When a member raises a billing dispute or you spot something wrong with a payment, the goal is to find out what happened quickly, communicate clearly with the member, and take the right corrective action. This article walks through how to investigate in ClubRight, starting with Finance Health and working outward.
Start at Finance Health
The fastest way to spot a known billing issue is the Finance Health page in the Payments area. Health groups payment issues into categories, each with the member, the plan, when it happened, and a detail line describing the specific problem. If the dispute you are investigating fits one of these patterns, Health will already have flagged it for you.
Categories you will commonly see in Health include:
Charged during freeze: the member was charged while their membership was frozen.
Charged after cancellation: the member was charged after their membership ended.
Duplicate charges: two successful charges of the same amount within 48 hours.
Duplicate active schedules: the member has more than one live recurring schedule.
Cancelled mandate, still set to DD: the member is set up for Direct Debit but no live mandate exists.
Overdue but payment just landed: the member appears overdue but a successful payment came in within the last seven days (a reconciliation lag).
Stuck payment: a payment has been sitting as Requested or Pending for more than seven days.
Click Open on any flagged row to go straight to the member to investigate.
If the issue is not in Health
If you cannot find the member in Health, open their profile from Contacts and work through their record in this order:
The membership and its payment schedule. Click into the relevant membership and click View full schedule. The schedule shows every scheduled, requested, successful, and failed payment, with dates and amounts. Compare this to what the member is telling you.
The Payments tab on the member's profile. Shows the mandate or stored card status, plus the recent payment history.
The Payments area's Transactions page. Filter by the member to see all activity across memberships, classes, and till sales in one timeline.
The Payments area's Balance & Activity page. For card disputes, the provider-side transaction record shows the gross, fee, and net amounts.
Decide what action to take
Once you know what happened, the action is usually one of:
Refund the payment. See Refunding a member: process and rules for the process and timing.
Cancel a Direct Debit mandate or remove a stored card if the cause was a configuration issue that will recur.
Reinstate a cancelled mandate if the issue was no live mandate and the member wants to continue paying by Direct Debit. See Why has a member's Direct Debit failed? for the reinstate flow.
Adjust the freeze or cancellation dates on the membership if charges happened in error around a state change.
Challenge an indemnity claim if the member has raised one. See Direct Debit indemnity claims.
Communicating with the member
Once you have established what happened and what you are doing about it, communicate clearly:
Confirm what was charged and when.
State the cause, in plain terms.
Say what you have done (refund, mandate cancelled, freeze adjusted).
Give them the expected timing for any refunded funds to appear.
If a member tells you something that contradicts the ClubRight payment record, the underlying information comes from the bank or payment provider. Politely ask the member to check with their bank if they disagree with what the record shows.
Helpful tip
š” Record the refund reason every time. The refund reason is permanent on the payment record. Months later, when a member queries an old charge or your accountant asks about a discrepancy, the reason field is what tells the story.
Have more questions about investigating payment issues?
If you have a question that is not covered here, our Customer Success team is happy to help. Reach out via the orange chat button at the bottom right of your ClubRight dashboard.
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