Recurring payments fail. Expired cards, changed banks, insufficient funds. Dunning is the automatic recovery: retry the charge on a schedule rather than losing the subscriber silently.
Where to find it
Under Settings → Failed-payment recovery (dunning) in the app.
How to set it up
Turn on retries
Switch on Automatically retry failed payments.Set the retry count
Set Max retries, up to four.Save
Click Save settings.
Options
The retry ladder
When a billing attempt fails, a dunning sequence opens for that subscription. Retries land at 1, 3, 5 and 7 days from the first failure. The offsets are measured from that first failure, not from the previous retry, so the ladder cannot stretch out and drag past the window where a card is still recoverable. When the ladder is spent, the sequence is marked exhausted and stops.
What stops a retry early
- Dunning is switched off in Settings. Nothing is retried.
- The subscription is cancelled or paused. Terminal and paused contracts are never retried; the sequence is closed immediately.
- A persistent error, such as a payment method that no longer exists. The attempt still advances so it cannot be re-selected forever, backs off, and exhausts when the ladder is spent.
Recovery after the ladder ends
A subscriber who fixes their card after the retries are spent still counts as recovered. The sequence is reclosed as recovered, the churn flag clears, and the amount is credited to your recovered total. Somebody who came back should never be left flagged as churned.
Updating a card
The app never handles card details. A subscriber updates a failing card from the customer portal: Email me the link asks Shopify to email them Shopify's own secure payment-update link. The card is entered on Shopify, not on us and not on you.
SMS recovery
Plan required
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