This article covers how to pause Adfin's chasing and collection for a customer or a specific payment, the duration choices, and what to expect.
In Adfin you can pause at two levels: for the customer as a whole, or for a specific invoice or payment request.
Pausing for a customer (or several at once)
Pausing at the customer level affects every outstanding invoice and payment request on that customer. Use it when the reason for pausing is about the customer as a whole: they've asked you to stop chasing, they're on holiday, you've spotted something wrong and need time to review.
To pause one or more customers in bulk:
Go to Customers in the side menu.
Tick the customer(s) you want to pause. Select multiple to do a whole group in one go.
Click Manage reminders & collections in the action bar at the bottom of the screen.
Pick how long to pause for (see "How long to pause for" below).
This action covers both Auto Collect (direct debit) and On Demand (card link) customers in one step.
For finer control on a single customer, open the customer from the Customers list and go to the Customer agents panel on their detail page. You'll see two more granular options:
Pause OD. Stops the On Demand reminder emails. Direct debit collection continues as normal.
Pause AC. Stops scheduled direct debit collections & reminders. On Demand continues.
Pausing one invoice or payment
Pausing at the payment level affects only the single invoice or payment request you've picked. Use it when only one payment needs attention.
You can pause from two places:
Open the payment in the detail drawer and use the Pause AC or Pause OD action in the Activity tab, or
Tick the payment(s) in the Payments list and click the Pause icon in the action bar. You can select multiple to pause in bulk.
Then pick how long to pause for, the same way you would at the customer level.
What pausing does at the payment level depends on the payment type:
On Demand (card link). Pausing stops the chasing emails only. The payment link itself stays active.
Auto Collect (direct debit). Pausing stops both the chasing emails and the upcoming collection, provided the collection hasn't already been submitted to the bank (see "What you can't pause" below).
Recurring Invoices / Schedules: a Recurring Invoice or Payment Schedule has multiple payments. Pausing one of them pauses only that payment, and the rest of the series carries on. There is no way to pause a plan as a single thing, so to cover all of it you either pause at the customer level, which also covers the payments the plan creates later on, or pause each payment request in turn.
Pausing never stops a plan creating new payments. It only affects collection and chasing on the payments that already exist. If you want a plan to stop producing new payments altogether, cancel the schedule instead.
One to watch: the most specific setting wins. If you resumed a single payment on its own, that payment stays resumed even if you later pause the whole customer, so you would need to pause that one directly.
How long to pause for
Wherever you pause, Adfin asks how long the pause should last. You get four choices:
Until you resume it manually.
7 days.
14 days.
Until a specific date.
If you picked a fixed duration (7 days, 14 days, or a specific date), things resume on their own when the time's up. If you went with "until you resume it manually", go back to the same place you paused from. The action will say Resume instead of Pause.
When reminders resume, Adfin picks up the chase sequence where it left off rather than starting from scratch.
What you can't pause
A direct debit collection can only be paused if it's not Submitted, which typically happens two working days before we're due to collect the payment. Once a collection has moved to the Submitted status, it's been sent to the bank and you can't pull it back. The customer will receive their advance notice email, and the charge will go through.
What carries on as normal
A couple of things continue regardless of a pause:
Direct debit advance notice emails for any collection that's already in flight (Submitted). The bank's processing it; the customer needs to know.
Payment links on On Demand invoices stay active. Pausing reminders stops Adfin from emailing about them, but the customer can still pay them.
The customer sees nothing. No banner, no message. The emails just stop arriving. Customers can't unsubscribe themselves either; any opt-out has to be done by you in Adfin.
When billers usually pause
Three common reasons we see in support:
The customer's paid, but the reconciliation hasn't caught up. A few days off the chase emails while Xero or QuickBooks catches up keeps a good payer happy.
The mandate is on the wrong customer. Pause first to stop the chasing, then merge the duplicate customers. See How to merge duplicate customers.
The customer's asked for breathing space. Pause with a date or until manually resumed, and the chase picks up again when you're ready.
Common questions
Will the customer see anything? No. Pausing is silent on the payer side. They just stop receiving emails.
Can I pause just the overdue chases and keep the friendly "due soon" reminders? No. Reminders are one block. Pausing them stops the whole chase sequence.
Why is the customer still getting a direct debit collection notice after I paused collection? Because the collection was already submitted to the bank before you paused. Once submitted, the charge can't be cancelled, and the bank requires us to send advance notice. Future collections won't go out while the pause is on.
How do I stop the "set up your direct debit" emails for one customer? You have a few options, depending on whether you still want the mandate.
To keep the request open and just stop the chasing, turn off Mandate reminders on that customer's Customer agent tab.
To stop them for a while and pick them up again later, pause mandate chasing notifications for that customer and choose when they should resume.
If you don't want the mandate at all, cancel their pending mandate request from the customer's record. If you'd like to keep collecting from them by card or bank link, change the agent or set their preferred payment method to On Demand in the Customer agent panel.I paused collection but my customer is still being asked to sign a mandate. Why? Pausing collection stops the chasing for payments, but it doesn't touch an open mandate request, so those emails carry on. To stop them as well, either turn off Mandate reminders on that customer's Customer agent tab, or pause mandate chasing notifications for them, or cancel the pending mandate request if you don't want the mandate at all. See the question above for which to pick.
I've resumed a collection. When will it actually be taken?
Resuming doesn't change anything on the mandate itself, so once a mandate is active there's no activation wait to sit through again. Resuming only restarts the Bacs notice: your customer gets at least 3 working days' warning of the date and amount before we take the money. If the invoice due date has already gone past, the collection still gets that full notice, so the debit lands a few working days after the due date rather than on it. One thing to check: a mandate shows as Active from the moment your customer signs it, so if they only signed in the last few working days it may still be activating, which adds a little time before the first collection. See Getting started with direct debits.