Auto-retry billing events

BillPro can retry a billing event that fails with a soft decline. A soft decline is a temporary problem, such as insufficient funds, that may clear without you contacting the customer.

Card schemes allow up to 15 retries of a soft-declined payment in 30 days. BillPro makes up to 3 automatic retries.

How it works

1. A billing event is soft-declined on its scheduled date. The order becomes Failed.
2. BillPro retries it on the retry days in your profile. Each day counts from the billing event's scheduled date.
3. If a retry is approved, the billing event becomes Recovered and the order becomes Active again.
4. If a retry is hard-declined, BillPro stops retrying.
5. After the last retry, BillPro turns off auto-retry for the order.

flowchart LR
  Event["Billing event
  soft-declined"] --> R1["Retry 1
  soft-declined"] --> R2["Retry 2
  soft-declined"] --> R3["Retry 3
  soft-declined"] --> Failed["Order is Failed"]

Retries always count from the original scheduled date. If you execute a billing event early and it fails, the retries still wait for its scheduled date.

Check your retry settings

Open the profile menu, select Profile, then the Processing Details tab. Under Auto Retry:

• Retry Soft Declines shows whether auto-retry is on.
• First Retry (days), Second Retry (days) and Third Retry (days) show when each retry runs.

BillPro Merchant Support sets these. A common setup is days 1, 2 and 3, and a retry can't be more than 28 days after the scheduled date. To change them, contact Merchant Support. See View your profile.

Each order's Summary tab shows whether Auto Retry is enabled for that order.

Collect the payment yourself

While automatic retries run, you can still collect the payment:

• Retry it from the order's Billing Events tab.
• Take a phone payment, or send the customer a payment link.

Manual retries don't use up the automatic retries. When the payment is approved, BillPro stops retrying.

See the retries

A retry keeps the billing event's SPID (scheduled payment ID). Each attempt gets its own Transaction Unique ID from the payment gateway.

To see the retries, open the order's Billing Events tab and expand the billing event. Click a Transaction Unique ID to open Transaction Details, with the response from the payment gateway and the acquirer.

To see every declined billing event, go to Payments › Billing Exceptions. Filter by Auto Retry to split orders with auto-retry on and off. See Monitor billing exceptions.

The dashboard and projected payment reports don't include automatic retries.

Suspend subscriptions after the retries

If Auto Suspend is on, a subscription whose retries all fail becomes Suspended instead of Failed. BillPro then stops collecting its billing events. To reactivate it, update the card, or retry the payment successfully.

If Auto Suspend is off, the order stays Failed and BillPro keeps collecting its later billing events.

Auto-suspend applies to subscriptions only. See Configure BillPro with CardCorp.