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Strict failed-payment cleanup

Don’t carry deadweight — a short two-phase grace period restricts access fast and cancels non-payers quickly.

  • 1-day active grace
  • 3-day on-hold grace
  • 4 days before cancel
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FreeRecurring billing

If your product has a hard marginal cost per active subscriber (seats, compute, shipping commitments), you want non-payers off the books fast. This recipe tightens the two-phase grace period to the minimum sensible window — 1 day Active, 3 days On-Hold — so access is restricted almost immediately and the subscription cancels after 4 unpaid days. It’s the mirror image of the lenient recipe.

What you get
  • Access is restricted after just 1 day unpaid.
  • Subscription cancels after 4 unpaid days total.
  • Active base stays clean — no long deadweight.
  • Best paired with automatic payments to minimise false failures.
Copy these settings

The exact configuration

Enter these values and you have the setup live. Every field maps to a real ArraySubs setting.

SettingValue
Active Grace DaysGeneral Settings → Renewals1 (brief Active window)
On-Hold Grace DaysGeneral Settings → Renewals3 (short On-Hold)
Total grace before cancelDerived4 days (1 + 3)
Best for

When to use this setup

Per-seat or metered products with real marginal cost
Shipping commitments you can’t carry for non-payers
Automatic-payment stores with reliable card capture
Set up

Set it up in 3 steps

A step-by-step guide drawn from the ArraySubs user manual. Open the linked page for the full walkthrough and screenshots.

  1. Open Renewals settings

    Go to ArraySubs → Settings → General Settings → Renewals.

    General Settings

  2. Tighten the grace windows

    Set Active Grace Days = 1 and On-Hold Grace Days = 3 for a 4-day total grace window before cancellation.

    Recovery & Grace Flows

  3. De-risk false failures

    Because the window is short, use automatic payments (Stripe) so genuine cards don’t get cancelled over a slow manual invoice.

    Automatic Payments
From the manual

This recipe is built from these ArraySubs user-manual guides:

Good to know

Notes & edge cases

Too short a window risks cancelling customers who would have paid — only use this when marginal cost justifies it.
Manual-payment subscriptions need time to pay an invoice; strict grace suits automatic payments best.
The overdue checker runs hourly, so cancellation can lag the 4-day mark by up to an hour.
Built with

Modules behind this recipe

The ArraySubs modules this setup relies on.

Free + Pro

Billing and Renewals

How ArraySubs creates, schedules, communicates, and collects recurring payments from first invoice to final renewal.

More recipes

Related setups to explore

Other configurations you can build with the same modules.

Free

Lenient failed-payment recovery

Give customers a long, forgiving grace period after a failed payment before anything is cancelled.

Pro

Failed payment → auto-downgrade

Instead of cancelling after a failed renewal, automatically move the customer to a cheaper plan.

Free + Pro

Automatic Stripe billing (SCA)

Collect every renewal automatically and off-session with Stripe, fully SCA / 3D Secure compliant.

FAQ

Questions, answered

It can, which is why strict grace is for products with real per-subscriber costs. For most stores, the lenient recipe recovers more revenue.

The recommended minimums are Active Grace 1 day and On-Hold Grace 3 days. Going lower risks cancelling customers mid-recovery.
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