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 the Member's Profile Page
Go to Contacts > Search for your member > Click their name > Open Full Profile
From here you will either look at their active Membership if the payment is related to payments for a Membership Plan, or Purchases, if they paid for a one-off item such as a product, class or credit.
Membership Plan Payments
Click "Manage and View Details" on the Member's Membership Plan card
Scroll down and "click "view full schedule" - this will provide a list of all payments and payment attempts for their membership plan. Against each payment you will see one of the following:
"Successful" is a good sign that the payment was made successfully
"Failed - Refer to Payer" is a Direct Debit payment rejection due to insufficient funds
"Failed - cancelled" is a Direct Debit payment rejection due to the mandate being cancelled (by you or the member) close to a payment request
"Declined" - declined refers to card payments only (not Direct Debit) and can be that the members card is blocked, cancelled, or they had insufficient funds in their account at the time of the payment request.
Compare this to what the member is telling you.
Member issue:
Member/Banking app says the payment is fine, Clubright still shows pending or requested:
The UK Direct Debit system will provide updates on a minimum of a next-working day basis, we cannot speed this up. If a member has seen funds leave their account today, this will not be confirmed until the next working day. For example, if the funds left the member's account on a Friday, the clearance will not show until the Monday.
If this goes beyond 2-working days, raise the issue to Clubright Help so we can investigate further.
Member says more than one payment was taken on one day:
Please ask for evidence from the member, and send that, together with the member's details to Clubright Help
Member says that a payment was taken during a freeze or after cancellation:
First check their profile as above to establish whether you can see this in Clubright. If you cannot see the alleged payment then please ask for evidence from the member and raise to Clubright help.
Please note that UK Direct Debit payment requests are sent to the bank on the 3rd working day prior to the collection day, and once the request has been sent it cannot be stopped. If the freeze or cancel request was created within the 3-day window, this will be why the payment was still taken.
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
đĄ 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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