This article helps you diagnose and fix autopay issues in Playground, including charges that didn't run, incorrect frequency settings, and autopay behavior for inactive students.
Understanding How Autopay Works
Autopay in Playground runs at 9:00 AM local time on the scheduled day. It only collects charges that are already posted, have a due date on or before that day, and belong to active students with a non-zero balance. If any of those conditions aren't met, the charge will be skipped that cycle — it won't fail, it just won't run.
Identifying Why Autopay Didn't Run
There may be times when autopay does not run for a family. The reasons below outline why autopay may not run for a family:
Common Reasons Autopay May Not Run
Inactive Students: No payments will be processed for inactive students. When a student is marked Inactive, all upcoming autopay payments will stop. However, the balance will continue to accrue if the payment plan or charge is not deleted. (Note that autopay will not run for inactive students even if they have it enabled.)
No Outstanding Balance: Autopay cannot process payments for students without an active payment plan or charge, even if a payment method is saved on the student's profile. Ensure a valid billing plan exists.
Autopay Activation: Check to make sure the family has autopay enabled. Additionally, if a family enables autopay after 9 AM on the scheduled autopay date, payments will not process until the next run.
Federal Holidays: Payments scheduled on federal banking holidays might not process. Administrators may need to manually process payments or set a new run date.
Misaligned Due Dates, Autopay Dates and Billing Frequencies: If a billing plan’s due date falls after the scheduled autopay date, the first debit may be skipped and autopay won't charge that amount. To prevent this, it's best to align the billing due dates with the autopay schedule.
Creating Charges after Autopay Runs: Charges added after 9 AM on the autopay date will not be included until the next cycle.
Failed Payments: A student may still have a balance after autopay pulled money from their account if their payment ended up failing. Failed payments are not retried the same day but are included in the next scheduled autopay run.
Inactive Students
The following steps will show you how to check if a student is inactive or not, and how to activate them to ensure autopay runs moving forward.
Check a Student's Status
From your My School -> Students tab, click into the student's profile. If you can't view the student on the Students tab, try removing any active filters.
Check the status tag next to their name. It will read Active if the student is active, or Inactive if the student is inactive.
Activate a Student
If you find that autopay didn't run because the student is currently Inactive, follow the steps below to activate them. Only activate them if they are currently attending. Click here if you only want to charge them for the payment autopay missed.
From your My School -> Students tab, click into the student's profile.
Select the Settings tab.
Scroll to the bottom of the page and click the Activate button.
Select a classroom to put the student in and click Activate to activate the student.
No Outstanding Balance
The following steps will show you how to check if a student has a balance, as well as create a new billing plan if needed.
Check a Student's Balance
From your My School -> Students tab, click into a student's account.
Click their Billing tab.
You will see Amount paid, Current Balance, Amount Overdue, and Amount unposted listed towards the top of their profile. If their balance is $0, you may need to create additional charges.
Before you create them, scroll down and check under their Debits tab to see if they have upcoming charges. Their current balance can be $0 if they recently made a payment.
Create New Debits
If you find that the student doesn't have any upcoming debits and you need to create more, click here for an in-depth guide on creating billing plans.
Autopay Activation
This section covers how to tell if a family has autopay enabled, when they enabled it, and how you can request them to turn autopay on.
Check a Student's Autopay Status
Click into your Billing -> Statements tab.
Search for the student whose autopay didn't run in the search bar.
Click the three dots next to their name and select Autopay settings.
If the student doesn't have autopay enabled, you will see the option to send them an Autopay reminder. Click Send reminder to send them an email reminder.
If the student does have autopay enabled, you will see a green Autopay tag listed next to their payment method.
If they do have autopay enabled, it is possible that it was enabled after autopay ran for the day. To check when they enabled autopay, click Show autopay update history. This will show you exactly when autopay was enabled.
Send Autopay Reminders
If you find that autopay isn't currently enabled, you can send reminders by opening the student's Autopay Settings in the instructions above. You can also send them to multiple students in bulk. Click here for an in-depth walkthrough on sending autopay reminders.
Misaligned Due Dates, Autopay Dates, and Billing Frequencies
This section covers how to check due and autopay dates and make sure they are aligned so autopay runs properly.
Check When Autopay Runs
Autopay runs based on which billing frequency a student is on. Before we check when autopay runs, it is important to figure out what billing frequency a student is on. Follow the steps below to start the process:
From your My School -> Students tab, find and click into the student's profile.
Click into their Settings tab and check what their Billing frequency is set to.
It is best practice to align a student's billing frequency with their debits. For example, if a student is charged monthly, they should be on a monthly billing frequency.
Once you confirm which billing frequency the student is set to, click into their Billing -> Debits tab to view when their charges are due.
In the example below, we can see that this student is charged on the 1st of the month.
Now that we have confirmed both the billing frequency and due date, we can check and see when we have autopay set to run.
In this example, as they are on a monthly billing frequency, we will want to check when autopay runs for monthly kiddos.
Navigate to your Settings -> Billing tab.
Click Edit weekly cycles, Edit bimonthly cycles, or Edit monthly cycles depending on which billing frequency you are checking.
We will click into Edit monthly cycles as our example student is on a monthly billing frequency.
After editing one of the cycles, you will then be able to see when families are supposed to pay, which aligns with when autopay runs.
In our example, payments are due on the 26th, so autopay also runs on the 26th. As this student's payments were due on the 1st, autopay won't run until the 26th.
As we can see in our example, autopay didn't run on the 1st for this student because we have autopay set to run on the 26th for our monthly kiddos. This could mean a couple of different things: they have the wrong due dates listed on their billing plan, or they are not set to the correct billing frequency.
🚨 If they are on the correct billing frequency but their due dates don't align, it is recommended to edit the current dates or delete upcoming installments and create a new plan with the correct due dates. We don't recommend editing the due date on the school level, as this will change when autopay runs for the entire school.
Creating Charges after Autopay Runs
This section will cover how to check if a debit was created after autopay ran for the day.
Check When a Debit Was Created
From your My School -> Students tab, locate and click into the student's account.
Click into their Billing -> Debits tab.
Locate the debit in question and click the three dots next to it.
If the debit is a part of a billing plan, you will need to expand the plan by clicking the plus sign, find the specific installment, and then click the three dots next to the installment.
Select View to open the Transaction Details window.
Click Show payment update history
Check the date and time to confirm when the debit was created. If it was created after autopay ran, this is why the family wasn't charged.
Failed Payments
This section will cover how to check if a family's autopay payment failed.
From your My School -> Students tab, find and click into the student's profile.
Click into their Billing -> Credits tab. All the student's payments will be listed here.
Locate any payments with a Declined status and look at the description. If autopay pulled the payment, the description will say "Autopay payment".
FAQs
What time does autopay run?
What time does autopay run?
Autopay runs at 9:00 AM local time on the scheduled day. For weekly plans this is typically Friday; for monthly plans it's based on your school's configured billing dates. Only charges that are posted and due by 9:00 AM are included in that run.
Can a family turn off their own autopay?
Can a family turn off their own autopay?
Yes. Families can disable autopay from their account in the Playground family app, only if mandatory autopay is disabled. Families won't be able to disable autopay after enabling it with mandatory autopay turned on. Admins can also disable it from the student's Billing tab by editing the billing plan settings.
Can I add a debit to a student who is already inactive?
Can I add a debit to a student who is already inactive?
Yes, you can create debits on inactive accounts from the student's Billing tab. However, autopay will never process those charges automatically. You must run a manual charge via Billing actions > Charge Payment Methods.
A debit was created but didn't get picked up by autopay. Why?
A debit was created but didn't get picked up by autopay. Why?
The most common reasons a debit gets skipped are: it was created after the 9:00 AM cutoff on the scheduled day, the due date is set in the future, the student is inactive, or the account balance is $0 (including cases where a credit offsets the debit). Check each of these in the student's statement view.
How do I collect a missed autopay charge without waiting for the next cycle?
How do I collect a missed autopay charge without waiting for the next cycle?
Navigate to Billing > Statements.
Select the student(s) with the outstanding charge.
Click Billing actions and choose Charge Payment Methods to run a manual charge immediately.