Suppress Display of “Phantom” ACH Failures Caused by Missing TE Responses

A recent change to expose immediate credit card failures on the ledger has unintentionally caused ACH transactions to display as failed when the issue was simply a lack of response from Tuition Express (TE), not an actual payment decline. These “phantom failures” are confusing for centers and parents, leading to unnecessary concern and fee assessments.
Background
With the new visibility of immediate payment statuses, some ACH payments are marked as failed on the ledger when no confirmation was received from TE. In these cases, the payment never reached the bank for processing, yet the ledger and system notifications indicate a “failure.” This results in multiple failure emails being sent overnight to both admins and parents, giving the impression that payment retrieval attempts have failed — even though the payment often succeeds later through Auto Pay.
Request Details
We request an update to payment handling logic to prevent display and notification of “phantom” ACH failures. Specifically:

• If a failure is caused solely by lack of response from TE (i.e., no communication received, no transaction attempt made), it should not be displayed on the ledger as a failed payment.

• These instances should be internally logged for troubleshooting but not exposed to users or trigger failure notifications.

• Only true, confirmed failures (e.g., NSF, invalid account) should appear on the ledger and generate email alerts.

Impact
Implementing this change will:

• Reduce confusion for centers and parents who believe payment attempts failed when they had not.

• Prevent inappropriate NSF and late fee assessments.

• Decrease support workload from inquiries related to phantom failures.

• Improve confidence in the accuracy and reliability of the ledger’s payment data.

Rationale
The current behavior exposes technical communication errors as payment failures, which misrepresents the situation to end users and damages trust. Restricting the display of failures to verified transaction outcomes ensures that the ledger accurately reflects payment status and minimizes unnecessary disruptions for centers and families.