A failed payment, and suspension
What this covers
What happens when a charge fails, what suspension looks like, and the fastest way back.
Everything on this page needs the manage-billing permission, which belongs to the
Owner alone — not even a Manager has it. If Subscription is missing from your
settings menu, you are not an Owner (link The Owner account).
The sequence
Nothing happens abruptly. A single failed charge does not suspend anything.
- A charge fails. Expired card, insufficient funds, a bank block.
- The Owner gets an email straight away, with a link that goes directly to a page where the invoice can be paid. Everything keeps working.
- The payment provider retries automatically over the following days. If a retry succeeds, that is the end of it and you may not even notice.
- If it stays unresolved, the subscription ends and the workspace is suspended.
- Paying reactivates it automatically. No support ticket, no waiting.
So there is a window — days, not minutes — in which a card problem costs you nothing but attention. That email is the whole game. Which is why the Owner's address must be one somebody reads (link The Owner account).
What suspension looks like
Your staff sign in as normal and see a suspension page instead of the app. They cannot reach the Dashboard, the Timeline, bookings or settings.
What still works
| Still works | Detail |
|---|---|
| Signing in | Accounts are unaffected. Nobody's password changes |
| The billing pages | Plan list, payment step, billing portal, Renew, Resume — deliberately reachable so you are never locked out of paying |
| This knowledge base | So you can look up what to do |
| Your public pages | Guests are not affected at all. Your booking page, menu and events pages carry on working |
That last row surprises people, and it matters operationally. Guests keep booking while you are suspended. Those bookings are being recorded — you simply cannot see them until you pay, and then they are all there waiting.
It is reassuring and it is also a warning: you could be suspended on a Friday, take twenty online bookings over the weekend, and know nothing about any of them. Which is the strongest argument for dealing with a failed payment the day the email arrives.
What stops
Everything your staff do in the app: taking bookings by phone, the Timeline, Live View, the waitlist, Orders, reports, settings. Automatic guest messages stop going out too, so guests with existing bookings will not receive their reminders.
The fastest route back
If you still have the email
Click the link in it and pay the invoice. That is the quickest path — it goes straight to a payment page for the specific invoice, no navigating required. Access returns automatically once the payment clears, normally within moments.
If you do not
- Sign in as the Owner. You will land on the suspension page.
- Choose Renew.
- If the subscription is still recoverable, you go to the billing portal — update the card there and the provider retries.
- If it has fully ended, you go to the plan list. Choose your plan (your previous one is highlighted) and pay.
- Access returns automatically.
If payment keeps being refused
The problem is between your card and your bank, and Tabledoo cannot resolve it. Work through Payment method — in particular, try another card, and ring your bank to ask whether they are blocking a recurring payment to a new merchant.
Preventing it
- Keep the Owner's email monitored. Everything depends on that message being read.
- Update the card as soon as a replacement arrives. Expiry is the single commonest cause.
- Use a card that is not tied to one person's employment.
- Check the expiry date shown on your subscription page now and then.
- Consider yearly billing if monthly failures are a recurring nuisance — one charge a year is one opportunity to fail.
Good to know
Nothing is deleted when you are suspended. Every booking, guest and setting is intact and returns exactly as it was.
Reactivation is automatic. There is no queue and no ticket — the payment succeeding is what reactivates you.
SMS credits survive suspension, though no texts are sent while suspended. Note your monthly allowance is only granted to active accounts, so a suspension spanning the 1st of the month misses that top-up (link Your monthly allowance).
Suspension is not cancellation. Cancelling is a decision you make; suspension is a payment that did not go through. Both end in the same locked screen, and both are recoverable (link Cancelling, resuming and renewing).