This article covers how to manage billing settings such as dunning (charge failure retry) process, and inventory management.
To get started, locate the Billing option under the Tools dropdown within the Stay AI Merchant Portal.
Billing Time
The time of the day payments will be processed and orders will be generated. Subscribers' recurring orders will be charged and their orders will be created at this time or shortly after this time (depending on the volume of orders processed).
You are able to set the time and timezone according to what best meets your business needs. It’s recommended that you process close to midnight of your desired timezone so that orders will be present for fulfillment at the beginning of the day.
Failed Billing
Here you can set the number of retries and retry interval for failed billing attempts or enable Smart Dunning and let Stay AI handle the heavy lifting.
Additionally, you can set whether or not you want subscriptions to cancel or remain active when the Failed Billing Retry process completes.
Smart Dunning
When Smart Dunning is enabled, all subscriptions that enter dunning will be dynamically assigned a retry schedule using AI based on the error code.
Dunning Scheduler
When the Dunning Scheduler is enabled, your subscriptions will retried based on custom schedules you create for soft declines (failures which may recover on their own) and hard declines (failures which require customer intervention).
You can set up to 30 retries per schedule as your business logic dictates.
Standard Retries
When Smart Dunning and the Dunning Scheduler are disabled, then you will set up your number of retries and time between each retry.
Retry After
The time between a failed billing attempt and a subsequent retry. When Smart Dunning is enabled, Stay AI will take care of this value dynamically using AI. Stay AI maintains any previously saved value in case you would like to disable Smart Dunning in the future.
Maximum Number of Retries
The number of times a failed payment is retried before your selected action takes place. When Smart Dunning is enabled, Stay AI will retry each failed subscription up to seven times. Stay AI maintains any previously saved value in case you would like to disable Smart Dunning in the future.
Stay AI Payment Declined Email and Integration Notifications
Stay AI's native Payment Declined will only trigger for a subscription if a payment error has not occurred in the past seven days for that specific billing recovery.
Example 1:
A subscription fails to bill successfully. The customer is sent a Payment Declined email.
The same subscription fails again to bill the next day. The customer is NOT sent a Payment Declined email.
The same subscription fails again eight days later. The customer is sent a Payment Declined email.
Example 2:
A subscription fails to bill successfully. The customer is sent a Payment Declined email.
The same subscription bills successfully the next day.
The customer wants more product and attempts a Get It Now request on the same subscription two days later which fails. The customer would be sent a Payment Declined email as this is a new recovery even though the last failure was within seven days.
Other App Webhooks
Other app webhooks like Klaviyo, Attentive, Postscript, YotPo, etc. will still trigger with each failure, so be sure to use fields like rtx_failed_billing_attempts in Klaviyo to inform your triggers and messaging.
Cancel Dunned Subscriptions
This feature is enabled by default. When enabled, subscriptions that reach the maximum retries from billing failures will be cancelled.
When disabled, subscriptions that have reached the maximum number of retries will remain active instead of being cancelled. These subscriptions and subscribers will display as ACTIVE in analytics.
If you have disabled this feature at any point, you can find ACTIVE subscriptions which are no longer being billed by navigating to the Subscriptions List Page and filtering by Billing Status = Dunning Expired. You can also find these subscriptions by exporting your subscriptions and filtering by the Billing Status.
Removing the Dunning Expired Billing Status can be done by:
Cancelling the subscription
Issuing another billing attempt (Get It Now)
This will allow the subscription to be billed by Stay AI automatically again.
If you disable this feature and enable it at a later date, subscriptions with the Billing Status Dunning Expired, will not automatically be cancelled.
Payment Recovery Analytics Considerations (Disabled)
When Cancel Dunned Subscriptions is DISABLED, there will be no System Cancellations in your Payment Recovery graphs as the subscriptions are not being cancelled from dunning.
Use Cases | Custom Dunning Apps (0 Retries + Disabling Cancel Dunned Subscriptions)
If you are using an external dunning solution to attempt additional retries, disabling Cancel Dunned Subscriptions and setting retries to 0 will allow you to fully control the dunning process based on your app's or your own logic. As to whether that solution cancels the subscriptions, that is up to you and your provider.
Final Retry Discount
Recover more subscriptions that fail with Insufficient Funds errors by incentivizing customers to update their card with a Final Retry Discount.
When enabled, Stay AI will apply a discount code before final dunning retry attempt (the seventh retry for smart dunning or the Maximum Number of Retries when smart dunning is disabled). This setting is not compatible with fewer than 2 manual retries.
Please note that this discount code will not exist in Shopify, but will appear as a discount code on subscriptions and orders.
FAQ
How many orders does it last for?
Just one.
Can a customer receive the discount more than once?
A customer can only receive a final retry discount once. If they enter dunning again, then they will not receive the final retry discount.
Does it stack with other discounts?
Yes, it will stack with other discounts.
Stock / Inventory Level Settings
Shopify’s Inventory System
Out of Stock - The only way a product can be marked as out of stock in Shopify is if Track Quantity is enabled, Continue selling when out of stock is disabled, and the product has an Available Quantity of 0 or a negative integer across all locations.
If Track quantity is disabled or Continue selling when out of stock is enabled, the product will never register as out of stock.
Stay AI and Inventory
The following settings dictate if Stay AI checks inventory during the billing process and what happens when a product is out of stock on a subscription.
Check Stock Levels Before Billing
Check stock levels before billing - If this setting is enabled, Stay.Ai will look to see if a product is marked as Out of Stock (defined above) when the order is processed. If a product is out of stock, the proceeding settings determine what happens to the order.
DO NOT check stock levels before billing - If this setting is enabled, Stay,Ai will not look at inventory quantities in Shopify and will submit the order to Shopify regardless of its Shopify Inventory settings. This can affect fulfillment on your end if you do not have inventory available for one of the products submitted in the order.
Retry Out of Stock Orders
The number of times to retry a subscription billing order that contains one or more out-of-stock-items. After the set number of retries, the order will be deferred to the next billing date.
Do not retry - Subscription is moved to its next billing date
Retry once - The order is retried the next day and if unsuccessful, the order is moved to its next billing date.
Retry twice - The order is retried the next day. If unsuccessful, the order is retried the following day. If unsuccessful again, the order is moved to its next billing date.
The first and second failed attempt will trigger the Item Out of Stock email (found under Notifications to trigger). If Retry twice is set, a failure on the second will not trigger an out of stock email.
Notifications and Webhooks are only sent after partial fulfillment has been attempted (if enabled)
Partial Fulfillment
If Check stock levels before billing is enabled and this Partial Fulfillment is enabled, Stay AI will allow in stock items to ship without out-of-stock items for subscriptions with multiple lines if the remaining products meet the In Stock Item Value Threshold.
If the remaining items in the subscription do not meet the In Stock Item Value Threshold, the order defaults to the Retry Out of Stock Orders logic.
The currency for the In Stock Item Value Threshold will default to the store’s set currency.
If In Stock Item Value Threshold is set to 0 all partial orders will be fulfilled.
Allow One-Time Line Only Orders
If enabled, Stay AI will generate orders when all subscription lines are out of stock, as long as one-time lines are present.
Notifications and Webhooks:
If the order is fulfilled after meeting the In Stock Item Value Threshold, the customer will be sent the Order Partially Fulfilled email notification (Notifications > Emails).
Other Reasons for Partial Fulfillment Failure
Amount Off Products Discounts - If one or more of the out of stock products that are targeted with an Amount Off Products discount, then partial fulfillment will not attempt to remove those items and result in an out of stock failure.
Bundle Line Is Out of Stock - If one or more of the out of stock products are a bundle line, then partial fulfillment will not attempt to remove those items and result in an out of stock failure.
Prepaid - Partial fulfillment is not attempted for prepaid subscriptions.
Billing Failure - Shopify first returns failures for inventory failures before billing cards. If the partial fulfillment reattempt results in a billing failure, then the subscription will be sent billing failure notifications and moved into dunning.
Inventory Allocation Errors
In some cases, the inventory of a product may be in a location that is not in the delivery profile associated with a subscription or inventory may not be in a location which ships to a subscription's address. In these cases, an out of stock error will be sent to these customers.
Additionally, if a subscription receives an Inventory Allocation Error on the initial billing attempt, partial fulfillment will not be attempted.