Troubleshooting

Stripe billing errors

Diagnose and resolve payment failures, declined cards, and subscription issues.

On this page

Card was declined
Subscription is in "past due" state
Invoice shows unexpected amount
VAT / tax ID not applied to invoice
Cannot access Stripe billing portal
Subscription cancelled unexpectedly
See also

Card was declined

Stripe returns a decline code that HowlOps surfaces in the billing UI. Common decline reasons:

Decline reason	What to do
`insufficient_funds`	Use a different card or top up the account.
`card_declined`	Contact your card issuer. They may have blocked the transaction.
`expired_card`	Update the card via Settings > Billing > Manage billing > update payment method.
`incorrect_cvc`	Re-enter your card with the correct CVV / CVC code.
`do_not_honor`	Card issuer refused the charge. Contact your bank.
`fraudulent`	Stripe's fraud detection flagged the card. Try a different card or contact Stripe support.

Subscription is in "past due" state

If a renewal payment fails, Stripe retries the charge automatically (typically a few attempts spread over one to two weeks, depending on Smart Retries and your card issuer). Here is what happens as the attempts add up:

First failures: we email you that the payment failed and ask you to update your payment method. Your workspace keeps working normally.
The attempt before the last: we send a clearly-labelled final warning. It tells you that if the next attempt also fails, monitoring will be paused.
The third failed attempt: monitoring is paused. Every monitor and heartbeat in the workspace stops checking, and alerts stop, so you are no longer being monitored. Nothing is deleted. You have a 3-day window to fix payment.
If the 3-day window passes without payment: paid capabilities are reset to their free options. Monitors and heartbeats paused by the billing flow stay paused, and the platform reconciles resources against the resulting limits. Nothing is deleted by this step.

To resolve at any stage: go to Settings > Billing > Manage billing > update your payment method. The outstanding invoice retries immediately, and a successful payment un-pauses everything we paused (your own manually-paused monitors stay as you left them).

Invoice shows unexpected amount

Invoices for mid-cycle upgrades include proration. The prorated amount is calculated as:

(days remaining in billing period / total days in period) x (new plan price - old plan price)

This is shown at checkout before confirming an upgrade.

VAT / tax ID not applied to invoice

Tax IDs must be entered before the invoice is generated. To add or update:

Go to Settings > Billing > Tax information.
Enter your country and tax ID type (VAT, GST, etc.).
The next invoice reflects the tax ID. Past invoices cannot be retroactively updated through the UI; contact support for corrections.

Cannot access Stripe billing portal

The Stripe billing portal is accessible from Settings > Billing > Manage billing. If the button fails:

Verify you are logged in as a workspace Owner or Admin.
Try in a different browser or clear cookies.
If the error persists, the portal session link may have expired. Reload the billing page to generate a fresh link.

Subscription cancelled unexpectedly

Possible causes:

All payment retry attempts failed. Check your email for retry failure notices.
You or another Owner clicked Cancel subscription.
A chargeback was filed with your bank, which triggers automatic subscription cancellation per Stripe policy.

To restore a cancelled subscription, start a new checkout from Settings > Plan.