Your Account Balance and your Budget Limits are checked separately every time money moves, and either one running low stops a payment straight away. This article covers what happens to card payments, Accounts Payable payments, and reimbursements when funds run short, what keeps working regardless, and how to restore service quickly.
How It Works
There's no overdraft. A shortfall always shows up as an immediate decline or a clearly labelled Failed status, never as a payment that quietly goes through anyway.
- Card payments decline instantly. A card payment checks your Budget Limit and your Account Balance in real time, and either one falling short declines it at checkout, with no pending or held state.
- This holds whether Weel's own check catches it first or the card network reports the decline back. A declined payment isn't retried automatically, so you simply try again once funds are available.
- Subscription card charges follow the same rule. Subscription cards run through the identical real-time funds check as any other card, so a low Account Balance or Budget Limit declines them too.
- Subscription cards are only exempt from card-blocking for overdue expense receipts, not from the funds check itself.
- Accounts Payable payments fail, they don't stall. A payment your Account Balance or Budget can't cover moves to Failed with an explicit reason, and Weel retries it automatically once you top up, as long as the bill is under 6 months old.
- A shortfall in a specific Budget or Budget Member fails with a different reason to a shortfall in your overall Account Balance. Batch payments fail and recover together as one group, not invoice by invoice.
- Reimbursements work the same way as Accounts Payable. A reimbursement is an Accounts Payable Bill behind the scenes, so it fails and retries on the same terms, and you can still submit and code a claim at a $0 Budget Limit.
- A compliance hold on a payout is a separate matter that doesn't retry automatically. Contact Support to clear it.
- Transactions already approved settle normally. Once a card payment is authorised, Weel reserves the funds straight away, so it settles later even if your Account Balance has since dropped to zero.
- Everyday tasks keep working. Approving expenses, coding transactions, and running exports and reports don't move money, so a zero Account Balance never blocks them.
Good to know
- Your Budget can show plenty of room and still decline a payment if your Account Balance is low, and a healthy Account Balance won't help if your Budget's own limit is used up.
- Only Admins can see your actual Account Balance, in the mobile app or the web app. Everyone else sees only their Budget's Available Limit, so ask an Admin to check the Account Balance if you can't tell which one is short.
- For Accounts Payable and reimbursements, open the Failed item to see the exact reason. That's the fastest way to tell a Budget-side shortfall from an Account Balance shortfall.
- To top up your Account Balance, send a bank transfer or set a Direct Debit threshold so Weel tops it up automatically.
- To fix a Budget Member shortfall, use the +/- icons next to their name.
- To fix a pooled Budget shortfall, use the one-off limit adjustment (pencil icon) at the top of the Budget.