Autopay and Declined Cards | Help Center

Autopay charges a family's saved card or bank account for their invoices, so they do not have to pay each one. Autopay and payment retries need the Pro or Max plan and a connected Stripe account. Set them on the Automation tab of your billing dashboard. Only owners and admins can change these settings, and changes apply only after you click Save Settings.

When Autopay Charges a Family

Autopay charges a family only when all three switches are on:

your studio's Enable Autopay setting;
the family's own autopay choice in their Billing Preferences (it is off until they turn it on); and
the family's autopay override: you have not turned on Disable autopay in the Billing Overrides of the family's billing card.

Your studio setting does not turn autopay on for families. Only the family can turn it on; the family billing card shows their choice.

Autopay then charges an invoice only when it is Sent, Overdue or Partially Paid, the family has a default payment method on file, and a balance remains. Trio skips the other invoices, so a family with no saved card or bank account is never charged.

When the Charge Happens

Autopay runs once a day.

Cards - Trio charges a card Days Before Due days before the due date (0 to 30; 0 charges on the due date).
Bank accounts - a bank payment takes days to clear, so Trio starts it 5 business days before the due date, or Days Before Due days before if that is earlier. An invoice made inside those 5 business days is charged at the next daily autopay run and clears after the due date.

Run Autopay Now charges every eligible unpaid invoice at once. It is safe to run more than once, because Trio skips invoices it already charged today. The button works only after Enable Autopay is on and saved.

Payment Retries

Turn on Retry Failed Payments to charge a declined autopay card again. It is off by default, with no retry days. Enter the Retry Schedule as days after the failure, separated by commas, for example 1, 3, 7: up to 5 different days, each from 0 to 90.

With retries on, Trio also tries again when a bank payment is returned for insufficient funds, at most 2 times. See Accepting Bank (ACH) Payments.

After a Card Is Declined

When an autopay card charge is declined, Trio emails the family at once. While a retry is planned, their Billing page says the card payment failed, gives the retry date, and links to Update your card.

Retries on: Trio charges the card again on each day of your schedule, counted from the day of the failure in your studio's time zone. Autopay does not charge that invoice in between. A failed retry emails the family with the next date. Each failure keeps the schedule you had when it first failed, so a later change applies to new failures only.
Retries off: Trio stops charging that card for the invoice. The family pays it themselves, or autopay tries once more after they save a different card.
Retries stop early when the card cannot succeed on a retry (for example it was reported lost or stolen, it expired, or it needs the cardholder to confirm the payment), when the family turns autopay off or removes their default method, or when you turn retries off.
After the last retry, Trio emails the family and stops. Autopay charges the invoice again only when the family saves a different default payment method, once for each new method.

If the family pays the invoice another way, the retries stop and nothing more is charged.