Failed Renewal Process

Topic

Renewals

For

Front Office Team

Read Time

~5 minutes

The Failed Renewal workflow is designed to protect your patients and your practice. Although it involves a bit of manual review, it is intentionally structured this way to ensure billing accuracy, prevent accidental overcharges, and give your team full control before billing resumes.

Why we use a manual review process

We intentionally require staff review before a failed renewal can continue. This safeguards your practice by:

1. Preventing overcharges. Automated retrying or auto-resuming could trigger multiple charges for members who are significantly past due.
2. Maintaining accurate billing. Many situations require staff adjustments, such as updating dates, collecting partial payments, or modifying the subscription, before normal billing should continue.

In short, the manual process is a safety mechanism that protects both the practice and the patient.

What happens when a renewal fails

When the system attempts to bill a renewal and the payment is declined, the following steps occur automatically:

• The membership status changes to Renewal Failed.
• The scheduler pauses all future renewal attempts.
• The office is prompted to review the failure via the Review Failed Renewal link in the dashboard, or the red Renewal Failed button on the member’s subscription page.
• Staff see a clear explanation of the failure reason: expired card, insufficient funds, network error, invalid token, and so on.

In most cases, a staff member must manually review the failed renewal before billing can safely resume.

How failed renewals resume

There are two ways billing may resume after a renewal fails.

Automatic resume (within 90 days past due)

If a member updates their card through the secure click-to-update link and the subscription is less than 90 days overdue, the system will:

• Automatically clear the failed status
• Immediately retry the charge
• Resume normal recurring billing if the charge is successful

This allows recent declines to recover quickly without staff intervention.

Manual resume (90+ days past due)

If a subscription is 90 days or more past due, it will always require manual staff review before billing resumes. This prevents unintended multiple charges from processing all at once and ensures proper handling of long-overdue balances.

How to manually clear a failed renewal

After reviewing the failure reason:

1. Make any necessary updates (payment method, dates, subscription terms).
2. Click Clear Failed Status to tell the system it is safe to resume.
3. Once cleared, the scheduler will immediately attempt to process all past-due renewals, bringing the membership current.

Caution before clearing

If a member is significantly past due, clearing the status may trigger multiple charges at once. See Scenario 2 below for how to manage this safely.

Common scenarios and how to handle them

Scenario 1: The member updates their payment method

The member updates their card online or in-office.

• If the subscription is less than 90 days overdue, the failed status clears automatically, the system retries the charge, and billing resumes as normal.
• If the subscription is 90+ days overdue, the subscription remains in Renewal Failed and billing does not resume automatically.

For 90+ day cases, your team should:

1. Open the Review Failed Renewal window.
2. Confirm the payment method is updated.
3. Review how many cycles are overdue.
4. Clear the failed status.

Caution

Use caution if multiple cycles are overdue. Significant catch-up billing may occur.

Scenario 2: The member is several months past due

This scenario is the main reason the manual step exists. Before clearing the failure status, staff can:

• Collect a manual payment to partially bring the account current.
• Modify the renewal dates to prevent multiple automatic charges.
• Adjust subscription terms if appropriate.
• Document any arrangements made with the patient.

Once adjustments are made, clear the failed status. The scheduler resumes normal billing under the updated settings.

Summary

The Failed Renewal workflow is an intentional safeguard built to protect both your patients and your practice. Human review ensures accurate billing, prevents accidental overcharges, and gives your team full control before billing resumes.

While recent payment failures can recover automatically through the secure card update process, long-past-due subscriptions always require staff review to ensure safe, accurate billing. Updating a payment method does not guarantee automatic recovery if an account is significantly overdue, so always check how many renewal cycles are past due before clearing a failed status.