# Follow up on failed Zen Planner payments every week

> Last week's failed Zen Planner payments grouped by decline reason, with phone numbers and who still trains, so the desk knows who to call first.

Source: https://cotlet.dev/integrations/zen-planner-api-mcp-server/list-failed-payments

Monday is when the front desk finds out whose membership dues bounced over the weekend. In Zen Planner that means opening the Failed Payments report, adding the error column and looking up each member before anyone can pick up the phone.

Cotlet does it in your own Zen Planner account with list\_failed\_payments, get\_member and list\_attendance, called by your AI agent, an n8n workflow or a script.

[Request access](https://cotlet.dev/app/signup?app=zen-planner) [All Zen Planner tools](https://cotlet.dev/integrations/zen-planner-api-mcp-server)

Hosted · nothing to install or maintain

Official options

## Can Zen Planner do this on its own?

Zen Planner has preset automations for this job: Failed CC Payment - Email and Failed Bank Acct Payment - Email notify the member and the business email when a payment is declined, and Past Due Bill - Profile Alert flags the profile. Revenue Recovery Services, a separate service with a fee per recovered payment, retries failed payments with SmartDate timing, sends members email and text reminders and hands declines to Zen Planner account managers. The partner API has no payments endpoint (checked 12 Oct 2026). The gap for studios that chase declines themselves: the preset email is one template for every decline reason, and no report turns the week's failures into a call list that separates a bank block from a mistyped card number.

By hand

## How you do it in Zen Planner today

1. In Zen Planner Studio, open the Dashboard and go to My Reports > Finances > Failed Payments; on the previous dashboard the same data sits in Failed Payments (Last 30 Days) or Failed Payments (Month to Date) under Financial.
2. Change the Payment Date criteria to last week, because the saved Zen Planner report covers the last 30 days or the month to date.
3. Click Edit Report Settings, add the Confirmation Code column and click Refresh Report to see the error for each failed payment, or click each line item for details.
4. For a single member, open the profile and go to Financial > View Payments, then click the declined payment to read the Payment Error box.
5. Copy each name into a call list and look up the phone number on every profile. The Zen Planner report shows what failed, not which of those members trained yesterday and which have quietly stopped coming.

With an agent

## How to follow up on failed Zen Planner payments every week

Prompt

```
Every Monday, list last week's failed Zen Planner payments, sorted by what each member has to do to fix them, with phone numbers, and tell me which of those people are still coming to class.
```

1. 01  
### Pull one clean billing week  
The agent calls list\_failed\_payments for last Monday to Sunday, with location\_id when the studio has more than one site. Two failures for the same person in one week, common on weekly billing, become one line with both amounts.
2. 02  
### Sort by what fixes the decline  
Insufficient Funds goes to a "new card or a later charge date" group. Do Not Honor and Declined by Issuing Bank go to "member calls their bank". Invalid Card Number and expired dates go to "staff re-enters the card". A payment marked as an error rather than a decline is flagged: do not rerun it until someone confirms the first charge did not go through.
3. 03  
### Check who still trains  
For each person the agent asks list\_attendance for the last 14 days. A member who checked in this week can be caught at the front desk before class. A member with a failed payment and no visits is the likelier cancellation, so that name moves to the top of the call list.
4. 04  
### Reach the right person  
get\_member adds phone and email. When the failed bill belongs to a child on a family account, the agent lists the linked family members so staff call the parent who pays, not the student.
5. 05  
### Stop at the list  
Cotlet has no tool that reruns a charge or edits a stored card, so those fixes stay with your staff in Zen Planner. If a name also failed the week before, the agent marks it as a repeat instead of treating it as new.

### What you get back

Example data

```
Zen Planner failed payments, 5 to 11 Oct: 6 members, $684.00
Call first (no visits in 14 days): Marcus Webb $89.00 Insufficient Funds, +1 555 0187
Call first: Priya Nair $149.00 Do Not Honor, ask her to call her bank, +1 555 0121
At the desk (trained this week): Sarah Lee $129.00 Invalid Card Number, re-enter card
At the desk: Leo Grant (parent: Maria Grant) $99.00 Expired card
Check before rerunning: Tom Hale $129.00 Payment Error
Repeat from last week: Marcus Webb
```

### Other ways to ask

- Every Monday, list failed payments at our Downtown location only and post the call list to the front desk channel.
- Which members had a payment fail twice in the last 30 days?
- On the 3rd of each month, show me everything that failed in the first billing run, grouped by decline reason.
- List failed payments for kids' memberships and give me the parent's phone for each one.

Before you automate it

## What Zen Planner allows, and what to know first

- Zen Planner support recommends reviewing failed payments at least monthly, and ideally as often as members are billed.
- For Zen Planner Payments customers outside the U.S., a declined payment shows "Payment Declined" with a Stripe decline code such as insufficient\_funds or expired\_card in the Error Code section.
- Zen Planner support says a payment marked PAYMENT ERROR, rather than PAYMENT DECLINED, should not be rerun until the business confirms with the customer that the charge did not go through.
- The Zen Planner preset Past Due Bill - Profile Alert puts an alert on the profile and blocks self check-in, so a member with an unpaid bill is stopped at the kiosk until staff handle it.
- Expiring Credit Card - Email in Zen Planner goes out thirty days before the card on file expires, and Zen Planner notes it is not needed for studios with Card Account Updater.

Every tool here only reads, so it can run weekly from n8n, Make, Zapier or cron without waiting for your OK.

Sources: [Zen Planner help: How do I resolve a failed payment?](https://help.daxko.com/s/article/ZEN-PLANNER-How-Do-I-Resolve-a-Failed-Payment) · [Zen Planner help: Stripe decline codes](https://help.daxko.com/s/article/Zen-Planner-Payments-UK-AU-CA-Stripe-Decline-Codes) · [Zen Planner help: How to set up automated emails](https://help.daxko.com/s/article/ZEN-PLANNER-How-Do-I-Set-Up-Automated-Emails) · [Zen Planner: Revenue Recovery Services](https://www.zenplanner.com/services/revenue-recovery-services)

REST

## Call list\_failed\_payments from a script

curl

```
curl https://cotlet.dev/api/v1/zen-planner/list_failed_payments \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $COTLET_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"from":"2026-10-05","to":"2026-10-11"}'
```

Example response

```
{
"payments": [
{
"person_id": "p253ac9b9",
"name": "Sarah Lee",
"amount": 129,
"date": "2026-10-08",
"reason": "Card declined"
},
{
"person_id": "p41c7f0d2",
"name": "Marcus Webb",
"amount": 89,
"date": "2026-10-06",
"reason": "Expired card"
}
],
"total": 218,
"currency": "USD"
}
```

MCP: add https://cotlet.dev/mcp/v1 with the same key; the tool is zen-planner\_list\_failed\_payments. Example data.

[Schedule it in n8n, Make, Zapier or cron](https://cotlet.dev/integrations/zen-planner-api-mcp-server#automations)

Tools

## Zen Planner tools this automation uses

__Cotlet Zen Planner tools used to follow up on failed Zen Planner payments every week__
| Tool | Parameters |
| ---------------------- | ---------------------- |
| list\_failed\_payments | from, to, location\_id |
| get\_member | person\_id |
| list\_attendance | person\_id, from, to |

[All 14 Zen Planner tools with descriptions](https://cotlet.dev/integrations/zen-planner-api-mcp-server#tools)

## Frequently asked questions

### Does Zen Planner retry failed payments on its own?

With Revenue Recovery Services, yes: Zen Planner retries failed payments on SmartDate timing and sends members email and text reminders, and Zen Planner says its fee is billed to the member only when a payment is recovered. Without it, the preset Failed CC Payment and Failed Bank Acct Payment emails tell the member and the business that a payment was declined.

## More Zen Planner automations

- [Find Zen Planner members who stopped coming to class](https://cotlet.dev/integrations/zen-planner-api-mcp-server/find-inactive-members)
- [Add leads from a CSV to Zen Planner as prospects](https://cotlet.dev/integrations/zen-planner-api-mcp-server/add-prospects-from-csv)
- [Zen Planner API and MCP server: every tool](https://cotlet.dev/integrations/zen-planner-api-mcp-server)
- [All use cases](https://cotlet.dev/use-cases)

## Give your agent access to Zen Planner.

Free 7-day trial with 5,000 credits, no card needed. Cotlet is independent and not affiliated with Zen Planner.

[Request access](https://cotlet.dev/app/signup?app=zen-planner)