The retry schedule
When retries happen after a failed payment, and how to change the timing.
The retry schedule decides how long to wait between attempts to collect a failed payment. Each wait is measured from the last failure, so the retries spread out over the days after the first decline.
The default schedule
Out of the box, a failed payment is retried on this timeline:
Each gap is counted from the previous failure. After the last retry fails, the schedule is exhausted and the invoice is left open for you to handle.
Changing the timing
The schedule is configurable for your organization. You set how many retries there are and how long to wait before each one. A gentler schedule waits longer between attempts; a tighter one tries more often. The number of gaps is the number of retries.
Smart retry timing
On the Grow plan and above, the schedule can adapt to the kind of failure (Settings → Dunning & retries → "Adapt retry timing to the failure type"). With it on, a temporary infrastructure hiccup (the bank was unreachable, a processing error) is re-verified within hours instead of waiting days, and an insufficient-funds decline waits a little longer and lines up with the start of the month, when funds most often arrive. Every adjustment is written on the attempt's record with its reason, so a shifted retry always says why. With it off, your schedule runs exactly as configured.
Independent of timing, dunning emails are delivered between 8:00 and 20:00 in your organization's timezone: the charge happens when it's due, but the notice about it waits for daytime.
Before it ever fails: expiring cards
Separately from retries, on the Grow plan and above, yRecurring warns customers whose card on file is about to expire (or already has) while they have an active subscription: a friendly heads-up with the update-card link, sent once per card. Many failed renewals are just expired cards; this avoids the failure entirely.
Hard declines
By default, a hard decline does not use the retry schedule at all. It parks the run to wait for a new card, because retrying a dead card is pointless. If you prefer, you can choose to retry hard declines on the schedule too, though it rarely helps.
Edge cases
- Waits are measured from the last failure, not from a fixed calendar date. A retry scheduled two days out means two days after the attempt that just failed.
- More retries mean a longer runway before exhaustion. Adding gaps extends how long recovery keeps trying before it gives up.
- The schedule only governs soft declines unless you turn on retrying for hard declines.