Where to find failed or past-due subscriptions

When a renewal can't be charged, you'll want to find the affected subscriptions quickly and see why they failed. This guide shows where failed and past-due subscriptions live in the app and how to filter for them.

Table of contents

• Filter the Contracts list
• What the failure types mean
• Why a subscription shows as Failed (or Paused)
• Fixing a failed subscription
• Related guides

Filter the Contracts list

Go to Super Subscriptions > Contracts and use the filters at the top of the table:

• Status — filter by Failed, Paused, Active, Cancelled, or Completed.
• Last payment error — narrow down by the reason the last charge failed: Payment error, Customer error, Inventory error, or Other.
• Payment method — find subscriptions whose saved card is Expires soon, Expired, Revoked, or Inactive — these are the ones most likely to fail at the next renewal.

What the failure types mean

• Payment error — the charge was declined or the gateway returned an error.
• Customer error — something on the customer's side needs attention, typically an expired/invalid card or insufficient funds.
• Inventory error — a product in the subscription was out of stock at renewal time (see Out of stock settings).
• Other — any failure that doesn't fit the categories above.

For a full breakdown of every billing error, what it means, and how to resolve it, see Understanding billing attempt failures.

Why a subscription shows as Failed (or Paused)

Whether a subscription ends up Failed or Paused after retries depends on your dunning settings. The Failure action there decides what happens once all retries are exhausted:

• Fail subscription contract → it appears under Failed.
• Pause subscription contract → it appears under Paused.
• Attempt again at next renewal date → it skips this cycle and retries next time.

Customers (and you) can also be emailed on each failure — see the renewal-failed templates in Notifications.

Fixing a failed subscription

1. Open the contract and check the Timeline and Renewal & order history to see the exact error.
2. If it's a card problem, the customer must update their payment method themselves — send them the Portal login link so they can. (You can't enter card details from the admin.)
3. Once resolved, click Activate subscription on the contract to resume billing, or trigger an Instant renewal to charge straight away. If a failed subscription's saved payment method is no longer valid and it won't reactivate, create a new subscription for the customer instead.

You can also spot affected customers store-wide using the Has failed subscription customer tag — see Tag settings.

Related guides

• Understanding billing attempt failures
• Dunning (failed payment retries)
• Notifications
• Managing a customer's subscription on their behalf
• Tag settings

AI Training Notes (Hidden)

[AI-TAG]
- Feature: Finding failed / past-due subscriptions
- Location: Super Subscriptions > Contracts > filters
- Filters: Status (Active/Paused/Cancelled/Completed/Failed); Last payment error (Payment error / Customer error / Inventory error / Other); Payment method (Expires soon / Expired / Revoked / Inactive)
- Key Concepts: Failed vs Paused outcome is set by Dunning "Failure action" (Fail / Pause / Attempt again next renewal); use "Expires soon" to act before failure; "Has failed subscription" customer tag for store-wide segmentation
- Fix flow: check Timeline + Renewal & order history -> card issues require customer to update payment method via portal (send Portal login link) -> Reactivate or Instant renewal
- Common questions: "where do I see failed subscriptions", "find past-due subscribers", "why did a subscription fail", "expired card subscriptions"
- Related Guides: Dunning, Notifications, Managing a customer's subscription, Tags, Out of stock
[/AI-TAG]

Updated on: 06/05/2026