How Payment Retries Work

When a lesson payment is declined, Tutonomi doesn't give up straight away. Here's what happens automatically before anything lands back with you.

What happens first

When a payment is declined, Tutonomi retries the charge automatically. During this time the payment appears in the Pending Payments table with a status of Retrying and a failure type of Payment Declined.

While retries are running

The pupil is contacted and asked to check their account or speak to their bank. You don't need to do anything during this stage.

If retries are exhausted

Once all automatic retry attempts have been made without success, the payment moves from Pending Payments to the Failed Payments table. The failure type updates from Payment Declined to Payment Failed, which is your signal that the system has done what it can and the situation now needs your attention.

What to do next

Speak with your pupil directly and ask them to check their account or contact their bank. You can also send them a reminder email from the Failed Payments table by clicking View Options next to the payment.

If the payment can't be resolved, you can void it as a last resort. This writes off the lesson and cancels any further collection attempts.

Good to know

• Most payment issues are resolved during the automatic retry stage without any involvement from you.

• If your pupil has further lessons booked and the payment remains unresolved, it's worth cancelling those too to avoid the same issue recurring.

• For a full breakdown of failure types, see the guide on soft fail vs hard fail explained.