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Payments & risk Medium ~20 min to build

Follow up on failed subscription payments

When a subscription renewal charge fails, tag the customer and alert your team so the save happens before the subscriber churns.

Trigger: A subscription billing attempt fails.

What it does

  1. Catch the failed billing attempt
  2. Tag the customer payment-failed (your email tool can run a dunning flow off that tag)
  3. Post the details to Slack

Tools involved: Shopify Flow · Make · n8n · Zapier · Slack · Klaviyo

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How to build it

Shopify Flow Recommended

Trigger: Subscription billing attempt failure

Conditions

  • Optional: subscriptionContract.customer.tags does not include "payment-failed"

Actions

  1. Add customer tags: payment-failed
  2. Send Slack message to #retention with the customer name and the billing attempt error message

Works for subscription apps that bill through Shopify subscription contracts. Remove the tag with a second workflow on "Subscription billing attempt success". Many subscription apps also have built-in dunning, so check yours first.

Get it: Shopify Flow

Make

  1. Shopify > Watch events (advanced), Event topic SUBSCRIPTION_BILLING_ATTEMPTS_FAILURE
  2. Shopify > Update a customer (add tag)
  3. Slack > Send a Message

Build it in Make

n8n

  1. Webhook node (receives a Send HTTP request from the Flow workflow above)
  2. Slack: Send Message

n8n's Shopify Trigger doesn't list subscription billing topics, so let Flow catch the event and forward it.

Build it in n8n

Zapier

  1. Webhooks by Zapier: Catch Hook (fed by Flow's Send HTTP request action)
  2. Slack: Send Channel Message

Zapier's Shopify app has no subscription billing trigger.

Build it in Zapier

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