Understanding failed payment retries

When a subscription payment fails, Orbit does not cancel the subscription. It marks it Past Due, tries the charge again, and can email the customer so they can fix their card. That chasing sequence is sometimes called dunning.

Considerations

• The Payment Recovery page shows you what is happening. It does not hold the settings.
• The number of retries and the length of the grace period are set on Subscription Settings.
• Saving those settings shows no message. The save bar leaving the screen is the confirmation.

What happens when a payment fails

1. The scheduled charge fails, for example an expired card or not enough money in the account.
2. The subscription status changes to Past Due.
3. A red bar appears on the Subscriptions page reading 1 subscription with failed payments.
4. Your card provider tries the charge again on its own schedule. Orbit records each attempt.
5. The customer gets your Payment failed email, if that email is turned on.
6. The grace period runs from the end of the current billing period.
7. When the grace period ends and the money has still not arrived, the subscription is cancelled if Auto-cancel after grace period is on.

Open the Payment Recovery page

1. From your Orbit dashboard, go to Subscriptions.
2. Look below the figures and the charts for the red bar.
3. Click View recovery dashboard. The Payment Recovery page opens.

Note: The red bar only appears while a payment has failed. There is no Payment Recovery item in the left-hand menu, so the bar is how you get to the page.

Read the Payment Recovery page

Three figures sit at the top:

• Past Due Subscriptions: how many subscriptions are behind.
• Revenue at Risk: what those subscriptions are worth per month.
• Avg. Failed Attempts: the average number of failed charges across them.

Below that is one card per subscriber. Each card shows their name and email, a Past Due label, a Retry button, and four figures:

• Product: what they subscribe to.
• Amount at risk: the amount per billing cycle.
• Period end: the end of the period they have paid for.
• Last payment: when money last arrived.

Inside each card, a red Payment Recovery block shows how the chase is going: Retry attempts as a used count out of 3, and Grace period as the days remaining, with a bar that fills as the days run out. The used count and the days shown on this block are fixed at 3 attempts and 7 days and do not follow your settings. When every retry has been used, a line reads All retry attempts exhausted. Subscription will cancel when grace period ends.

Retry a payment now

1. On the Payment Recovery page, find the subscriber.
2. Click Retry on their card.
3. Orbit asks the bank for the money again and records the attempt on the subscription.

The status stays Past Due, the counter does not move, and the three figures at the top stay where they were. That is correct. The status changes only once the money clears.

Set your retries and grace period

1. On the Payment Recovery page, click Open settings. You can also go to Settings, then Subscription Settings.
2. Find the Failed Payment Recovery panel.
3. Set Grace period to 1 week, 2 weeks or 3 weeks. This is how long to keep trying before taking action.
4. Turn Auto-cancel after grace period on or off. On means unpaid subscriptions are cancelled when the grace period ends.
5. Set Maximum retry attempts. It can be between 1 and 10.
6. Click Save changes.

Choose the emails customers get

The same settings page holds an Email Notifications panel. One switch matters here:

• Payment failed: tells customers when a payment attempt fails.

Related guides

• Recovering a failed subscription payment
• Understanding subscription statuses
• Changing your subscription settings
• Cancelling a subscription