Failed Payment Recovery
Help customers fix a failed payment before you cut off their access.
What it adds
A dunning process: provider-driven retry tracking, a defined grace period with stated restrictions, de-duplicated notices, and a direct path to repair the payment method.
What your agent is told to do
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What your agent is told to do
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Treat the provider's retry schedule and invoice status as the source of truth for where an account is in dunning. Do not run a parallel retry timer.
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Define one grace period and state exactly what is restricted during it. Halve-working software with no explanation generates support tickets, not payments.
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Give the failing account a persistent in-app path to update the payment method and retry the invoice immediately, rather than waiting for the next provider attempt.
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De-duplicate customer communication by invoice and attempt, not by webhook delivery. Providers retry webhooks and deliver them out of order.
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Restore full access as soon as payment succeeds, without waiting for a nightly job. Subscription state modelling and webhook verification are owned by Billing Portal; build on it.
Edge cases it handles
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Edge cases it handles
6- The same failure webhook will arrive more than once. Sending a second identical dunning email is worse than sending none.
- Payment can succeed through the provider's own retry while the user is mid-way through updating their card. Recheck status before charging again.
- The person who receives dunning notices may not be the account owner. Billing recipients are owned by Billing Contact Management; send there.
- A card declined for insufficient funds and a card that has expired need different instructions. Use the provider's decline reason where it is safe to show.
- Access must not be revoked and restored repeatedly as retries fail and succeed. Move in one direction per invoice cycle.
- When the final retry fails, decide in advance whether the subscription cancels or lapses to a read-only state, and make the data recoverable either way.
Definition of done
8
Definition of done
8- Dunning stage is read from provider status rather than computed locally.
- The grace period length and its exact feature restrictions are defined in one place and shown to the user.
- A given invoice attempt produces at most one customer notice regardless of webhook retries.
- The user can update the payment method and trigger an immediate retry from inside the app.
- Successful payment restores access within the same request cycle, not on a schedule.
- The terminal outcome after the last retry is explicit and preserves the account's data.
- The feature matches the existing design system.
- No existing functionality is broken.
Related features
Billing Portal
Billing Portal
Let people manage their own subscription.
What it does
A billing area where users can see their plan, change payment method, get invoices, and cancel.
How it works
- 1 Use the payment provider's hosted billing portal if it has one. Do not rebuild card management — it's a PCI liability you don't need.
- 2 Show the current plan, renewal date, and payment method on your own account page.
- 3 Make cancelling possible without emailing support. Dark patterns here generate chargebacks.
Copy the prompt
No account needed
Add this feature to my app:
https://addthisfeature.com/x/billing-portal
Upgrade Modal
Upgrade Modal
Sell the upgrade at the exact moment someone wants it.
What it does
A focused upsell that appears when a free user reaches for a paid capability.
How it works
- 1 Trigger it at the point of intent — when they click the locked thing — not on a timer or on page load.
- 2 Name the specific feature they just tried to use. A generic pricing modal converts far worse.
- 3 State the price plainly and give one button to upgrade.
Copy the prompt
No account needed
Add this feature to my app:
https://addthisfeature.com/x/upgrade-modal
Booking Deposits
Booking Deposits
Take a partial payment at booking so the slot is held against a real commitment.
What it does
A deposit charged during booking, tracked against the remaining balance and the cancellation policy.
How it works
- 1 Show the deposit amount, the remaining balance, and the refund terms on the booking screen before payment, not in the confirmation afterwards.
- 2 Hold the slot while payment is in progress, and confirm the booking only once the payment provider reports settlement. Treat an unsettled payment as no booking at all.
- 3 Reuse the app's existing hosted checkout and the callback handling that already confirms payments. Do not add a second payment integration for bookings, and do not confirm on the browser redirect alone, because a user who closes the tab never returns to it.
Copy the prompt
No account needed
Add this feature to my app:
https://addthisfeature.com/x/booking-deposits
How it works
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1
Copy the link
Grab the Markdown instruction URL for this feature.
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2
Give it to your AI
Paste it into Claude Code, Cursor, v0, Lovable — whatever you build with.
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3
It inspects, then implements
Your agent reads your existing app first, then adds the feature to fit it.
Works with your stack
These instructions are written to adapt. They tell the agent to detect your framework, match your existing design system, and reuse what you already have — rather than assuming a particular stack.
Need it tighter than that? Customize the feature and tell it exactly what you're running.