ACH payments that fail immediately (e.g., bank account blocked or denylisted) can be handled by General Online Dunning instead of Direct Debit Dunning. In that flow, the Direct Debit max retries setting does not apply, so you may see more retries than expected.

How Direct Debit Dunning limits work

Direct Debit Dunning applies its own rules, including a maximum number of ACH retries (for example, 2). That limit only applies when the invoice is in Direct Debit Dunning.

Why some ACH invoices use a different dunning flow

ACH payments can fail in two ways:

1. Immediate failure – The payment is rejected right away (e.g., bank account blocked or denylisted by the processor).

2. In-progress then failure – The payment is accepted, goes to “in progress,” and later fails (e.g., insufficient funds).

When an ACH payment fails immediately, the system may treat it as a general payment failure and route the invoice to General Online Dunning (also called Auto Collect Dunning). In that flow:

• The Direct Debit Dunning max retries setting does not apply.
• Retries follow General Online Dunning rules (e.g., Smart dunning), which can allow more attempts over a longer period.

If you see more ACH retries than your Direct Debit limit, it usually means the first attempt failed immediately and the invoice was handled by General Online Dunning instead of Direct Debit Dunning.

What you can do

If the bank account is blocked or denylisted: It will not succeed. Stop dunning for that invoice and ask the customer to add a new bank account or pay with another method (e.g., card).

If you want ACH invoices to always follow Direct Debit Dunning limits: Contact Chargebee Support so we can review your configuration.