When a membership's automatic renewal charge fails, the membership moves to Past due and Owneli retries the card on a smart schedule — about four attempts over seven days — emailing the client after each failure. If every attempt fails, the membership lapses to Expired. You have that week to fix the card or take payment another way.
What happens when the charge fails?
| Stage | What happens |
|---|---|
| Attempt 1 fails | Status → Past due. The client gets a payment-failed email with a link to their portal wallet, telling them how many attempts remain |
| Retries | The card is retried after roughly 1, 3, and 7 days |
| A retry succeeds | The membership returns to Active, the period rolls forward, credits or wallet funds are granted as normal |
| All attempts fail | Status → Expired, and the client gets a lapsed email |
While past due, the member's benefits are already inert past the period boundary — an expired period doesn't keep covering services.
How to recover it
Find the membership
Open the client's profile and their membership panel. A past-due membership shows the billing error and the next retry date.
Get a working card on file
The fastest fix is the client updating their own card — the dunning email already points them to their portal. You can also send them the secure card-capture link; staff never type card numbers. See the card-on-file guidance in deposits and cancellation fees.
Or renew manually and take payment yourself
Staff with POS access can renew the membership from its panel: the period rolls forward, credits or wallet funds are granted, and the past-due state clears. The manual renew does not auto-charge a card — ring the plan price as a normal sale so the money is actually collected.
After it has lapsed
An expired membership stops billing entirely. Renewing it from the panel starts it again; a cancelled membership can't be renewed — assign a new plan instead. Banked credits may stay redeemable for a window after cancellation, depending on the plan's settings — see Memberships.
Common questions
Why did a member get charged days after their renewal date?
That's the retry schedule working: a failed renewal is retried at ~1, 3, and 7 days. The successful retry is the renewal charge, just late.
Does pausing a past-due membership stop the retries?
A past-due membership can still be paused (for example when approving a pause request), which takes it out of active billing. Fix the card before it resumes.
The client says they never got a warning
Dunning emails go to the email on the client record. Check the client has an email address and that the messages aren't in spam — a client with no email gets no dunning notices at all.