Automations
Stripe Billing automations are a no-code way to build custom, automated workflows to streamline your business processes, enhance customer communication, and improve revenue recovery efforts.
Tailor automated workflows to fit your specific use case, for example:
- Custom dunning flow for annual subscribers
- Notify your team when high value invoices are overdue
- Email a confirmation when a subscription is canceled
- Give new users a $10 spend credit at signup Beta
Workflows consist of triggers, filter conditions, and actions. This guide describes how to use those to build and configure your own custom automation. Follow an automation recipe to get started with common use cases.
Set up automations
To get started with automations, follow these steps:
- In the Stripe Dashboard, go to the Automations tab in Billing.
- Click New automation or press the n key.
- Name the automation.
- Select the event that you want to trigger the automation.
- Optional Add filter conditions so that your automation only runs when the specified conditions are met.
- Add a sequence of actions and delays.
- Optional If the selected trigger applies to other automations, drag the new automation to the desired position in the priority order, then click Save.
Choose a trigger
There are five triggers to choose from:
Trigger | Description | Example use case |
---|---|---|
Invoice due date upcoming | Actions are executed relative to the due date of the invoice. The automation terminates when the invoice is paid or voided. This trigger is for invoices of type send only. | Manage customer communication by scheduling invoice.will_be_due webhooks at custom intervals. |
Invoice is finalized | Triggered when an invoice is finalized. The automation terminates when the invoice is paid, voided, or marked uncollectible. | Mark invoices for certain customer segments as uncollectible (write-off) after a period of time. |
Invoice is overdue | Triggered when an invoice becomes overdue. The automation terminates when the invoice is paid or voided. This trigger is for invoices of type send only. | Manage customer communication by scheduling invoice.overdue webhooks at custom intervals. Manage collections by scheduling emails to the collections team. |
Subscription is canceled | Trigger when a subscription is canceled. | Email a cancellation confirmation to the customer. Optionally include a cancellation reason survey. |
Subscription payment fails | Triggered when a subscription invoice payment fails its first attempt. The automation terminates when the invoice is paid or voided. |
|
Customer is created | Triggered when a customer is created. | Create a new subscription with a $10 signup credit for any new customer. |
Choose filter conditions
After selecting a trigger, you can add one or more filter conditions. These conditions need to be met for your automation to run. For example, if you filter for customers on annual subscriptions, the automation only runs if there are annual subscriptions.
Depending on the trigger, the following filter conditions are available:
Condition | Description |
---|---|
Customer metadata | A key-value pair to match on customer metadata. |
Invoice metadata | A key-value pair to match on invoice metadata. |
Invoice amount | A minimum or maximum amount per invoice defined in your default currency. Invoices not denominated in your default currency are evaluated against their conversion. |
Subscription interval | Limit to yearly or monthly subscriptions. |
Product | Limit to invoices or subscriptions that contain at least one of the products specified. |
You can use the Metadata API field to directly apply metadata for customers and invoices.
Choose actions
The following table describes the available actions for the various triggers:
Action | Description | Supported triggers |
---|---|---|
Set retry policy | A retry policy defines how failed charges are retried. This action allows you to create a custom policy and attach it to an invoice. |
|
Mark subscription unpaid | The subscription continues to generate invoices each billing cycle which remain in draft state. |
|
Cancel subscription | Canceling subscriptions disables creating new invoices for the subscription and stops automatic collection of all invoices from the subscription by setting auto_advance to false . When you cancel a subscription, the Automation immediately stops running. |
|
Mark invoice uncollectible | The customer is unlikely to pay this invoice and you want to treat it as bad debt in your accounting process. |
|
Send team email | Email a custom memo, along with details about the trigger to a team member or internal email address. | All triggers |
Send subscription cancellation email | Email a cancellation confirmation to your customers. Optionally, you can choose to include a survey link to collection cancellation reasons. |
|
Send invoice.will_be_due webhook | You can schedule this webhook to be triggered with custom delays to get reminders about an invoice that is about to be due. |
|
Create subscription Beta | Creates a subscription for the newly created customer with a single product and price. | Customer is created |
Credit customer balance Beta | Makes a positive adjustment to the customer credit balance in the amount of your choosing. | Customer is created |
Manage and edit your automations
This section describes how to priority order and pause or stop automations. These actions help make sure your automations run as expected.
Priority ordering
You can configure multiple automations for the same trigger, but each event only triggers one automation. When an event occurs that applies to multiple automations, Stripe checks their filter conditions in priority order and runs the first one that matches. All other automations are ignored.
If an automation is executed, your global settings are ignored.
Scenario A: You create an automation for the ‘Subscription payment fails’ event with no conditions applied. In this scenario, the automation runs every time a subscription payment fails. Your default settings for subscription payment failure won’t run.
Scenario B: You create an automation for the ‘Subscription payment fails’ with the condition that the invoice must be greater than $100. In this scenario, the automation runs if the subscription payment fails and the invoice is over $100. If a subscription payment fails and the invoice is less than $100, your default settings for subscription payment failure run instead.
To change a trigger’s priority order, open the list of automations, click the overflow menu () for any of that trigger’s automations, and select Update priority. You can also select it from the Actions menu on the automation details page. In the Set priority panel, drag each automation to the desired position and then click Save.
Pausing or stopping automations
To switch off or pause an automation, go to the Automations tab on the Revenue recovery page and turn off that automation’s toggle. If any executions are in progress for that automation, you can let them finish or immediately cancel them all.
You can turn the automation on again at any time.