When managing subscriptions, failed recurring payments are a common challenge. The circuly system helps automate your response to these failures with flexible settings—allowing you to define retry logic, communication flows, and what actions to take if multiple payment attempts fail.

This article explains each of the settings available to manage failed payments, so you can configure a process that suits your operations.

Feature overview

In the circuly Hub, you can configure:

• How many times a failed payment should be retried.
• The time interval between each retry attempt.
• How many days in the past circuly should check for unpaid payments.
• Whether a subscription should be canceled after repeated failures.
• Whether and when your customer should be notified of failed payment attempts.

Step 1: Configure payment retry settings

To access the settings:

Go to: Settings > Invoices & Payments > Failed Payment

Available options:

• Maximum number of payment retries
  Defines how many times circuly should automatically retry a failed payment before requiring manual input.
• Next payment attempt in
  Sets the time interval (in days) between each retry attempt.
• Past billing date
  Defines how many days in the past circuly should look for missed recurring payments and attempt to retry them.
• Example:
  If you set this value to -15, circuly will check for any unpaid recurring payments scheduled in the last 15 days and attempt to retry them based on your retry rules.
• Cancel subscription on failure
  If enabled, the subscription is automatically canceled and moved to pending return status after two failed payment cycles.
  • A payment cycle refers to a single payment being retried up to the maximum number of times you’ve defined.
  • Two failed payment cycles mean two different payments have both failed, each having already gone through all retry attempts.

Learn more: What is a payment cycle?

Step 2: Configure email notifications for failed payments

To access the settings:

Go to: Settings > Emails > Payment Notifications

Available options:

• All payment-related emails
  When enabled, circuly sends email notifications for both successful and failed payments using the associated email templates:
  • “Payment was successful”
  • “Payment has failed”
• Failed payment – final attempt
  Sends a failed payment email only on the last retry attempt.
• Failed payment – every attempt
  Sends a failed payment email after each retry attempt.
• Terminal
  Sends the “Return unpaid product” email after two failed payment cycles.
  Make sure this template is activated in your Email Templates section.

Important: An email can only be sent if the corresponding template exists and is activated in the Email Templates tab.

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Learn more here about how to retry a failed payment manually.