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Dunning and retries

When a subscription renewal payment fails, PaymentsAI can automatically retry the charge on a configured schedule before cancelling the subscription. This is called dunning.

Dunning is part of Pro Features, configured under Automation Rules → Subscriptions in the dashboard. Without dunning rules set up, a failed renewal does not trigger any automatic retries — the subscription's invoice simply stays unpaid until you act on it.

Pro Feature:

Dunning is part of Automation Rules, which require Pro Features to be enabled. Enabling Pro Features adds a per-transaction fee. See Pricing and fees — Pro Features.

Default rule​

PaymentsAI offers a default dunning configuration with three retry attempts when you add a dunning rule without customising it:

  1. First retry: 3 days after the failed renewal, charging the full amount.
  2. Second retry: at 7 days, charging the full amount.
  3. Third retry: on the 15th day of the month at 06:30, charging the full amount.

If the third retry also fails, the subscription is cancelled.

Customising the schedule​

Each retry step in a dunning rule can be customised on three dimensions.

Schedule​

For each retry, choose when it runs:

  • Retry Immediately: run the retry as soon as the previous attempt fails.
  • Retry on a Specific Date: run the retry on a fixed calendar date and time.
  • Retry After a Certain Amount of Time: wait a defined interval (days / hours) from the previous attempt.

Amount​

For each retry, choose how much to charge:

  • Full amount: the full renewal price.
  • Partial amount: a reduced amount, sometimes used when a smaller charge has a higher chance of going through on a card with low available balance.

Backup payment instrument​

For each retry, toggle "try backup payment". When on, the retry is attempted against the customer's backup payment instrument (if one is on file) before the attempt is marked as failed.

After the last failed attempt​

The dunning rule defines what happens after the final retry fails. Choose any of:

  • Cancel the subscription: the subscription transitions to canceled and stops renewing.
  • Abandon the invoice: the open invoice is marked as abandoned without cancelling the subscription itself.
  • Trigger a webhook: fire a webhook event so your own application can decide what to do.

Webhooks during dunning​

Each failed payment attempt dispatches the transaction-declined webhook — use it to surface "payment failed, please update your card" messaging to the customer. See Transaction declined webhook.

If a retry eventually succeeds, transaction-processed fires for the captured payment and subscription-renewed fires for the subscription. If retries are exhausted, order-delinquency-reached fires and the rule cancels the subscription — subscription-canceled follows (or subscription-churned for a terminal churn). See Subscription webhooks for the full event list.

Recovery​

The simplest path to recover an unpaid subscription is to have the customer update their payment instrument. Once a new instrument is attached and activated, the next scheduled retry charges it.

If the subscription has already moved to canceled (or churned) after the last retry, recovery requires either a new subscription or reactivation if a scheduled cancellation has not yet applied — see Subscription reactivation.

Configuring the rule​

In the PaymentsAI dashboard:

  1. Open Automation Rules from the top menu.
  2. Select the Subscriptions section.
  3. Click Add New Rule to use the default 3-step retry sequence, or build a custom sequence step by step.
  4. For each step, set the schedule, amount, and backup-payment toggle.
  5. Set the action that runs after the last failed step (cancel / abandon invoice / trigger webhook).