Giving alerts and what to do about them

Psalmly tells your church when something about its giving needs a person. Most of these alerts are about a member's recurring gift running into trouble, and the first thing to know is that the member has already been told. Your part is usually smaller than it looks.

Where they arrive

Two places, nearly always together — the Notifications bell on your church's admin dashboard, and an email to the address on your account. The email says the same thing the bell does, and its subject ends with your church's name, so if you lead more than one church you can tell them apart without opening them.

They never buzz your phone. Giving alerts are bell and email only, and there's no switch to turn them off — they're about money your church is receiving.

Who on your team gets them

Two different circles, depending on what the alert says.

Every admin gets the ones about your church's own account — giving going live, Stripe needing something, a disconnect, a failed refund.

Only admins with finance access get the ones about a particular gift: a member's recurring gift in trouble, and the two about disputes. That's your lead admin, plus any admin a lead has switched See donor-identified giving on for. These alerts name an amount, and most of them a giver, so they follow the same rule as the gifts ledger itself. If you're an admin who has never seen one, that's why — a lead grants finance access from that person's record in your directory, covered in Managing your church directory.

One wrinkle worth knowing: the account-level alerts reach every admin, but the Giving page they link to opens only for admins with finance access. Without it, the link lands on a short page saying giving details are limited, with your church's totals and reports a click away under Finances. Pass the alert to a lead if it needs someone inside Giving.

When a member's recurring gift is in trouble

Cards expire, banks decline, balances run short. Three alerts cover the whole arc, and you may only ever see the first:

• "A recurring gift's payment didn't go through" — a payment was refused. Stripe usually retries over the following days on its own, so one failed payment doesn't end a gift.
• "A recurring gift is on hold" — the retries all failed and Stripe stopped trying. Nothing is being collected, but the gift still exists and can start again.
• "A recurring gift stopped" — it has ended. The alert says why: its payments didn't go through, one was disputed, your Stripe account couldn't accept them, or it was cancelled in Stripe rather than in Psalmly.

Each one names the giver, the amount, how often it repeated, and the drive or fund it supported. You hear once per run of failures, not once per attempt — a gift that misses cycle after cycle doesn't fill your inbox.

A gift given anonymously shows as "A giver" instead of a name. That's deliberate: anonymity hides the giver from your church's records, and an alert is one of those records.

What to do about it

Usually nothing, and that's the honest answer.

The member already knows. The same failure sends them their own email and notice, pointing at the one thing that fixes it.

Only they can fix it. The card or bank account belongs to the giver, and their saved payment methods are private to them. You can't see them, change them, or restart a stopped gift from the admin side — there's no admin control over a member's recurring gift anywhere in Psalmly, by design.

Nothing in Psalmly is waiting on you. The gift's state is already correct. The alert exists so a lapsing giver doesn't vanish silently, not because there's a task to clear.

What's genuinely useful is the pastoral part. A gift that stopped after months of faithful giving is worth a conversation, and now you know to have it. Reach out as a person, not as a billing department — and if the gift was anonymous, let it rest, because the alert deliberately doesn't tell you who to call.

Money always moves in Stripe. Anything money-shaped — refunds, dispute evidence, payouts — happens in your own Stripe dashboard, where your church is the merchant of record. Psalmly never moves money on your behalf.

What you'll see in Psalmly afterwards

Less than you'd expect, so it's worth saying plainly.

• The gifts ledger won't show the failed payment. Failed attempts are hidden from Recent gifts on purpose — it's a record of money your church actually received. Opening Giving after one of these alerts shows you nothing new. See Tracking gifts, refunds, and reports.
• "Recurring givers" only drops when a gift stops. The count on your Giving page still includes a giver whose payment failed or whose gift is on hold, because those gifts are still live.
• There's no list of your church's recurring gifts. A person's record in your directory shows their yearly total and gift count, not their schedule.

So the alert itself is the record. It stays in your bell.

When it's your account, not their card

One alert breaks the pattern: "Recurring gifts aren't going through."

It means your church's Stripe account can't accept payments at all, so every member's recurring gift is failing for the same reason. It goes to every admin, not just finance, and arrives at most once a day while the problem lasts.

This one is yours to fix. Open your Giving page, where the status explains what Stripe needs. And note the difference: while your account is in this state, members are not told their gifts failed — sending them after a card that's perfectly fine would point them at the wrong thing.

Setting up, staying active, and disconnecting

Three alerts follow your Stripe account rather than any one gift. All three go to every admin.

• "Giving is live" — arrives once, the first time your church can accept gifts.
• "Action needed to keep giving active" — Stripe needs more information from you. Your Giving page lists exactly what, and while anything is outstanding your dashboard's Needs attention card carries a row for it too.
• "Giving disconnected" — your Stripe account was disconnected, so your church can't receive gifts until you reconnect.

Setting up online giving describes what each of those states looks like on the page.

Disputes and failed refunds

The two dispute alerts name the gift's amount and go to admins with finance access. A failed refund names no amount and goes to every admin.

• "A gift was disputed" — a giver disputed a gift with their bank. You respond with evidence in your Stripe dashboard; Psalmly has no part in that exchange.
• "Dispute lost" — the dispute went against your church and the money was taken back out of your balance. This one lands in your bell only, with no email.
• "A refund failed" — a refund couldn't be completed. Open the gift in Stripe to retry or follow up.

What sends no alert

• A member managing their own gift — setting one up, pausing, resuming, editing, or cancelling it. Your church isn't told, the same way you aren't told when someone stops putting cash in the plate.
• A gift that ended because the member removed its card, or deleted their account.
• A drive gift reaching its last payment. It was always going to stop on that date. See When a campaign finishes.
• A one-time gift that didn't go through. Only the giver hears about that one.
• A gift arriving. Gifts land in your ledger quietly; there's no alert for each one.

One last thing worth keeping straight: "Your Psalmly payment failed" is not a giving alert. That one is about your church's own subscription to Psalmly — see Managing your plan and billing.