Missed Payment Alerts

How Forbidden Finance detects missed recurring payments and alerts you, and what to do when a bill is flagged as missed.

Overview

When a recurring charge does not appear by its expected due date, Forbidden Finance flags it as Missed and sends you an alert. This helps you catch billing issues, declined payments, or forgotten manual payments before they turn into late fees or service interruptions. Missed payment alerts work for all active recurring rules, whether auto-detected or manually created.

How Missed Detection Works

Each active recurring rule generates expected occurrences on a schedule. When an occurrence's due date passes without a matching transaction appearing in your account, the system marks it as missed. Here is the lifecycle of each occurrence:

State	Meaning
Expected	The charge is upcoming and has not occurred yet.
Pending	A matching transaction has appeared but is still processing.
Matched	The charge was found and confirmed in your transactions.
Missed	The due date passed with no matching transaction.

A transaction "matches" when it comes from the same merchant, falls within the amount tolerance (default 10%), and arrives within a reasonable window around the due date.

When You Receive Alerts

Forbidden Finance sends two types of notifications related to upcoming and missed payments:

Reminder (3 days before) — A heads-up that a bill is coming due soon, so you can make sure the funds are available.
Missed alert (after due date) — Sent when the due date passes without a match. This is your signal to investigate.

Both notification types can be enabled or disabled independently in your notification settings.

What to Do When a Bill Is Flagged as Missed

Check your bank account

Log into your bank directly and verify whether the charge was processed. Sometimes transactions take an extra day or two to appear in Forbidden Finance, especially on weekends or holidays.

Wait for sync

If you have a connected bank account, the next sync may import the transaction and automatically resolve the missed flag. Sync frequency depends on your plan (daily for Starter, hourly for Pro, real-time for Premium).

Mark as resolved manually

If you confirmed the charge went through but it has not synced yet, you can manually mark the occurrence as resolved. Tap the missed occurrence and choose Mark as Paid.

Investigate if genuinely missed

If the charge truly did not go through, contact the biller to check for payment failures, declined cards, or account issues. A missed credit card payment, for example, may trigger a late fee that you can sometimes waive by contacting the issuer promptly.

Update the rule if needed

If the charge date shifted (for example, a biller changed your due date), edit the recurring rule to reflect the new schedule so future occurrences are tracked correctly.

Common Reasons for False Missed Alerts

Not every missed alert means something went wrong. Here are common reasons a charge may be flagged incorrectly:

Sync delay — Your bank has not sent the transaction data yet. This resolves on the next sync cycle.
Merchant name change — The biller updated their merchant name, so the system does not match it to the existing rule. Edit the rule to include the new name.
Amount outside tolerance — A price increase pushed the charge beyond the 10% tolerance. Increase the tolerance on the rule or update the expected amount.
Weekend or holiday — Banks may process charges on the next business day. The missed flag appears on the due date but often resolves within a day or two.