Managing subscriptions in Stripe

When you charge for access to your AI using our built-in Stripe integration, you create and connect a new standard Stripe account to your Coachvox account. This gives you access to Stripe's features for managing your AI clients' subscriptions.

This article covers how to view and manage these subscriptions on Stripe, and how to handle requests for changes from clients.

How clients can manage their subscriptions

Your clients can manage their subscriptions directly from the AI chat. This is usually the easiest and quickest option for them. Here's what they need to do:

1. Log in to your AI chat and click the cog icon in the top corner.
2. Click 'Manage subscription' on the menu.

This will open their subscription portal that will look like this:

From here, they can update their payment method, change their billing information, or cancel their subscription.

Viewing your subscribers in Stripe

You can see who is subscribed to your AI and check the status of their subscriptions in your Stripe dashboard.

To view your subscriptions:

1. Log in to your Stripe account at dashboard.stripe.com and go to Billing > Subscriptions.
2. Here you'll see a list of your subscriptions, including their status (active, past due, cancelled).

To find a specific subscriber, use the search bar at the top to search by email address or customer name.

You can also navigate from the main menu to Customers to browse your customer list.

Cancelling a client's subscription

If a client asks you to cancel their subscription on their behalf, you can do this in Stripe. Here's how:

1. In your Stripe account, go to Billing > Subscriptions and click the subscription you want to cancel.
2. Click Actions (top right) and select Cancel subscription.
3. Choose when to end the subscription:
   • Immediately – Access stops straight away.
   • At the end of the period – The client keeps access until their current billing period ends.
4. Choose whether to issue a refund (optional), then click Cancel subscription to confirm.

Issuing refunds

You can refund payments directly from your Stripe dashboard. Refunds can be for the full amount or a partial amount. To issue a refund:

1. In your Stripe account, go to Transactions > Payments and find the payment you want to refund. (Or find the subscriber, then view their payments.)
2. Click the three dots (...) to the right of the payment and select Refund payment.
3. Enter the refund amount (the full amount is selected by default), select a reason, and click Refund.

Understanding failed payments

Sometimes a client's payment will fail. This could happen for reasons like insufficient funds, an expired card, or an issue with their bank.

What Stripe does automatically

Stripe has a feature called Smart Retries enabled by default. When a payment fails, Stripe automatically:

• Retries the payment at the best time (using data to predict when the payment is likely to go through).
• Sends email notifications to your client about the failed payment.
• Continues to retry over a set period.

If all retry attempts fail, the subscription will be cancelled automatically (this is the default setting).

Customising your retry settings

You can adjust how Stripe handles failed payments:

1. In your Stripe account, go to Billing and select Revenue Recovery.
2. On the Retries tab, you can change the settings.

Further guidance

For detailed help with Stripe, visit Stripe Support.

For help setting up charging for access or creating coupons, see our guide on charging for access to your AI.

Check out our FAQs about access and charging for answers to common questions.