Pledges vs charges — when the money actually moves

A donor commits $100 a month for 12 months. Your progress bar jumps by $1,200 — but your bank will see that money arrive in twelve monthly slices. Understanding the difference between a pledge (the commitment) and a charge (money actually moving) explains everything about how recurring giving appears in your dashboard.

For the donor-facing basics of recurring giving, see Recurring donations. This article is the accounting view.

The two kinds of records

When a donor starts a recurring plan, your Donations tab gains two kinds of entries over time:

• The pledge — one record representing the commitment itself. This is what counts toward your campaign total and progress bar.
• The installments — a record for each successful monthly charge, documenting the money that actually moved. Each one is a real payment with its own receipt.

Rule one: nothing counts until real money moves

The first charge runs immediately at signup. Only when that first payment succeeds does the pledge flip to counted status and appear in your totals. A card that never successfully charges never moves your progress bar — a signup with a bad card quietly expires without ever touching your numbers.

Fixed-term plans: the commitment counts up front

Every recurring plan created today runs for a set number of months — Monthly and Installments both. For a fixed plan (say, $100 × 12 months):

• After the first successful charge, the pledge counts the full $1,200 commitment toward your campaign total.
• Each month's charge then collects another $100 of it. The installment records document the collection, but they don't add to your total again — the pledge already did. No double counting, ever.
• Your dashboard's plan view tracks how much of the commitment has actually been collected so far.

This is why your progress bar can be "ahead of" your bank: the bar reflects committed money; the payouts reflect collected money.

Legacy open-ended plans: the pledge grows

Some older campaigns still carry open-ended monthly plans from before set lengths existed — new plans can't be created without an end, but these legacy plans keep running. For them, there's no fixed commitment to count up front. Instead:

• The first successful charge counts one month's amount.
• Each subsequent successful charge adds another month to your total as it happens.

Your total for open-ended plans always equals money actually collected — it can't get ahead of reality.

When a charge fails

Cards expire mid-plan. When a scheduled charge is declined:

1. The plan moves to Past due and Pledgix retries automatically — about 2 days after the failed charge, then about 5 days after it.
2. If the donor (or you) updates the card, the retry runs promptly with the new one.
3. If every retry fails, the plan is cancelled automatically.

One exception: some plans are billed by the payment gateway itself on its own schedule. Those plans handle failed-payment retries on the gateway side, and card or billing-day changes can't be made from Pledgix — the dashboard flags them as gateway-managed.

Here's the accounting that follows: when a fixed-term plan ends early, its pledge is shrunk to what was actually collected. If the $1,200 plan died after four payments, your total adjusts down to $400. Your campaign never keeps credit for money that will not arrive — the progress bar heals itself without any action from you.

Cancellations — who can end a plan

• You (and your managers with donation-editing permission) can cancel any plan from the Recurring Payments panel.
• Donors on a fixed-length plan — a firm commitment — can't end it with one click: their cancellation click creates a cancellation request for your team to review, so commitments aren't silently walked away from without you knowing. (Legacy open-ended plans are the exception — those donors can still self-cancel from their portal.)

Reading your dashboard with this model in mind

| You see | It means | |---|---| | A pledge record | A counted commitment (fixed plans: full amount; legacy open-ended plans: grows per charge) | | An installment record | An actual charge that succeeded — this is money moving | | Plan status Active | Charging on schedule | | Plan status Past due | A charge failed; automatic retries in progress | | Plan status Completed | A fixed plan collected everything it committed | | Plan status Cancelled | Ended — totals already adjusted to what was collected |

Tip: When comparing your campaign total against money received, remember the gap is exactly your uncollected pledge balance — commitments still being paid down monthly. It's not missing; it's scheduled.