Automations

Learn how to customise subscription and invoice workflows with 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:

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.

Warning

When using automations, the next_payment_attempt is no longer set in invoice.payment_failed webhooks but is set in invoice.updated webhooks.

Choose a trigger

You can choose from five triggers:

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, voided, or auto_advance is turned off. This trigger is only for invoices with `collection_method` set to `send_invoice`.	Manage customer communication by scheduling `invoice.will_be_due` webhooks at custom intervals.
Invoice is finalized	Triggered when an invoice is finalised. The automation terminates when the invoice is paid, voided, or auto_advance is turned off.	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, voided, or auto_advance is turned off. This trigger is only for invoices of type `send`.	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 cancelled.	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, voided, or auto_advance is turned off.	Custom retry behaviour for a subset of customers Notify your collections team of high-value payment failures.

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.	Subscription payment fails
Mark subscription unpaid	The subscription continues to generate invoices each billing cycle, which remain in `draft` state.	Subscription payment fails
Cancel subscription	Cancelling 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.	Subscription payment fails
Mark invoice uncollectible	The customer is unlikely to pay this invoice and you want to treat it as bad debt in your accounting process.	Subscription payment fails Invoice finalised Invoice overdue
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. You also have the option to include a survey link to collection cancellation reasons.	Subscription is canceled
Send `invoice.will_be_due` webhook	You can schedule this webhook to be triggered with custom delays to get reminders about an invoice that’s about to be due.	Invoice due date is set
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 you choose.	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 executes, it ignores your global settings.

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 event with the condition that the invoice must be greater than 100 USD. In this scenario, the automation runs if the subscription payment fails and the invoice is over 100 USD. If a subscription payment fails and the invoice is less than 100 USD, 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 all of them.

You can turn the automation on again at any time.