dunning
Communication cadence for unpaid invoices.
failed payment recovery
Failed payment recovery is the operational practice of getting a customer's payment to succeed after it fails. Includes the technical retry layer (Stripe Smart Retries), the email/communication layer, and the audit trail of who paid late and why. Most SaaS at $5K-$500K ARR loses 5-10% of MRR monthly to failed payments.
In context.
Porchops makes failed payment recovery the operational layer Lou runs. Stripe fires payment_intent.payment_failed; Lou pulls the customer's history, identifies the failure cause, drafts a recovery email, lands the draft in the founder's inbox.
The recovery surface includes: decline-code classification, retry cadence, the recovery email itself, auto-send thresholds, Card Account Updater integration, and the audit trail. All five matter; missing one leaves recovery on the table.
Concrete instances.
5-10% of MRR fails per month at our scale; recovering 35-55% of that recovers 1.7-5.5% of MRR.
A SaaS with $50K MRR loses ~$3,500/month to failed payments. Recovering 50% recovers ~$1,750/month — $21,000/year.
Lou recovered $4,200 for porchops in March 2026 across 9 events. Real numbers from the dogfooding audit log.
Common questions.
Is this the same as Stripe Smart Retries?
No. Smart Retries handles the retry attempt cadence (technical); failed payment recovery is the broader operational layer that includes the email, audit, and recovery-rate tracking.
What's a realistic recovery rate?
35-55% overall. Expired-card recoveries cluster around 70%; soft declines around 50%; hard declines around 15%. The mix of decline codes drives your specific rate.
What tools help with failed payment recovery?
Stripe Smart Retries (free, technical), Card Account Updater (free, automatic), and an email layer like Lou (or Churnkey, Churn Buster, Stunning). All three layers are needed.