Service
Failed draft recovery
Every month a slice of your billing run comes back declined. Churnline works that list the way it should be worked — by decline reason, on the right timing, through the channels that actually convert — and reports back in dollars.
What's actually in your decline report
"Payment failed" is not a reason, it's a category. Underneath it sit six or seven distinct situations, and each one has a different fix. This is why generic dunning software underperforms in gyms:
| What happened | Why generic retries fail | What works |
|---|---|---|
| Card expired | Retrying the same dead number, forever | Account updater service, plus a 30-day-ahead heads-up so it never expires live |
| Insufficient funds | Retry lands on the same empty account 48 hours later | Retry aligned to a pay cycle, not a fixed interval |
| Card reissued after fraud | Member has no idea their gym draft broke | Account updater catches most; the rest need one clear text with an update link |
| Account closed | Retries will never work, ever | Stop retrying, go straight to human contact before the relationship cools |
| ACH return (R01/R02/R08) | Return codes get flattened into one bucket | Read the code — a stop-payment means something completely different from an NSF |
| AVS / CVV mismatch | Looks like a decline, is actually stale address data | Fix the record, re-run same day |
The sequence we run
- Day 0 — silent fixes first. Account updater refresh, AVS correction, and a same-day re-run on anything that was a data problem rather than a money problem. A meaningful share of your list clears here without the member ever knowing.
- Day 1 — one text. Short, friendly, names the club, includes a self-serve update link. Not "your account is past due." More like a gym reminding a regular that their card bounced.
- Day 3 — email with the same link. Different channel, same low-friction ask. Some members are text people and some aren't.
- Day 5 — front-desk flag. The member checks in and a staff member handles it face to face in fifteen seconds. This is the step that separates gyms from every other subscription business, and the step almost nobody runs.
- Day 8 — NSF re-run on pay-cycle timing. Not a blind interval. Timed against when money is actually likely to be in the account.
- Day 14 — a call, from a person. By now anyone left is either genuinely gone or genuinely stuck. Both deserve a conversation instead of another automated notice.
- Day 21 — decide, don't drift. Recover, freeze, downgrade, or close it cleanly. What kills gyms is the member who sits in "failed" limbo for five months using the facility for free.
That last one is worth more than the recovery itself at a lot of clubs. Members whose drafts failed months ago and who still swipe in every day are a double loss: unpaid dues plus the capacity. The first pass usually surfaces a handful of these and they've often been there longer than the owner would guess.
What you send us, and what you get back
From you: one export from your billing platform showing failed and declined drafts, and read-access or a contact at your club who can send member contact details. That's the whole lift. Ten minutes, once.
From us: the recovery pass itself, plus a report that shows the starting pool in dollars, what cleared silently, what cleared through outreach, what's still open and why, and which of your members are training on a broken draft right now.
Pricing, stated plainly
Setup and first pass — $299
Export mapping, decline-reason breakdown, account updater setup, a full recovery pass on everything currently outstanding, and the report. This is where everyone starts, at any club size.
Start recovery — $299Then, optionally, ongoing
Monthly recovery is priced by the size of your billing run, because that's what determines how much there is to recover. The point of tiering it is that the fee stays comfortably below the recovery at every size — a flat fee would quietly stop making sense for smaller clubs, and we'd rather not sell you that.
Large clubs and multi-location groups, reported by location.
Large club planBilling under about $10,000 a month? We don't sell a monthly plan at that size — the fee would eat the recovery. Take the $147 playbook pack and run the sequence yourself. The calculator will show you which side of that line you're on.
The guarantee: if the first pass recovers less than $299, we refund the difference between what it recovered and what you paid. If it recovers nothing at all, you get the full $299 back and we'll tell you honestly that your billing is already tight and you don't need us.
Every charge, one-time and monthly, reads CHURNLINE on your card statement.
Start with the outstanding pile
Draft Recovery, $299 to start. We map your billing export, build the recovery sequence around your club's actual decline reasons, and run a full pass on everything currently outstanding. You get a report showing exactly what was chased and what came back.
Start recovery — $299Estimate my leak first