Fixing many accounts at once

Plan cancels, refunds, stopped collection, field changes and notes for a list of accounts, see exactly what would happen, and only then run it.

Sometimes a whole group of accounts needs the same fix. A burst of fake signups is the usual one, but it could be a bad promotion, a gateway problem or a list from a partner. Retrixus lets your AI do that fix as one batch, safely.

A batch runs the same steps on every account in a list:

1. Cancel subscriptions: end them now, or at the end of the paid term. You choose which states and which plans.
2. Refund open charges: whatever has not already been refunded, back to the card. You choose a minimum amount and a date range.
3. Stop collection: past-due invoices are marked failed, so the card is not retried. Cancelling a subscription does not do this on its own. You choose which invoices: all of the account's past-due invoices, only those for certain plans, or only certain invoice numbers. A customer on two plans keeps paying for the one you leave out.
4. Set fields: write your own account fields, such as a status or a reason. For each field you choose whether to keep a value that is already there.
5. Add a note: in your own words. The note is written last, from what actually happened, so it never claims a refund that did not go through.

And, when you need them:

• Void declined-refund credits: when a card issuer refuses a refund, Recurly leaves an open credit on the account. Voiding it, then refunding in the same batch, tries the refund again.
• Pin a payment gateway: move the account's card to a named gateway.
• Set the business entity: on sites with Recurly's Multiple Business Entities.
• Close the account: Recurly deletes its billing info and cancels what is left. It never erases the customer's data.

How it goes

• Ask in plain words. For example: "Cancel and refund all direct signups since Monday with the Android WebView browser, tag them TRUE FRAUD and add our usual note."

• Find the accounts first, then fix them. Ask the question ("which trial accounts are on their fifth failed payment?"), look at the answer, then say "fix those". The batch is planned from that exact answer, kept for a day, so nothing is looked up twice and no account is missed. An answer that could not read everything is never used for a batch.

• Your AI asks before it plans. It looks at how your organisation already does this (the values in your fields, the way your notes read, any saved playbook), proposes the same, and asks you to confirm each choice. It will not guess a refund rule or a note.

• The plan changes nothing. Retrixus reads each account live from Recurly and shows you:

  • how many accounts, subscriptions and charges are affected;
  • the refund total;
  • the accounts it expects to fail, and why;
  • a few notes written out in full.

  You can ask for the complete list as a spreadsheet.

• Leave some plans alone. Say "skip anyone on a premium plan" and every account that still has a subscription on a matching plan is left out of the batch, and listed as skipped with the plan it holds. Patterns work: premium-* matches every plan code starting with premium-.

• Watch for flagged accounts. An account stays in the batch but is flagged when a step found nothing to do on it: the cancel matched no subscription, or a stop limited to certain plans matched no invoice. Flagged accounts are shown first. They were usually picked by mistake, so check them before you confirm.

• Save it as a playbook ("save this as our fraud playbook"). Next time, your AI only asks for the dates and the criteria.

Who can do it, and the limits

• Managers, Admins and Owners can plan batches. The Business plan includes them.
• The site must be set to read and write. See Read-only vs read-write.
• Limits: by default, a Manager can run a batch of up to 1,000 accounts and $2,500 of refunds on their own. Above that, an Admin or Owner who did not plan it must approve it. No batch can go past 25,000 accounts or $50,000 unless an Owner raises the ceiling for that one batch, with a reason. Your Owner can change these limits.

Running it

• Nothing runs until you say so. Your AI shows you the plan and asks. When you agree, it confirms the batch, and you can leave out any accounts first. A confirmation is only good for ten minutes and only for the plan you saw.
• Over the limits, a second person approves. The batch waits for an Admin or Owner who did not plan or confirm it. If nobody decides within a day, it expires and nothing happens.
• It runs in the background, soonest renewal first, so accounts about to be charged again are handled before the ones that are not. Before each change, Retrixus looks at the account again: anything already done since the plan is skipped, never done twice.
• You can stop it at any time. Accounts already finished stay finished.
• Results: ask for the results, and you get a spreadsheet with every account and what happened, in Recurly's own words where something failed. A refund the card issuer refused shows as declined, credit left open: the customer is owed that money as credit on their account. It is never shown as refunded.
• A day or so later, run the sweep. It plans a follow-up on the same accounts that refunds anything charged since and stops collection on invoices still being retried. You confirm it like any batch.

Every change is in your audit log twice: what was about to be done, then what happened.

In the portal

Admin, Batches lists every batch with its status. Open one to see:

• its numbers;
• a note as it will read;
• how far it has got;
• what happened to each account (download the spreadsheet).

An Admin or Owner approves or denies a batch here when it is over the limits, and anyone who can run batches can stop one. Saved playbooks are listed at the bottom.