When a connected payment provider reports a settlement, ThirdSectorBee tries to match it to a supporter’s recurring payment and record the payment. When it can’t do that safely, it raises an exception rather than guess. The Reconciliation page is your team’s queue of those exceptions: until you deal with them, money that reached your bank may be missing from supporters’ records.
Before you start
- You need
relationships:read:fundraisingactivitiesto see the queue andrelationships:write:fundraisingactivitiesto act on it. - Exceptions come from provider connections; see Connect a payment provider for reconciliation.
Open the queue
Open Relationships → Reconciliation. The menu item shows a count of open exceptions. The page lists Open exceptions by default; use Status, Reason and Connection to filter, and the paging controls to see more.
Each row shows the Reason, Context (the mandate reference and any explanation from the provider check), Amount, Settled date, Connection and Status. The actions offered depend on the reason, and only appear while the exception is Open.
Exception reasons
| Reason | What happened | Actions |
|---|---|---|
| Unmatched mandate | The settlement’s mandate isn’t linked to any recurring payment, so money arrived and nothing was recorded | Link mandate, Resolve |
| No due collection | The mandate is known, but no open collection falls within the date tolerance | Attribute, Resolve |
| Amount mismatch | A collection is due in the window, but the amount differs by more than the tolerance | Attribute, Resolve |
| Ambiguous match | Two collections match equally well, so ThirdSectorBee refused to pick one | Attribute, Resolve |
| Payment reversed | A payment already recorded was reversed by the provider, for example a late Bacs failure or a Direct Debit chargeback. The reversal has been recorded automatically; this exception is there because a chargeback often signals a complaint or a cancelled mandate | Resolve |
| Subscription changed at provider | The subscription at the provider no longer matches what ThirdSectorBee holds, for example it was edited in the provider’s dashboard or ended there. ThirdSectorBee won’t overwrite either side | Resolve |
| Subscription not found at provider | The recurring payment refers to a subscription the provider can’t find. It isn’t recreated automatically, to avoid collecting twice | Resolve |
| Schedule not supported by provider | The recurring payment’s collection day can’t be expressed by the provider, so it wasn’t sent. For GoCardless this includes Day of week, skip-weekends and working-day rules, weekly schedules, and days after the 28th | Resolve |
For the last three, fix the cause first, at the provider or on the recurring payment in ThirdSectorBee, then resolve the exception. Read the Context column for the detail.
Attribute a settlement to a collection
- Choose Attribute.
- Under Collection, choose the collection this settlement pays off. Each option shows its amount and due date.
- Choose Attribute.
The settlement is recorded as a payment against that collection, exactly as an automatic match would have recorded it. Older exceptions, raised before the recurring payment link was stored, ask for a Collection ID instead; enter one only if you’ve verified it.
Link an unmatched mandate
- Choose Link mandate.
- Under Find supporter, search for the supporter’s contact record. Organisations can’t be linked here.
- Choose the supporter’s Recurring payment, or choose Create a new recurring payment if they don’t have one yet.
- Choose Link mandate.
- If more than one collection matches, the form asks you to choose which collection this settlement belongs to; choose it and select Use this collection.
Linking does two things: it records the mandate against the recurring payment so future settlements on it are matched automatically, and it attributes this settlement. If the arrangement has no open collections, you’ll see “Mandate linked, nothing to attribute”: the link is saved, but you’ll need to choose a different recurring payment or resolve the exception yourself.
Resolve or ignore an exception
- Choose Resolve.
- Choose the Outcome: Resolved or Ignored.
- Add a Note explaining what happened and how it was resolved.
- Choose Save.
Resolving records your decision and closes the exception. It doesn’t create, correct or reverse any payment, so make any correction first.