Sending a payment reminder for outstanding fees

When an instalment is outstanding or a payment has failed, you can send the member in question a reminder. You can do this per member, or to a whole group at once.

First: the system already reminds them

4planning automatically sends a payment reminder for a late payment: every seven days, up to three times. Members cannot switch these off, precisely because outstanding money is involved.

A manual reminder is therefore meant for the cases after that, or when you want to add a personal message.

Step 1: Find the outstanding instalments

1. Go to Finance → Membership fees.
2. Filter on the status open or failed. These are the members who have not paid yet.

Step 2: Send the reminder

1. Select one member, or several at once.
2. Choose Send reminder.
3. The member receives a message with a payment link to the outstanding instalment. If the member pays outside the app, the message contains no payment link but the amount and the request to transfer it to the association.

What else you can do

• Retry a failed direct debit, once the cause has been resolved.
• Mark as paid manually when the money arrived outside the app, by bank transfer or in cash for example.
• Pause or stop the subscription when someone is temporarily or permanently no longer a member.

Tips for effective use

• First look at why an instalment is outstanding. With SEPA the cause is often a missing or withdrawn mandate — a payment reminder does not help there, but activating the mandate does.
• Go through arrears weekly rather than once a quarter: the fresher the instalment, the greater the chance it still gets paid.

Frequently asked questions

• The member says they are not receiving the reminder. Check the member's email address and whether the message is landing in spam. The reminder also goes out as a push notification if the member uses the app.
• Can I change the text of the automatic reminder? The automatic dunning messages are fixed. If you want your own wording, send a manual reminder or a message through the member list. Your own reminder text does not apply to members who pay outside the app: they always receive the fixed text with the amount to transfer, so the message never contains a payment link that does not work.