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A recovery case is the unit of work Airdun tracks. It opens when a subscription invoice fails in Stripe, and it ends when the invoice is paid or written off.

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What triggers a case

A failed subscription invoice opens a case when the autopilot of its kind is Live: a renewal opens a Renewals case, the first charge after a free trial a Free trials case, and a very first payment at signup a New customers case. A case keeps its use case for its whole life, and follows that use case’s settings. See Autopilot. One-time payments, manually invoiced subscriptions, subscriptions already canceled, and SEPA Direct Debit payments do not open a case. Each case carries a failure category, shown in your case list: Insufficient funds, Expired card, Lost card, Authentication required, Generic decline, Processing error, or Finalization error. Payments Stripe blocked as suspected fraud are never chased.

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Case lifecycle

1

Open

Airdun receives the failed invoice from Stripe and opens the case.
2

Airdun at work

Airdun reaches out to the customer around Stripe’s retries, adds its own adaptive retries when they are on, and records every interaction on the case page.
3

Recovered or Lost

The case closes as Recovered when the invoice is paid, or as Lost when the invoice is voided or marked uncollectible, the subscription is canceled, or the recovery window has run out.
While a case is open, Airdun’s outreach can also stop without closing it: Exhausted (Airdun has done what it could), Escalated (handed to your team by an escalation rule), or Stopped (stopped by you, or by pausing or turning off the use case). Stripe keeps retrying in all three cases, and a payment still closes the case as Recovered.

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What counts as one case

One failed invoice = one case. Stripe’s later retries of that invoice stay on the same case. If the same customer fails again on a later invoice (for example next month’s renewal), that is a new case, with its own history and outcome. For how cases are counted against your plan, see Cases & Limits.
Reaching your plan’s case limit never stops a case or prevents new ones from opening.