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Create campaigns

Automatic dunning uses campaigns that can be applied billing entity-wide or tailored to individual customers. Create multiple campaigns to suit varying thresholds or cadences, all aimed at recovering overdue payments. To set up a new campaign, go to Settings > Dunning and follow these steps:
  1. Assign a name, code, and description for easy identification.
  2. Set an overdue balance threshold with its designated currency.
  3. Add additional currencies for thresholds as needed.
  4. Specify the delay between attempts.
  5. Define the number of attempts for the campaign.
  6. Apply this campaign to a billing entity or a customer.

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Overdue balance threshold

You can define thresholds for all supported currencies. When a customer reaches the specified threshold in their invoiced currency, the dunning campaign is triggered. If a customer’s invoiced currency is not supported in the campaign, they will not be eligible for it.

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Attempts & delay

A dunning campaign begins when the overdue balance threshold is reached. Subsequent attempts follow the set delay. The campaign ends once the overdue balance is paid or all attempts have been exhausted.

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Apply dunning to a billing entity

Setting a campaign at the billing entity level applies it to all customers that inherit the billing entity’s dunning behavior — except those who either:
  • Have a specific campaign assigned to them, or
  • Have dunning deactivated.
Alternatively, you can leave the billing entity without a campaign and assign dunning campaigns individually to each customer.

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Automatic dunning on customer

If a campaign is set for the billing entity, it will automatically apply to all customers attached to it. However, you can override this at the customer level by either assigning a different dunning campaign or deactivating dunning for that specific customer.

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Change from one campaign to another

If you change the default campaign or assign a different campaign to a customer, any ongoing dunning process will stop. The new campaign will take precedence and start from the beginning.

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Dunning behaviour

  1. Automatic payment attempt: Lago will initiate a payment intent for the specified amount via the connected PSP.
  2. Failed payment: If the payment fails, an email will be sent to the customer with a payment request and a URL to complete the payment (excluding GoCardless).
  3. Successful payment: Upon success, the attached invoices will automatically reflect a “succeeded” payment status.

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Dunning and payment methods

Dunning applies to every overdue invoice, whatever payment method was set to collect it. Choosing Manual payment on a subscription, a one-off invoice, or a top-up only tells Lago not to charge that invoice automatically when it is finalized. It does not exclude the invoice from dunning. Once the invoice is overdue, a dunning campaign groups all of the customer’s overdue invoices (one payment request per currency and per billing entity) and attempts a single automatic payment for the combined outstanding amount, using the payment provider set on the customer. If the customer has no default payment method stored in Lago, Lago falls back to a payment method already saved for that customer at the provider (with Stripe, the first one attached to the Stripe customer).

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Prevent automatic charges for a customer

To make sure a customer is never charged on any payment method when one of their invoices becomes overdue, remove them from the dunning campaign by enabling Exclude from dunning campaign on the customer. They will stop receiving dunning emails as well. Leaving the customer’s default payment provider empty also prevents the charge and keeps the dunning emails, but it is not a guarantee: if a payment provider is set on that customer later, dunning can charge them again.

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Edit a dunning campaign

You can edit all details of a dunning campaign, but note that changes may directly impact customers linked to the campaign and could trigger new dunning attempts.

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Delete a dunning campaign

Deleting a dunning campaign will immediately stop the current campaign for all associated customers, and no further dunning attempts will be made. If the deleted campaign is not the default, customers linked to it will revert to the billing entity’s settings and may be enrolled in the default dunning campaign, if one is set.

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Need more than a fixed sequence?

A campaign runs the same attempts and delays for every customer. If you need the next step to depend on the account, the Dunning Agent reads twelve months of payment history first: it waits on customers still inside their usual payment lag, chases the net amount after a partial payment, sends a card-fix link when a charge failed, and escalates large or unanswered accounts to a person. It runs alongside campaigns.