This is unavailable for plans paid by ACH, PayPal or anything else that does not support a self-service card change.
• Change Billing Day moves the plan to a different day of the month, with a Last day of month option. Donately previews the new next-charge date and warns you if the change would charge the donor twice in quick succession, which is the mistake most people make here.
• Pause Plan stops charges and keeps everything else. It applies immediately, with no confirmation, so be deliberate.
• Activate Plan restarts a paused or cancelled plan.
• Cancel Plan stops all future charges. Donately confirms with the donor's name and amount, and warns that it cannot be undone.

You can also change status in bulk: select plans in the list, then Change status.

There is no "charge now" button. You cannot force a retry from the dashboard. If a donor has fixed their card, update it on the plan and the next scheduled charge will use it.

You cannot switch between a donor's saved cards. The Payment methods on file card shows which one the next charge will use, but it is read-only. Use Update Card to put a new one on.

Importing plans from another platform

Migrating live recurring gifts is a separate, support-assisted process. See Import active recurring donations.