Resolve an unresolved payment

A transaction shows UNRESOLVED when it was sent to the payment processor but Shuttle never received a definite answer, so nobody yet knows whether the money moved. Shuttle asks the processor again on its own where the processor supports it, so a transaction less than about 15 minutes old may still resolve without you. One that stays unresolved needs a person to check it with the processor and record the outcome. Why payments end up unresolved is covered in When a payment is interrupted.

These steps apply to an unresolved payment, authorisation or capture. For an unresolved refund, check its status with the processor and contact Shuttle support.

Before anything else

Don’t take the payment again, or ask the customer to pay again, until it is resolved. A second attempt on the same contract usually finds nothing due, because the unresolved amount is held against what the customer owes. A payment taken another way, such as a new payment or a new link, would charge the customer twice if the first attempt went through.

Find unresolved transactions

Open Transactions, press the sliders button (Show Advanced) and set Status to Unresolved; widen Created if you need to look back further than 90 days. In any list an unresolved transaction carries an amber UNRESOLVED badge after its amount. See Transaction search.

To be told as it happens rather than finding them later, have your systems listen for the PAYMENT.UNRESOLVED, CAPTURE.UNRESOLVED and REFUND.UNRESOLVED webhooks. See Webhook events.

Check with the processor

1. Open the transaction and note its amount, date and time, and the card ending.
2. Find it in your account with the processor by those. If your processor also shows the transaction’s receipt reference, you can search by that too.

The Gateway ID on the Processed By card, the processor’s own reference, may be blank on an unresolved transaction, because the processor’s reply never arrived. When it is there, search by it instead; where the processor offers it, view in … opens the transaction on the processor’s site.

Record the outcome

The processor shows	What to do
Completed, paid or settled	mark as approved
Declined, failed, cancelled, or no record of it	mark as declined. On a payment, nothing was taken and the customer can pay again. A processor can take time to show a recent payment, so check again before declining one that is only minutes old.
Still pending or in progress	Nothing yet. Check again later.
On a payment: authorised, but waiting for you to accept or capture it	Decide at the processor first: accept it there, then mark as approved, or cancel it there, then mark as declined.
On an authorisation: authorised	Don’t mark it yet: contact Shuttle support.
On a capture: captured	mark as approved. If the processor shows it was not captured, mark as declined.

Both buttons ask you to confirm. They record what the processor already shows; nothing is sent to the processor and no money moves.

Shuttle does not go back to the processor to check the outcome you record, so check the processor’s own records before you mark it.

If you recorded the wrong outcome, you can mark it the other way, but that does not undo what the first marking did: a confirmation or webhook already sent stays sent, and a saved payment method marked failing after a decline still needs replacing. Approving is still refused if the customer no longer owes the amount (see Things to note). Check the payment and the contract afterwards, and contact Shuttle support if they don’t look right.

What happens next

• Approved counts exactly as a successful transaction: a payment is applied to what the customer owes, and the customer gets the usual payment confirmation where your organisation sends one.
• Declined counts as a failed one: the contract moves to failing and any retry schedule takes over, the saved payment method is marked failing so later collections need a new one, a payment link becomes usable again, and the customer is not told.
• Your systems receive the usual success or failure webhook.
• The Status Category on the Processed By card stays Unresolved, so it remains clear the outcome was recorded by a person.

The full effects are in the rules: Mark an unresolved payment approved or declined.

Things to note

• Approving a payment is refused if the customer no longer owes the amount, for example because they have since paid again. If the processor shows both payments went through, contact Shuttle support before refunding either.
• Approving a capture is refused if the authorisation no longer has that amount left to capture.
• Resolve an unresolved authorisation promptly. Card authorisations usually expire after about a week, and an expired authorisation can’t be captured, whatever you record.
• A payment held by a fraud tool shows PENDING rather than UNRESOLVED. It is decided in the fraud review, not here.
• The buttons appear on an unresolved transaction for users with the payment_transaction permission, which the Admin and Support roles have and Support (read-only) does not. Without it the buttons aren’t shown.

Related tasks

• Transaction
• Processed by
• When a payment is interrupted