hardScenarioDesignMidSeniorStaff
A customer has been barred for non-payment and it turns out they paid three weeks ago. Walk me through how that happens and what you fix.
6 min readUpdated 2026-08-15Target archetype: Enterprise Captive
Answer
Short answer
Almost always the money arrived but was never allocated to the invoice that dunning was watching, so an unpaid document aged past a threshold while the account balance was zero.
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Likely follow-ups
- The payment carried a reference that matches no invoice. What should the system do with it, and for how long?
- A direct debit was returned unpaid after the invoice was marked settled. What is the correct sequence from there?
- How would you decide which accounts a suppression rule should hold back from the bar step entirely?
- What compensation, if any, do you owe this customer, and who decides?
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