How Do I Track Payment Attempt Retries and Sequences for Declined Payments Using Exports?

Understanding Recurly's Retry Process

Recurly Subscriptions uses an intelligent retry schedule, often referred to as dunning, that is optimized for maximizing recovery of declined payments. This system does not natively expose a simple field like payment_attempt_count or retry_sequence_number in exports.

Steps for Retry Sequence Tracking

To track and analyze the sequence of payment attempts for a specific set of declined payments, you must use the Transactions export and follow a manual grouping process.

• Step 1: Export Transaction Data Export the Transactions data for the time frame you wish to analyze.

• Step 2: Filter for Declined Purchases Filter the exported transactions by:

  • status = declined

  • type = purchase (This excludes non-payment-attempt transactions like authorizations and refunds).

• Step 3: Group and Sequence Transactions Group the remaining declined transactions by a common identifier to associate them with the original invoice and customer. Use either:

  • invoice_id

  • account_code

• Step 4: Analyze the Sequence Within each grouped set of transactions (by invoice_id or account_code), the sequential numbering of the transaction records will allow you to manually count and analyze the sequence:

  • The first transaction record in the group is the first attempt.

  • The second is the second attempt, and so on.

• Step 5: Identify Decline Reasons Use the gateway_error_codes column to identify the specific reason for each decline in the sequence, which is essential for understanding the dunning process's outcome (successful recovery or eventual failure).