Payment issues
What happens when a subscription payment fails — the retry window, the 7-day grace period, and what read-only access means.
Overview
When a renewal payment fails, TestKase does not cut you off immediately. Your organization moves through a fixed sequence of access states while the payment provider retries the charge, and only becomes read-only once a full week has passed.
Every organization is in exactly one of four access states:
| State | What it means |
|---|---|
| Full | Everything works normally. |
| Grace | A payment has failed, but you still have full access while you fix it. |
| Paused | The grace period ran out. The organization is read-only until payment succeeds. |
| None | There is no active subscription for that product. |
The timeline after a failed payment
Days 0–3 — the payment is being retried
The subscription is marked pending. The payment provider automatically retries the charge against your saved payment method.
- You keep full access. Nothing is restricted.
- No email is sent. Most payments in this window succeed on a retry, so there is nothing for you to do.
Under 7 days — grace period
If the retries do not succeed, the subscription becomes halted. This starts a 7-day grace period.
- You keep full access for the whole grace period.
- You get an email telling you the payment failed and how to fix it.
- A banner appears in the product for the organization owner, with a Pay button.
7 days and over — paused, read-only
Once the grace period expires, the organization is paused. Access becomes read-only:
| Product | What still works | What is refused |
|---|---|---|
| Test Management | All reads — projects, test cases, cycles, results, reports | Any write: creating or editing test cases, cycles, runs, defects |
| Accessibility | Nothing — the product is free, so no payment problem can pause it | Nothing directly. Scans run on Live/Automate capacity, so a lapsed Live plan stops manual scans and a lapsed Automate plan stops scheduled ones. |
| Automate | Existing sessions and artifacts | New sessions — your parallel capacity is set to zero |
| Live | Existing sessions and artifacts | New sessions — your parallel capacity is set to zero |
Billing, sign-in and member removal deliberately stay available so you can fix the problem and manage costs while paused.
Paused is read-only, not deleted. Your projects, test cases, reports and existing session artifacts stay where they are. Normal retention rules still apply while paused — session artifacts are still deleted 30 days after the session.
When a renewal can't be confirmed
Rarely, a renewal goes through but the confirmation from the payment provider never reaches TestKase. We check every subscription with the payment provider once a day, so this is normally put right automatically within a couple of days — you won't notice anything.
If a renewal still can't be confirmed 10 days after its renewal date, the organization moves into the same states as a failed payment:
- Days 10–16: you keep full access, and the payment banner appears showing the date access will pause.
- Day 17 onwards: the organization is paused — read-only, exactly as described above.
As soon as the payment is confirmed, full access returns immediately.
If you see the payment banner but your payment did go through, contact support. We'll confirm the payment with the provider and restore access.
Getting access back
The paused state is computed live from your subscription — it is never stored. That means as soon as a payment succeeds, full access returns immediately. There is no reactivation step, no support ticket, and no waiting for a nightly job.
- Open Organization → Subscriptions (or click Pay in the banner).
- Complete the payment.
- Access is restored straight away.
Emails and notifications
- Dunning emails are sent once per event — you will not be emailed repeatedly for the same failed payment.
- A daily sweep checks for organizations that have crossed a threshold and sends the corresponding email.
- Members see the banner too, not just the owner — but without a Pay button, since only the organization owner can make payments. If you are a member, tell your owner.
▶Do I lose data while my organization is paused?
No. Paused is read-only. Projects, test cases, reports and existing artifacts are all preserved. Normal retention rules continue to apply — session artifacts are still deleted 30 days after the session.
▶How long do I actually have before anything stops working?
Seven days from the point the subscription is marked halted. Before that, the automatic retry window (roughly the first three days) gives you full access with no email at all.
▶I paid — why is the banner still showing?
Access state is computed live, so it should clear as soon as the payment is confirmed. Reload the page. If the banner persists, the payment may not have been confirmed by the payment provider yet.
▶I am a member, not the owner. Why can't I pay?
Only the organization owner can manage billing. Members see the banner so they understand why writes are being refused, but the Pay button is owner-only.
Related
- Plans & Pricing — plan tiers, subscription statuses, and payment methods.
- Changing seats & threads — resize your subscription.
- Usage & minutes — how device-minutes are counted.
Plans & Pricing
How TestKase billing works — buying, changing and cancelling plans, invoices and payments. For plan features and prices, see the pricing page.
Changing seats & threads
How to add or remove seats and threads. Adding more starts now and you pay only for the days left. Removing takes effect when your current billing period ends.