Playbook, accounting firm
The monthly payment failed and nobody noticed until it mattered
Two different messages arrive looking like a payment problem, and they need opposite answers. One is a client whose monthly fee collection failed, which is straightforward until it happens in the fortnight when the work has to be finished. The other is a client who believes that paying the practice paid their tax, and correcting that is the most valuable sentence in this pair.
Why this is not the general answer
The handling pattern for failed payments holds across every trade. What follows is the part that does not.
- What a client owes the practice and what they owe an authority are entirely separate, they leave the account at different times to different places, and a surprising number of people believe the fee covered the liability.
- A failed collection can suspend work under the engagement terms, and when that happens close to a filing date the consequence falls on the client rather than on the practice, which makes the timing here matter more than the amount.
- The collection recurs monthly against an annual cycle, so one failure in a quiet stretch of the year is minor and the identical failure while accounts are being finalised is not.
- Clients quite often cancel the payment deliberately, as a way of opening a fee dispute they have not put in writing, so a failed payment message is sometimes a complaint that has not identified itself as one.
How it arrives
- my monthly payment to you did not go through
- i paid you so why is the tax still showing as owed
- my card was declined can i pay another way
- will you stop working on my return if i miss a payment
- can i pay the fee late this month
- who do i pay the tax to it is not you is it
What has to be indexed for this to work
| How fees are collected and what happens when a collection fails | The methods you accept, when a retry happens, whether a charge applies, and who gets in touch. Ordinary, entirely factual, and it removes a whole category of anxious message. |
|---|---|
| The suspension position in your engagement terms | Whether work stops while fees are outstanding, after how long, and what notice a client gets first. Publish it, because the client who most needs to know is the one closest to a deadline. |
| A plain statement that fees and tax liabilities are separate | Where each payment goes and who it is made to, and that settling an invoice from the practice settles nothing else. One paragraph, and it prevents a kind of missed payment that is genuinely expensive for the client. |
| Who to contact about a payment problem, and how quickly | The person or address, and the response time you meet. A client trying to pay you and getting no answer is the one who stops trying. |
The reply
If a collection has failed, our payments page sets out how it is retried and what to do meanwhile [1]. Worth separating two things: fees paid to the practice are for our work, and anything owed to an authority is paid directly to them, so settling our invoice does not settle a liability [2]. Our engagement terms explain what happens to work in progress while fees are outstanding. I cannot see your payments or take one here, so leave me your name and an email and the accounts team will sort it out.
It answers the mechanics first, then volunteers the confusion the client did not know they had, because that misunderstanding is expensive and nobody ever asks about it directly. Mentioning the suspension terms warns without threatening. And it says plainly that no payment can be taken here, which is the belief that leaves an invoice unpaid.
Where it stops
The trigger. The visitor refers to a specific payment, says they cannot pay this month, or asks whether work has stopped on their file.
I cannot see a payment or take one, and I cannot tell you what is happening on your file. Leave me your name, an email and what has gone wrong with the payment, and the accounts team will come back to you today.
It stops answering before it guesses, says who will pick it up, and asks for the one thing that makes a reply possible. Nothing about it reads as a dead end.
Never say this here
Out of bounds
- Never confirm whether a payment succeeded, failed, was retried or is outstanding.
- Never say work has stopped, or will continue, on a particular client's file.
- Never suggest that paying the practice settles anything owed to an authority.
- Never agree to a late payment, an instalment or a waiver, since those are decisions for the practice.
Questions
- Can it take a card payment?
- No. It has no connection to any payment system and cannot take one, refund one or check one. It points at the route you publish and takes a message, which is what somebody trying to pay actually needs from it.
- Why put the suspension terms on the site?
- Because a client who discovers them during filing season discovers them at the worst possible moment. A client who read them in a quiet month pays before the collection fails a second time.
- Somebody clearly thinks their fee paid their tax bill. Is that ours to correct?
- It is worth a paragraph on your own site and a sentence in the reply. The cost of that misunderstanding lands on the client, and they will still remember that nobody mentioned it.
Keep reading
- Everything for a accounting firmDeadlines drive the volume. What an accountancy practice can automate, and why no answer may touch a caller's own numbers.
- Handling failed payments in generalThe reason usually sits with the card issuer and is invisible to you. The useless reply, the useful one, and why card details never belong in a chat.
- A client cannot get in to approve their accountsPortal sign in, agent authority and a shared login are three different problems. What the assistant can explain and what needs a person.
- The questions people are too embarrassed to ask before a first meetingHow long it takes, who is in the room, whether it is chargeable, and what to bring when the records are in no state to show anybody.
- Eleven at night, and somebody wants an accountant by morningNothing can be taken on overnight and pretending otherwise costs more than saying so. What to publish for the late panic enquiry.
Try it on your own material
Upload a document or point it at your site, paste one line of HTML, then ask it something only your business could answer.