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Use Subscription Billing to work through a month of subscription renewals. You can spot the days with failed or at-risk renewals, open a day to see who’s affected, and retry payments or email those customers from the same screen.

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Where to find it

In the admin sidebar, under Payments, select Subscription Billing. To open the screen, your role needs View only or Full access for Payment Reports. On the Roles screen, Payment Reports is in the Commerce card. Open the card and set access from the Payment Reports area’s menu. The same permission opens Home, Traffic, Performance and Transactions. To retry payments or email customers, your role also needs Full access for Subscriptions, or Custom access with Edit subscription details, pause, or cancel turned on, in the same Commerce card. Without it, you can read every figure, but the selection boxes, the retry buttons and Recommended actions don’t appear.

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What’s on the screen

The page header reads Subscription Billing, under a Subscriptions breadcrumb. The breadcrumb is a link only if your role can open the Subscriptions screen. The screen has two tabs, Calendar and Analytics, which report on the same month. It opens on Calendar and the current month.

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Calendar

Above the month grid, a summary row shows the month’s figures. Use the Renewals and Recovery switch to change what the summary and each day show, Today to go back to the current month, and the arrows to move between months. Only days with renewals show figures. A dot marks a day that needs a look: amber for Elevated risk, red for High risk. Point at a day for more figures, and click it to open the day panel.

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The day panel

The day panel opens beside the calendar, or over it on a narrow screen. The X closes it. It has two tabs. Overview sums up the day:
  • Collected (a day that has run) or Expected (a later day), with the number of Orders. Click the card for a breakdown by charges, customers and products.
  • Lost to failures, when renewals failed, with how many Failed and how many are Recoverable. Click it to see Why they failed. On a later day, this card is Projected loss.
  • Recommended actions: what you can do about the day. See the tasks below.
Subscriptions lists the day’s renewals, up to 100 at a time:
  • Status filters: All, then whichever of Failed, Retrying, At risk, Scheduled and Cleared the day has. Pick one at a time. Failed includes renewals already queued for a retry; Retrying shows only those.
  • Search: the magnifying glass searches by customer or product.
  • Rows: each row shows the customer, the product and the amount. A yellow pill gives the reason a renewal is at risk, for example Repeated declines. A blue pill shows a booked retry, for example Retry 14:30. asked to update card means the customer was recently sent a payment update email. Retryable marks a failed payment that Retry now can charge.
  • Pages: if the day has more than 100 renewals, use the arrows at the bottom to move between pages.
Click a customer to open the renewal’s details: why it’s at risk, the decline reason, the amount, product and market, what the customer has paid to date, past failed charges, the last attempt, any scheduled retry and the customer’s Lifetime value. Couldn’t be billed with Not a card decline means the payment failed before it reached a payment gateway. View full subscription opens the subscription.

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Analytics

Analytics reports on the whole month: a summary (Cleared first time, Revenue to date, Renewals and Failure rate), Revenue by day, When charges clear by time of day and time of month, Orders by market, Where failures concentrate and Top failure reasons.

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Find a day’s failed renewals

1

Switch to Recovery

On Calendar, choose Recovery. Each day shows the money you could still recover. Look for days with a red or amber dot.
2

Open the day

Click the day. The panel opens on Overview.
3

See why payments failed

Click Lost to failures to see Why they failed.
4

List the failed renewals

Open Subscriptions and choose Failed. Click a customer to see the renewal’s details.

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Retry failed payments

Retry now and Schedule charge failed renewals again, on the payment method already on file. They only reach payments that failed in a way a retry can fix. A hard decline needs a new payment method, so it isn’t retried. Retry now also skips renewals that already have a retry queued.
1

Start from the day's overview

In Recommended actions, click Retry now or Schedule retries. These cards appear when the day has payments a retry can fix. The panel switches to Subscriptions, with the retryable renewals on the first page selected. You can also tick rows yourself.
2

Check the selection

The bar at the bottom of the list appears once you select a row. It shows how many are selected and, when some can’t be retried or scheduled, how many each action can reach. If the day has more than one page, only the rows on the page you’re on are included. Turning a page, changing the status filter or searching clears your selection.
3

Retry now

Click Retry now. The dialog shows how many payments it covers and, if they share a currency, their total. Click Retry N payments (for example Retry 12 payments) to queue them to be charged again.
4

Or pick a time

Click Schedule. Choose In 4 hours (the default), In 8 hours, In 12 hours or In 20 hours, or set Retry at. The time must be at least 5 minutes and at most 23 hours away, in your own time zone. Nothing is charged now. Click Schedule N retries to book it.
5

Read the results

The dialog shows how many renewals were queued or scheduled, and names any that weren’t, with the reason. Click Done.
If a renewal you schedule already has a retry booked, scheduling moves it to the new time instead of adding a second retry. The dialog names the existing booking first. When every selected renewal is already booked, the button reads Move N retries. You can’t close a retry dialog while it’s sending.
If a retry dialog shows Retry status unknown or Scheduling status unknown, don’t retry straight away. Click Reload the day and check the renewals first. Retrying again can charge the same card twice.

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Email customers about a payment

Recommended actions offers two emails. Each opens a confirmation that says how many customers it will email.
  • Payment failed email: for renewals whose charge ran and failed, including those queued for a retry. It tells the customer the charge didn’t go through and asks them to update their payment method.
  • Payment update email: for renewals that haven’t run yet and are flagged at risk. It asks the customer to update their payment method before the renewal runs. Nothing is charged. It skips customers who were asked recently; their rows show asked to update card.
1

Choose the email

Open the day on Calendar. In Recommended actions, click Payment failed email or Payment update email. Each card shows how many of the day’s renewals it applies to.
2

Decide about resends (Payment failed email only)

Payment failed email skips customers the automatic dunning emails already wrote to, and customers already sent this email in the last day. To include them, tick Also tell customers who have already been told. This also waives the one-day quiet period, so some customers hear about the same charge twice. It’s off each time the dialog opens. Only tick this the first time you send this email for a day.
3

Send

Check the number on the Email N customers button before you send. That number is how many get the email. Then click it.
4

Check the results

The dialog shows how many emails were sent, and how many customers weren’t emailed, with the reasons. Click Done.
If a Send status unknown notice appears, close the dialog with Cancel, reload the day and check before you send again. Sending again can email the same customer twice.

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Frequently asked questions

Retrying payments and emailing customers need Full access for Subscriptions, or Custom access with Edit subscription details, pause, or cancel turned on, in the Commerce card on the Roles screen. Without it, the screen is read-only. Recommended actions also appears only when the day has failed or at-risk renewals.
None of the selected rows is a payment that Retry now can charge: it cleared, it hasn’t run yet, it was a hard decline, or a retry is already queued. Schedule can still move a retry that’s already booked for a set time.