Billing is past due

Use this guide when subscription payment fails and paid features stop working.

Symptoms

You may see one or more of these signs:

• Slack shows that payment is past due.
• App Home shows a past-due banner.
• Actions that worked recently now return a payment message instead of completing.
• Usage under billing still lists your plan, but gated actions refuse to run.

Past due billing status blocks expensive operations across the organization. This is separate from hitting a normal monthly quota on an active paid plan.

Likely causes

• A card expired, was declined, or lacks funds.
• An open invoice was not paid by the due date.
• The billing owner changed and no one with portal access updated payment.
• Payment succeeded in Stripe but Slash Social has not refreshed billing status yet.

Checks

1. Confirm you are the billing owner or have billing management access for the organization.
2. Open /social, choose Settings, then Billing & Plan.
3. Read the billing status and any banner text. Note whether Slack says only the billing owner can fix payment.
4. Compare the blocked action to A plan or usage limit is reached. Quota messages name a count such as 12/12. Past due messages refer to payment.
5. If you are not the billing owner, identify who holds that role before you retry expensive actions.

Fixes

1. Open Billing & Plan from Settings.
2. Open Customer portal or Billing history and update the payment method or pay the open invoice.
3. Wait for payment confirmation. Slash Social refreshes billing status after confirmation or when you reopen billing.
4. Return to the action that failed and try again.

Non-billing owners should ask the billing owner to complete the portal step. Slack may block the portal for users who are not the billing owner.

While past due, paid entitlements stay off and quota-heavy work such as AI generation, scheduling beyond free limits, and gated features remains blocked until payment succeeds.

The billing workflow also covers usage, billing history, and upgrade modals. If you need to change plans after payment is current, use Upgrade from the same Billing & Plan surface once the past-due banner clears.

Confirm the fix

The past-due banner clears. Usage shows the expected paid plan. Previously blocked actions succeed. Feature gates clear without a past-due banner.

Prevent it next time

• Keep a valid default payment method on the Stripe customer record tied to your organization.
• Assign a backup billing owner who can access the customer portal.
• Review Plan comparison before you depend on paid entitlements for a launch window.
• Watch for Stripe emails about failed charges and fix payment before the grace period ends.
• Open Billing & Plan at the start of each month to confirm status is active before large scheduling or AI runs.
• Teach creators to recognize past-due messages so they route payment issues to the billing owner instead of retrying the same blocked action.

Contact support

Escalate when payment succeeded in Stripe but Slash Social still shows past due after about an hour, or checkout and portal links fail to load.

Send support:

• Organization name
• Billing owner email or Slack user
• Stripe invoice reference if available
• When payment was completed
• The action that remains blocked and the exact Slack message

Related articles:

• Manage billing and upgrades
• A plan or usage limit is reached when the issue is quota on an active plan, not payment failure.