The debit is about to bounce. Now what?

What happens mechanically, and how fast

The order is predictable, and every step is quicker than people expect.

1. Day 0 — the return. The ACH comes back. Your bank charges you; the agreement charges you an NSF fee too, commonly a flat amount per occurrence.
2. Day 0–2 — the call. Collections calls the number on file, then the guarantor's cell, then sometimes the business's main line during service hours.
3. Day 1–5 — the default letter. Most agreements treat one or two returns as an event of default. Default generally triggers acceleration: the entire uncollected purchased amount becomes due at once, plus a default fee and collection costs.
4. Same week — the processor notification. Under the assignment and UCC language you signed, the funder may notify your card processor to remit receipts directly to it, and in some structures may contact your account debtors — the customers who owe you money. This is the step that turns a cash-flow problem into an operating crisis.
5. Weeks 2–8 — the guarantor. A performance guaranty is called on the theory that you breached. Where a confession of judgment was signed and is enforceable, this can move faster, though its use has been curtailed in the jurisdictions where much of this paper is written. The clauses, annotated.

The lesson in the timeline: the cheapest move is almost always made before the first return, not after.

Before it bounces: invoke reconciliation

If your agreement has a reconciliation clause, it is the only mechanism in the contract that lowers your payment without breaching it. Use it as written, exactly, and in writing.

1. Find the clause and read the conditions. Who must request it, in what form, by what deadline, with what documents. Many clauses require a written request within a few business days of month-end, with full bank and processor statements. Miss the window and the agreement may treat it as waived.
2. Send it by email and keep the sent copy. Reference the agreement number, quote the clause by section, attach every document it asks for, state the actual receipts for the period, and state the adjusted daily amount you are requesting under the specified percentage.
3. Ask for a written response by a date. If the clause says the funder decides in its "sole discretion", you are asking rather than demanding — but an ignored, well-documented, on-time request is a fact worth having later, especially if the deal is ever argued to be a disguised loan.
4. Do not stop the debit while you wait. Blocking it is a default trigger in nearly every agreement. Revoking the ACH authorization is a deliberate, consequential decision, not a way to buy a week.

Get the numbers before you negotiate

You cannot settle what you have not counted. Send the payoff and balance request: total payoff with a good-through date, complete payment history, itemised fees with the authorising clause, current holder of the paper, and the UCC file number. Owners routinely find debits that do not match statements and fees with no contractual basis. And if the paper has been sold, you need to know who you are actually dealing with.

Workout, settlement, or another advance?

Three doors, and only one of them is usually the right one.

The rescue industry that is already calling you

Distress is a list, exactly like funding is a list. Returned payments, defaults, judgments and new filings are all visible or inferable, so within days of trouble you will hear from "MCA debt relief", "merchant defense", and consolidation shops. Some are legitimate. Many are the same rooms, working the other side of the same file. What to look for:

• An up-front fee before anything is delivered. The oldest structure in the business. Fee-first debt relief has been an enforcement target for years in consumer markets; the commercial side has thinner protection, which is exactly why it is worked.
• "Stop paying everyone and we'll negotiate." Advice that triggers your default clauses on purpose, so that the crisis they are hired to solve gets worse and more urgent.
• Reverse consolidation. A new advance that funds your existing daily payments — adding cost on top of cost while the underlying obligations continue. The weekly number goes down for a while; the total goes up, sometimes enormously.
• Guaranteed outcomes. Nobody can guarantee a settlement percentage or that a funder will accept anything.
• Non-lawyers describing legal strategy. If the pitch is about defending a judgment or attacking a contract, the person doing that work should be a lawyer, licensed, named, and engaged by a written agreement.

Ask any of them the same three questions: what is your fee, when is it earned, and are you a lawyer? Then report the ones that fail.

The order of operations, on one line

Count what you owe → invoke reconciliation in writing, on time → get a payoff figure and the ledger → talk to a lawyer before any default event → negotiate a workout or a settlement → never take another position to pay a position. And keep every letter, because the paper trail is the only asset in this situation that appreciates.