CoolPay Hub is where staff review and approve upcoming recurring payments before they go out. Nothing reaches the bank until someone with permission approves it, or picks another action like skip or hold.
Find CoolPay Hub under Give > CoolPay Hub. It appears first in the CoolPay group with a shield check icon. A Missed Payments alert elsewhere in Give can also take you straight into the hub.
Approval uses the Recurring Contributions Update permission. Anyone with that permission can approve, including regular staff and staff-support or impersonation sessions.
• Needs you: everything waiting on a decision. This is the default tab and where you approve payments.
• Scheduled: pre-approved periods and periods that are not due yet.
• Activity: charges already submitted or resolved.
If a donor's recurring gift is cancelled, any leftover period for it can never be approved, so it no longer appears in Ready to decide (or in the daily "gifts need approval" email). The gift's server-side status makes it un-approvable, so leaving it in the queue was just noise.
You can still find and clean up that leftover period in the All view. Opening it shows the cancellation reason and date, and you can still skip it so it stops appearing without charging the donor. There is no approve option for a cancelled gift's period.
This only applies to gifts that are cancelled. A paused gift's leftover period still needs a decision and still shows in Ready to decide, since pausing is often how a failed charge reaches a human in the first place.
A period left behind by a gift the donor cancelled no longer shows up in Ready to decide. CoolFocus can never charge that period, so it is not something to act on; it still appears under All (and in the gift's own history) so the record stays visible, but it will not sit in your to-do queue or count toward the daily "gifts need approval" reminder email. A paused gift's periods still show in Ready to decide, since pausing is often how a failed charge reaches a human in the first place.
Each pending payment shows as its own card instead of a table row. A card leads with the decision itself: the amount on the left, and the due date (or, for a period you're approving ahead of time, "Charges on") on the right. Below that sit the donor's name and number, a link to the recurring gift, and the payment method.
Every card also carries one evidence line so you can judge the payment without opening it:
• Last: $35.00 on Jun 29 when the gift has payment history. The line uses the most recently processed payment, not whatever order the server returned.
• Last: $35.00 on Jun 29 - failed - Card expired when that latest payment itself failed.
• Payment method in plain language, such as Card •••• 4242 or ACH •••• 6789, never the processor's raw value
• Last: payment method on file, labeled in plain terms like Card •••• 4242 or ACH •••• 6789 rather than the processor's internal wording
• The saved payment method, shown in staff-friendly terms such as "Card •••• 4242" or "ACH •••• 6789" rather than the processor's internal type name
• The $35.00 on Jun 29 - 2 failures in 90 days when the history is otherwise clean but the gift has had recent failures.
• Payment method, labeled in plain terms as Card or ACH with the last 4 digits, for example "ACH •••• 6789". CoolFocus translates the processor's own vocabulary for you, so you will never see raw values like card or bank_account on a row or in the decision dialog
• First charge - no history for a gift with no payment history yet.
• Failed Jul 29 - Insufficient funds on a failed period, styled as a link straight to the failed payment.
Dates on the card show only the month and day. A date from an earlier calendar year adds the year, so an old date is never,,,, --mistaken for a recent one.
A card also flags a catch-up risk with a second, amber-tinted line when recent payments landed in the same calendar month. That often happens when a held or delayed gift settles alongside newer periods. The flag does not block approval, it just asks you to confirm the payments are separate periods, not duplicates.
A pending period can outlive the recurring gift behind it. If a donor's recurring contribution is cancelled or paused after a period was already queued for approval, that period stays in the hub, but it can no longer be charged.
CoolPay Hub flags these rows so staff do not try to approve them:
• The row's status pill shows Cancelled or Paused instead of the usual due/failed status.
• Opening the row shows a Recurring gift cancelled or Recurring gift paused alert with the date it was cancelled or paused.
• The dialog title becomes Review cancelled payment or Review paused payment.
• The Approve and submit button is replaced with Skip without charging.
• These rows cannot be batch-selected and are excluded from Approve all.
If you try to approve one of these periods through the API directly, you'll get a recurring_contribution_unavailable error. Use Skip instead. Skipping a leftover period does not charge the donor and clears it from the queue.
Sometimes a pending period is still sitting in the queue after its recurring gift was cancelled or paused, for example a donor cancelled the same day a charge was already scheduled. CoolFocus surfaces this instead of letting you approve a charge that can no longer go through:
• The row's status pill reads Cancelled or Paused instead of the usual due/failed pill, and the checkbox for that row is disabled so it cannot be included in a batch approval.
• Opening the row shows a Recurring gift cancelled or Recurring gift paused notice, with the date it was cancelled or paused, instead of the usual approve button.
• The only available action is Skip without charging. This resolves the period without submitting a charge to the recurring gift.
• Batch approval and pre-approval (approving ahead of the due date) both skip these periods automatically, so they never get pulled into a batch by mistake.
When a recurring gift is cancelled, any pending or failed period it already generated can never be approved, since the processor rejects a decision on a cancelled gift. CoolPay Hub now keeps those leftover periods out of Ready to decide and Failed entirely, so the queue only shows work someone can actually act on.
You can still find a cancelled gift's leftover periods in the All view. Open one to see why it can't be approved and to Skip it if you want to tidy it up, but there's no requirement to do so, since it no longer counts toward anything.
These cancelled-gift periods are also left out of the daily "recurring gifts need approval" reminder email, so a cancelled gift never inflates the amount your organization is asked to review.
A paused gift is different and still shows up in Ready to decide with a Skip action, because pausing is often how an auto-paused failure reaches a person in the first place. Only a deliberately cancelled gift is filtered out.
Needs you groups cards by the kind of decision:
• Due now: periods due today and waiting on a first approval. This group supports batch approval (see below).
• Failed - needs a decision: periods whose last attempt failed. Acknowledge the failure, contact the donor, or correct the payment method before re-approving. Only appears when something has failed.
• Stuck - re-submit charge: periods approved but never submitted to the processor. Click Re-submit on the card to retry the same approval directly, without opening the review dialog. This does not create a new decision.
• Approve ahead of time: clean, future periods you can pre-approve early. These cards show no batch checkbox: pre-approval happens one card at a time, since there is no batch pre-approve endpoint yet.
Each group shows up to 25 cards at once. Past that, a Show all button reveals the rest.
The Due now group header carries the batch controls, next to the,, or belong to or belong to ca cancelled o cancelled/paused r pausdsdcurring recurrigift, are thg gift are ney act,,,, --on:
• A checkbox to select every eligible card currently shown in the group.
• A button that prices the batch as you go: Approve all N * $amount when nothing is selected, Approve N selected * $amount once you check individual cards.
If more cards are hiding behind Show all, the button reads Approve N shown * $amount instead of Approve all, and both the button and the select-all checkbox only ever reach the cards on screen. Click Show all first if you want the batch to cover every due period.
A card in Due now that cannot batch-approve (because it needs individual review or has a recent failure) shows a disabled checkbox with the reason, instead of a blank space. Select-all skips these cards automatically.
Clicking the batch button opens the same batch confirmation as before: approving still requires typing the exact confirmation phrase for the selected count and total.
Switching tabs clears your selection, so a card checked in one tab can never ride into a batch approved from another.
Click anywhere on a card (other than its buttons or links) to open its decision dialog. Along with the amount, frequency, due date, and payment method (same Card / ACH labeling as the queue), you will see:
• Recent payments for this gift (date, amount, covered period, and status),,,,, --so you can avoid a duplicate charge.
• A catch-up warning when recent payments landed in the same calendar month.
• For a failed period, the dialog title becomes Review failed payment and shows the failure reason, so you can approve again, skip, or hold with context.
• For a cancelled or paused recurring gift, an alert explaining the gift can no longer be charged, with the cancellation or pause date
For a period flagged for individual review, the dialog explains why approval is not available yet instead of just hiding the button. You may see a reason such as missing permission, the recurring gift not being active, no usable saved payment method, or the period simply not being due yet (with the date it opens).
The Approve (or Approve ahead) button is green; a failed period's Review button is amber. Approving submits that one period only. It does not approve any future periods for the same gift.
CoolPay Hub keeps a pending period in sync with the donor's recurring gift right up to the moment you approve it. If the donor's payment method, amount, fees, frequency, or next payment date changed after the row loaded, for example the donor swapped a card for a bank account, or the gift amount was edited, CoolFocus blocks the approval instead of charging against outdated details.
When that happens:
• The confirmation dialog closes and your attestation is cleared, so you cannot resubmit the same dialog against stale details.
• An error message names what changed, for example "Payment method, amount, and fees changed."
• The queue refreshes automatically, so the row now shows the current payment method, amount, and fees.
Review the refreshed row, then approve again with the current details, or use Skip to move past this period without charging.
After a charge fails, the recurring gift's schedule normally moves on to its next due date within a few days, often before staff have even replaced the failed card. That schedule move by itself no longer blocks your retry.
When you re-approve a failed period with a new saved payment method, CoolFocus recognizes that the schedule has simply advanced past the failure and still lets the retry through, charging against the failed period's own original due date rather than the newer one. If anything else about the gift changed at the same time, such as the amount or frequency, the approval is still blocked as stale so you can review the current details before trying again.
Some periods carry a check that Approve cannot get past. In the queue, these show a red Blocked badge instead of a Review or Approve button. Opening a blocked row shows a dialog titled "Can't approve this period yet" that names the specific issue in plain language and lists what you can do about it, instead of just showing a raw flag name.
Each blocking issue has an owner:
• You can fix it now: for example, no usable payment method or a duplicate active recurring gift. The dialog tells you what to ask the donor for, or what to cancel, before approving.
• Nothing to do but wait: for example, an earlier bank payment on the same gift hasn't settled yet, or the period is already covered by a charge in flight. Approving now risks a double charge, so the dialog says to wait.
• Only support can clear it: for example, an open payment issue (reconciliation alert) on the recurring gift. The dialog says to contact support if the period needs to be charged, and offers Skip, Pause, or Mark fulfilled outside CoolPay as the actions that do work in the meantime. It never asks you to chase the donor for a card that is already fine.
A period that is blocked because support needs to clear an issue only stays blocked for its own billing period. An alert raised against an earlier period (say, April) no longer holds every later period of that gift hostage. Once the alert's own period has passed, later periods on the same recurring gift can be approved normally.
A period could previously get stuck showing Reconciliation Required with no Approve button at all, not even Skip through the usual review dialog, if the payment behind it was approved but never actually sent to the processor. Staff had to contact support to get it moving again.
CoolFocus now checks a stuck period like this every time the Hub reloads. If the payment history shows the charge truly never went out, the period is reopened automatically to a normal pending decision, and Approve becomes available again without anyone contacting support. If a payment may actually exist for that period, the block stays in place and still needs support to review it, since approving on top of a real charge would risk billing the donor twice.
If a period stays stuck after reopening CoolPay Hub, contact support.
Some periods can't be approved at all. A blocked row shows a Blocked badge instead of an Approve action, and opening the row shows a dialog titled Can't approve this period yet that names the blocker in plain language instead of a raw status code.
The blockers you may see:
• Payment issue still open - an unresolved payment issue is open on this recurring gift. Support has to clear it before the period can be charged.
• No usable payment method - the gift has no saved card or bank account that can be charged. Ask the donor for an updated payment method, then approve.
• Duplicate recurring gift - the donor has another active recurring gift with the same amount, schedule, and payment method. Cancel whichever gift is the duplicate, then approve.
• Bank payment still pending - an earlier bank payment for this gift has not settled yet. Wait for it to settle; charging now risks billing the donor twice.
• Period already covered - a charge covering this same period is already in flight or completed. Skip this period.
• Schedule cannot be resolved - the gift's frequency does not resolve to a single billing period. Support needs to correct the schedule.
When the fix is not something staff can do themselves, the dialog says so directly and points you to Skip, Pause, or Mark fulfilled outside CoolPay instead of Approve. Chasing the donor for a new card will not help when the block is one of these, since the payment method is not the problem.
Only an alert about that specific billing period can block it. An earlier open alert (for example a duplicate-charge hold from months back) no longer blocks every later period on the same gift forever. Once the alert's own period is resolved or the gift has moved past it, later periods can be approved normally even while the older period still waits on support.
When a period can't be approved from the dialog, the Individual review notice states the actual reason instead of pointing you toward controls that aren't there. You'll see one of:
• You don't have permission to approve payments
• Approval is unavailable while the recurring gift is not active
• The gift has no usable saved payment method, so nothing can be charged yet
• The exact date approval opens, when the period isn't due yet
In the no-payment-method case, approval and the attestation checkbox are hidden entirely, but Skip, Hold, and Mark fulfilled outside CoolPay stay available so you still have a way to resolve the period.
A period flagged for Individual review only shows the attestation checkbox and the Approve button when there is actually something to approve. If those controls are hidden, the dialog explains why instead of telling you to confirm authorization you cannot see. You may see:
• You do not have permission to approve payments
• Approval is unavailable while the recurring gift is not active
• This gift has no usable saved payment method, so nothing can be charged yet
• Approval opens on a specific date, for a period that is not due yet
When a period is hard-blocked by a risk flag (for example a pending ACH overlap), the dialog names the flag in plain language instead of just hiding Approve. Non-charge actions like Skip, Hold, and Mark fulfilled outside CoolPay stay available in all of these cases.
Some periods can't be approved as part of a batch and open in an Individual review alert instead. When the checkbox and Approve button are available, the alert tells you to review the details and confirm authorization. When they are not available, the alert explains why instead of pointing you at controls that aren't there, for example:
• The gift has no usable saved payment method, so nothing can be charged yet
• Approval opens on a future date, when the period becomes due
• You do not have permission to approve payments
• The recurring gift is not currently active
Even when approval isn't available, you can still Skip, Hold, or Mark fulfilled outside CoolPay for that period.
A period can be blocked by an open risk flag instead of being ready for a decision. Opening a blocked row shows Can't approve this period yet, along with:
• What is actually true right now (for example, an unresolved payment issue on the gift, or an earlier bank payment for this gift that has not settled)
• What to do about it: some flags are yours to clear (like getting an updated payment method from the donor), some just need you to wait for a pending payment to settle, and some can only be cleared by support
• When support has to clear it, the dialog says so directly and points you to Skip or Pause so the donor is not left waiting on a period nobody can act on yet
The dialog no longer offers an Approve action it cannot honor. Skip, Pause, and Mark fulfilled outside CoolPay remain available from the same dialog for a blocked period.
A blocking alert only holds back the specific period it was raised about, not every future period of that gift. Earlier, an alert tied to one billing period (for example, a duplicate-payment check from several months ago) could keep blocking every later period of the same recurring gift even after intervening charges had already gone through successfully. Alerts that don't name a specific period still block every period of the gift until resolved, since there is no way to scope those to a single charge.
A period that cannot be approved shows a Blocked badge on its card instead of an approve button.
The Scheduled tab is read-mostly. It groups periods into:
• Pre-approved - will charge on the due date: already authorized. You can revoke any of these right up until it charges.
• Upcoming - needs a look on the day: periods that carry something worth checking, so they wait for same-day review instead of being signed off in advance.
Click a row to open the same decision dialog as Needs you.
CoolFocus submits approved charges in the background. If the processor rate-limits the submission (for example "Too many requests"), CoolFocus keeps the period approved and queued, does not email the donor, and automatically retries. Recovery starts within a few minutes and also runs in a daily sweep. You do not need to re-approve in those cases.
Approval is not the same as submission. A period that shows an approved decision but is still queued lands in the Stuck group, with a Re-submit action.
Common causes:
• Recurring processing is paused for your whole organization.
• Recurring processing is paused for that donor's account.
When a pause blocks submission, CoolFocus opens an alert and writes a processing log entry. You can see the open alert on the recurring gift's Recent History timeline. Clear the pause, then approve or re-submit the period from the hub.
A pending period can outlive the recurring schedule it belongs to. If someone cancels or pauses a recurring gift while a period for it is still sitting in the queue, that period stays visible instead of disappearing, but the hub steers you away from charging it.
• The row's status pill shows Cancelled or Paused instead of the usual Due now or Approve ahead label.
• These rows are excluded from Select eligible and from batch approval. Their row checkbox is disabled.
• Opening the row shows Review cancelled payment or Review paused payment, with the date the gift was cancelled or paused and an explanation that the schedule can no longer be charged.
• The dialog offers only Skip without charging. There is no Approve and submit button for these rows.
Skip the period once you see this status. It moves the leftover period out of the queue without charging the donor.
A pending period keeps a snapshot of the payment method, amount, fees, frequency, and next payment date at the moment it was queued. If the donor updates their recurring gift after that (for example switching a card to a bank account, or changing the amount) while the period is still undecided, CoolFocus refreshes that snapshot automatically the next time it materializes due periods. You will see the updated payment method and amount in the row without having to do anything.
If the queue in your browser is showing an older snapshot when you click Approve, CoolFocus rejects the approval with a 409 and tells you exactly what changed, for example "Payment method and amount changed." The hub then refreshes the queue for you and closes the dialog so you do not approve against stale numbers. Review the updated row and approve again, or choose Skip if you do not want to charge that period.
• Skip moves the gift to its next scheduled date without charging this period. This is the right choice for a leftover period whose recurring gift was cancelled or paused..
• Hold pauses the period until someone removes it from hold..
• Mark fulfilled outside CoolPay records that the donor already gave another way for that period..
If approving one past-due period would cause a second non-current-period charge on the same gift to land the same day, CoolFocus defers the second one. You will see a Recovery spaced entry in Recent History. The current-period charge due today is never delayed. The deferred period stays in the hub and becomes eligible again after about 7 days.
The hub decides when a period is due using your organization's time zone on the server,,,,, --not your browser's clock. That affects Needs you vs. Scheduled, and what can be approved:
• Scheduled lists pending periods that are not yet due in your org's local time.
• You cannot approve a period until it is due locally. Approve stays unavailable for not-yet-due periods (other than the deliberate early approvals in Approve ahead of time). You can still open a card to review details.
• Overnight edge case: if it is already the next day in UTC, but not yet the next day in your organization's time zone, the period stays in Scheduled and cannot be approved yet.
• Fixing Failed & Missed Payments
• Managing a Recurring Gift
• Recurring Contributions
