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Guidelines for Resolving Failed Transactions
When a payment transaction records a failed gateway status, your options for correction vary based on the type of status, payment gateway provider, and the customer bank. We’ve provided some generalized recommendations for corrective actions that you can take before retrying the transaction. (Salesforce Billing Managed Package)
| Gateway Status | Recommended Action |
|---|---|
| Decline | Banks can decline calls for many reasons. Customers can sometimes fix the issue, such as transferring funds or calling their bank to unfreeze an account. In these cases, they can attempt a payment again. Due to the wide variety of reasons for declined calls, Salesforce only updates payment fields and leaves customers to manage a business process for declined payments. When a payment transaction sets its gateway response to Declined, Salesforce Billing updates Decline Payment Count (Payment Run) field on the related invoice. Users and processes can’t reset or decrease this field. This field updates only in response to payment runs. Payments from the payment center aren’t included. We recommend reviewing your transactions for declined responses so that you can monitor payment runs that have unexpected spikes in declined payments. |
| Validation Error | Payment runs don’t create payments from transactions with a gateway status of Validation Error. Change the incorrect payment information on your payment method so that future payment runs can use it for payments. For example, if the transaction failed because the payment method listed the customer’s name incorrectly, update the customer’s name on the payment method. |
| Permanent Fail | The gateway doesn’t accept any further requests that use the same payment method, so future payment runs using the payment method have the same result. We recommend creating a workflow rule that deselects your payment method’s Auto-Pay field when a related transaction receives a permanent fail response. That way, you don’t have the risk of more failed responses before you can delete or edit the payment method. |
| Requires Review | Gateways respond with a review code when the gateway call initially fails, but the payment method can still work following extra processing. For example, some banks send out this type of response when they have further questions about the payment request, and they provide an authorization code manually when the payment manager calls the processor. When a payment transaction sets its gateway status to Review, Salesforce Billing doesn’t create a payment automatically. Depending on the customer’s follow up with the payment processor, they can either auto-void the transaction or manually create a payment from the transaction record. |
| System Fail | Salesforce Billing provides a system fail response when it has to end its gateway payment request before receiving a response. System Fail responses can happen due to gateway server errors or invalid customer credentials or anytime the request times out before it receives a gateway response. System failures occur before the Salesforce Billing request reaches the gateway, so there’s no risk of an unaccounted payment remaining in the gateway. If your transaction has a System Fail gateway status, you can manually create the payment or wait for another payment run to pick up your invoice. |
| Unknown | When your transaction results in an Unknown gateway status, the related invoice was manually paid or had billing data changed between the payment run’s first and second batches. This situation usually results from the following actions.
If your invoice had a billing field change that’s preventing payment run inclusion, fix that field so that Salesforce Billing picks it up in the next payment run. |
