What happens when a subscriber's payment fails, and how to spot unpaid weeks

The short answer

When a subscriber’s card is declined, the subscription shouldn’t vanish. The payment is tried again over the following days, the subscriber is asked to update their card, and new tickets wait until it goes through. Many failed payments are fixed this way.

On One Ticket you’re emailed once when it happens, the subscriber shows as Past due on the Subscriptions tab of Orders, and any ticket of theirs for a session after what they’d paid for says Unpaid week on the Orders list. You don’t need to do anything, but you can see at a glance who’s behind.

Why payments fail

Most failed payments are a card problem, not someone trying not to pay. The usual reasons:

• the card expired, or the bank issued a new one after a loss or fraud alert
• not enough money on the day the charge ran
• the bank declined an unfamiliar charge
• the card was cancelled when someone changed banks

That’s why a good system retries rather than cancelling at once, and why a friendly reminder works better than a stern one. Assume good faith: the subscriber usually doesn’t know anything is wrong until the email arrives, and would rather be told than turned away.

What should happen next

Whatever tool you use, check it does these:

• Retry the card on a schedule over several days, not just once.
• Email the subscriber with a link to update their card, so they don’t need to contact you.
• Hold new tickets until a payment goes through, so nobody gets weeks of sessions for free.
• Keep what they paid for. Sessions already paid for stay theirs.
• Tell you once, not every time the card is retried.
• End the plan cleanly if every try fails, and give their place back.

Head it off before it happens

You can’t stop cards expiring, but you can make failures rarer and quicker to fix:

• Say how it works when people subscribe. One line in your subscription details: “If a payment fails, we’ll email you a link to update your card.”
• Mention it at the door, once, for the regular whose card you know is about to expire.
• Keep your price steady. Every change is a moment someone reconsiders.

What you can do

Usually, nothing: the retries and the subscriber’s own email often sort it out. If someone is a regular you know, a short personal message helps: “Your card didn’t go through for Tuesdays: the link in your email fixes it.” Avoid chasing people at the door. If you’d rather let someone in while it’s sorted, that’s your call, and it’s easier when you can see exactly which week is unpaid.

How it works on One Ticket

When a renewal is declined:

• You get one email, “Subscriber payment failed”, with who, which series, the plan and the amount, however many times the card is tried. You can switch these off under Settings, Preferences: Subscriber payment failed.
• The subscriber gets an email with the link to update their card. From their manage page, Fix payment tries it again straight away.
• Stripe tries the card again on its retry schedule. If every try fails, the subscription ends (Stripe’s default).
• New tickets wait until a payment goes through. Sessions they’d already paid for keep their tickets.

Spotting unpaid weeks

Tickets for each session are issued about a week before it. If a renewal fails after a ticket has been issued, that ticket is for a session past what the subscriber has paid for. On One Ticket you’ll see it in two places:

1. Orders, the list. That order says Unpaid week beside its status. Its ticket stops working until the payment goes through, and is issued again then.
2. Orders, the figures over the list. Payment failed counts these orders, with how many subscribers they belong to (“Unpaid weeks, 2 subscribers”). It only shows when there is one, and it follows your filters, so choose one event to see that session’s unpaid weeks.

On the Subscriptions tab, the status chip Past due lists everyone whose payment is being retried, and the figure at the top says how many. See Find an order and Subscribers.

Once the payment goes through, the subscriber is back to Active, the unpaid weeks' tickets are issued again, and new tickets come as usual.

Taking subscriptions costs you nothing extra: the subscriber pays a small booking fee on each payment, as on a ticket, and you receive your full price, into your own Stripe account. See pricing and the Subscriptions page.

Related reading

How recurring ticket sales work covers the whole life of a subscription, and the complete guide to selling tickets for recurring events puts it in context. If you’re the one calling a session off, how to skip a week of a class subscription means nobody is charged for that week instead. To see what subscribers have paid, see how to see subscription income alongside ticket sales.