Dunning and overdue payments
How Rowbot chases unpaid invoices, when a membership is suspended or cancelled for non-payment, and what needs your attention.
Some invoices go unpaid. A card expires, a Direct Debit bounces, someone genuinely forgets. Dunning is the polite, escalating process of chasing that money, and Rowbot runs it for you so a treasurer is not the club's debt-collection department.
What happens, and when
Your club sets the schedule under Financials → Settings. The shape is:
- Reminders. On the days you choose after the due date, the member is emailed about the outstanding invoice - what it is for, what failed if a collection failed, and when the club will try again.
- Suspension. After a threshold you set, the membership can be suspended: benefits are withheld, but the membership and its history remain.
- Cancellation. If it stays unpaid long enough, the membership can be cancelled for non-payment.
The member is told at each stage. Suspension and cancellation are not silent.
Reminders only chase people who can actually do something. A member whose Direct Debit is set up and working is not emailed just because an invoice is open - they are only chased once a collection has actually failed, or if the invoice was theirs to pay in the first place.
Needs attention
Financials → Needs attention is the treasurer's queue: the things that will not resolve themselves. It gathers
- failed collections - what bounced and why,
- disputes and chargebacks - money pulled back after the fact,
- accounting sync failures - invoices your books have not received.
The count appears on the Financials menu, so a problem does not need you to go looking. Each item opens the underlying invoice so you can act without hunting for it.
Disputes and chargebacks
A member can claim money back after a payment has settled - a card chargeback, or a Direct Debit indemnity claim. When that happens the money genuinely leaves your account, so Rowbot reverses the payment it had recorded: the invoice returns to outstanding, because the member still owes it.
Card disputes have deadlines set by the card networks. An unanswered dispute is decided against you by default, so deal with these promptly - which is exactly why they appear in Needs attention rather than only in the provider's dashboard.
When chasing is the wrong answer
Not every unpaid invoice should be pursued by machine:
- A disputed invoice is never chased. The member has objected on purpose; emailing them reminders escalates a disagreement rather than collecting anything.
- A member in genuine difficulty is better served by a price adjustment - a hardship rate you can mark sensitive so it never appears on their invoice - than by suspension.
- A wrong invoice should be credited or cancelled, not chased.
What's next
- Membership changes - freezing, adjusting or ending a membership.
- Financials - the wider money picture.