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Grace Periods

When a payment fails, your billing provider decides how long to keep trying and what to do when it gives up. Those defaults are rarely the ones you would choose. Often the provider cancels or writes off the customer before Slicker, or the customer themselves, has had a fair chance to recover the payment. Grace Periods let you set that policy yourself. You choose how long Slicker keeps working a failed invoice, and what should happen once that window closes, so recovery runs on your schedule instead of your gateway’s.

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Why it matters

Billing providers apply blunt, one-size-fits-all rules when payments fail. Some give up too early. Mandate-based and regulated recurring payment methods (for example SEPA Direct Debit, or recurring cards in India under RBI e-mandate rules) are often dropped after a single attempt, because their rules limit how and when a failed charge can be re-presented. The provider then cancels the subscription or writes off the invoice a few days later, even though the payment was still recoverable. Others give up too late, or never. Turn that behaviour off and unpaid invoices and delinquent subscriptions build up with nothing to close them out. A grace period sits in between. Slicker keeps recovering for as long as it is worth it, then takes a clean, deliberate action.

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How it works

1

Set the grace period

Choose how many days, measured from the first failed payment, Slicker should keep recovering an invoice. Throughout this window Slicker keeps dunning and retrying using your configured strategies.
2

Choose what happens when it ends

Pick the action Slicker applies once the grace period expires: cancel the subscription, mark the invoice as uncollectible, or leave it overdue for your team to handle.
3

Slicker does the rest

Slicker runs the window automatically every day and applies your end-of-grace action as soon as an invoice ages out, with a full record of every decision.

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What you can configure

Grace period length

The number of days from the first failure that Slicker keeps recovering before it acts.

Subscription action

What happens to the subscription when the window closes, such as cancelling it or leaving it untouched.

Invoice action

What happens to the unpaid invoice, such as marking it uncollectible or leaving it overdue.

Full audit trail

Every grace-period decision is recorded, so you always know what Slicker did, when, and why.

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Availability

Grace Periods are available today for Stripe Billing. Support for more billing providers is on the way. If you are on another provider and want early access, get in touch.
For Stripe, Slicker needs to own the recovery window, which takes two things:
  1. Set Stripe to leave failed invoices overdue rather than cancelling or writing them off, so Stripe does not close the customer before your grace period is up. The Stripe Billing integration guide walks through it.
  2. Give Slicker permission to apply your end-of-grace action. Marking an invoice uncollectible uses the Write on Invoices permission Slicker already needs. Cancelling a subscription also needs Write on Subscriptions. The Stripe Billing integration guide covers the exact API key setup.

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Getting started

Grace Periods are set up by our team as part of your recovery configuration. Contact us and we will set the window and end-of-grace actions to match how your business works.
Looking for dynamic grace periods? Fixed windows are just the start. We are working on grace periods that adapt on their own, based on payment method, customer value, and how likely a payment is to recover, so every invoice gets the right amount of runway. If that is something you want, talk to us. It is on our roadmap and we would love your input.
With Grace Periods, you decide when a failed payment is really done, not your billing provider.