A payment schedule is not collecting

A payer is on instalments, the dates have passed, and no money has come in. Nine times out of ten nothing is broken - this is how to tell which case you are in, and what to do about it.

Step 1 of 6

Go to the schedule, not the invoice

Open the payer, choose their Debtor tab, and go along the row to Payment Schedule. The Ledger tells you what is owed; only the schedule tells you what Xperios has tried to take, and when it will try next.

A schedule usually covers more than one invoice, so its figures will not match the single invoice you came in from. That is normal.

Use the arrow keys to move between steps.

1. Go to the schedule, not the invoice

   Open the payer, choose their Debtor tab, and go along the row to Payment Schedule. The Ledger tells you what is owed; only the schedule tells you what Xperios has tried to take, and when it will try next.

   A schedule usually covers more than one invoice, so its figures will not match the single invoice you came in from. That is normal.

2. Read the line under the heading

   Xperios tells you outright. Under the schedule's heading is a line like "£0.00 paid, £150.00 still to collect; the invoices (3434) owe £150.00 - no card attached". Those last three words are the whole answer in most cases, and the lines below confirm it: every one due, none processed.

   Xperios cannot charge a card it has never seen, and the only thing that saves one is a payment the payer makes themselves. An Active schedule with no card attached is waiting for them - it is not faulty.

3. Find everybody else in the same state

   Do not check them one at a time. Run the query Payment Schedule - Active without Card Token. It has no parameters - just run it - and it lists every active schedule with no card saved, so you can deal with the lot in one go.

   Worth running at the start of each term rather than waiting to be asked. Everybody on it believes they are paying by instalments and is not.

4. Ask the payer to make the first one

   Email to Payer, on the schedule itself, is the quickest way - it sends them their schedule with a link to pay. Tell them to choose Pay Next Instalment rather than Pay Balance, which pays the whole lot at once. They enter their card once; every payment after that is automatic.

   They will find it in the Portal under My Finances - the Pay Now icon under Account Balance on their dashboard.

5. When payments have failed instead

   If the lines show attempts against them, this is a different problem. A failed collection is retried: the date moves on three days, the payer is emailed, and it tries again, up to four attempts. On the fourth the schedule is cancelled and the payer is told. So a cancelled schedule is not a glitch - it is the end of four attempts, and the account is now yours to deal with.

   Setting the status back to Active restarts it, and that is meant to be a decision somebody makes - once you are satisfied they will pay.

6. If none of that fits, look at the provider

   Automatic collection needs a payment provider that can do it. Open System Configuration and look at the Finance tab, under Payment Area: if Auto Collect Payments is not there at all, that is your answer - your provider cannot collect automatically, and Xperios hides the setting rather than offer something that would never work.

   GOV.UK Pay is the one that holds a schedule but never charges it; every payment is a link the payer follows. Where collection is manual, the reminders are doing their job.

Why this one is worth knowing

Almost every report of this turns out to be step two: the payer has never made the first payment, so there is no card to charge. The schedule looks set up because it is set up — it is waiting for them, not for you.

Running that query at the start of a term, rather than waiting for somebody to ask, is the whole trick.

The same ground, as reference

• Payment schedules — how a schedule works, failures, and the settings
• Debtors — the ledger, and what the payer was told about a payment
• Refunds — when money has to come back out