Set up failed-payment recovery

Failed-payment recovery (dunning) runs automatically once you’re on the Pro plan — there’s no toggle to turn on. This tutorial walks through confirming it’s active and knowing what to expect when a charge fails.

Background reading: Failed-Payment Recovery.

1. Confirm you’re on Pro

1. Go to Settings → Billing (or Plans in your Shopify admin billing area).
2. Confirm your active plan is Pro. If you’re on Starter, upgrade — dunning, the recovery dashboard, and the retry emails are all Pro-only. See Pricing & Plans.

2. Know what happens automatically

Once you’re on Pro, nothing further needs configuring — recovery runs on every subscription by default:

1. A recurring charge fails.
2. RebillCart retries automatically on a schedule (roughly +2, +4, and +7 days).
3. The customer gets an email with a secure link to update their payment method.
4. If all retries fail, the subscription pauses — it is not cancelled, so the customer can still come back and resume it after fixing their card.

3. Check the branding on the recovery email

The “update your payment method” email uses the same branding as every other RebillCart email. Go to Settings → Email branding and confirm your logo, colors, and from-name are set — see Set up branded email notifications if you haven’t configured this yet.

4. Monitor recovery

1. Open Recovery in the RebillCart admin.
2. Check the revenue at risk and revenue recovered KPIs periodically.
3. Use the activity table to see individual subscriptions currently mid-retry.

If you’re also on the Subscription Risk Center, dunning activity feeds directly into its ranked action queue too, so you don’t have to check the Recovery page separately every day.

5. Test it (development store only)

On a development store, you can force a failed charge using Shopify’s test payment gateways  (most support a specific card number that simulates a decline). After forcing a failure:

1. Confirm the subscription shows up in Recovery with a “retrying” status.
2. Confirm the customer (test account) receives the payment-update email.
3. Let the retry schedule play out (or wait for the scheduled retries) and confirm the subscription either recovers or auto-pauses as expected — never cancels outright.

Never test with a live card. Recovery testing should only be done on a development store with Shopify’s test payment gateways.