Enable Smart Dunning in the Chargebee dashboard under Settings > Billing > Dunning; Smart Dunning supports up to 12 automatic retries with Chargebee determining optimal retry timing based on decline type
Classify retries by decline type: hard declines (e.g., do_not_honor) are not retried until a payment method update occurs; soft declines are retried automatically on a Chargebee-managed schedule
Register a webhook for payment_failed event; the payload includes invoice_id, next_retry_at, dunning_status, and failure_reason_code
Register a webhook for subscription_changed event which fires when a subscription's status changes to dunning or active after recovery
At the end of the dunning cycle, handle the subscription_cancelled or subscription_changed webhook (depending on your configured end-of-dunning action) to suspend entitlements
Use POST /api/v2/invoices/INVOICE_ID/collect_payment to manually trigger a payment retry outside of Smart Dunning when a customer updates their card
Known gotchas
Smart Dunning and Manual Dunning are mutually exclusive per Chargebee site; you cannot mix automated ML-driven retries with a manual schedule on the same site without contacting support
The maximum of 12 Smart Retry attempts is a Chargebee platform limit — unlike Stripe, you cannot configure a custom number above 12
Chargebee's dunning end action (expire subscription or leave active) must be configured in the dashboard — there is no API endpoint to set this programmatically on a per-subscription basis
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