What Happens If a Renewal Payment Fails

Why your loggers are back in your cart, and how to get them subscribed again.

Your organization's subscriptions renew once a year, on your renewal date. The charge goes to your Available Balance first, and anything left over goes to your default payment method.

If that payment doesn't succeed, ZENTRA Cloud doesn't quietly retry and it doesn't extend your subscriptions. It puts the affected loggers back in your cart, with the same plans they already had, so you can fix the payment method and pay without picking anything out again.

Nothing is deleted. Your loggers, their names, their folders, and their settings are untouched, and each one stays subscribed until the date it's already paid through.

1. What changes

Three things happen at once:

• The affected loggers go back into your cart, carrying the plans they were renewing.
• Their auto-renew is switched off. They won't be charged again until you check out.
• Nothing is extended. Each logger stays subscribed until the Ends date it already had, then stops being subscribed.

Your credit is safe. If part of the renewal was going to be paid from your Available Balance, that balance isn't consumed by a payment that didn't complete. The invoice stays open until it can be paid in full, so nothing is spent until the whole amount is.

2. Your data isn't deleted

While a logger isn't subscribed, its data isn't shown to you — not in ZENTRA Cloud, not in downloads and exports, and not through the API. That's a restriction on what you can see, not on what exists. The logger keeps recording and keeps uploading, and everything it collects is kept.

Subscribe it again and all of it appears, including the readings taken while it wasn't subscribed. There's no gap to repair and nothing to ask us to recover. Paying late costs you sight of your data, not the data itself.

Alerts are the exception. A logger without a subscription doesn't trigger alerts, and an alert that would have fired isn't sent later once you subscribe again. If you rely on alerts, this is the part of a failed renewal worth acting on quickly.

3. Where you'll see it

The place to look is your cart, and the Subscription column on the Devices page. Loggers that were renewing will show as being in your cart rather than renewing, and your cart will hold the plans they need.

4. Update your payment method

From Setup, select Billing. In the Payment Method card, add a working card and make it the default — see Manage your payment methods.

If your organization holds enough Available Balance to cover the charge, you don't need a card at all. Balance is always spent first. You can top it up from Add Usage — see Add prepaid usage to your balance — or redeem a Subscription Code, see Redeem a Subscription Code.

5. Check out again

Open your cart, check the loggers and plans listed are the ones you want, and select Checkout. The process is the same as any other purchase — see Subscribe a device.

Two things to expect:

• Your loggers are subscribed when the payment clears, not when you select Checkout. If the card is declined again, the loggers stay in the cart and you can retry.
• Auto-renew comes back on for the loggers you check out, so next year's renewal is set up again.

6. If you never paid your first invoice

There's a separate case that looks similar. If the very first invoice for a brand-new subscription is never paid, the subscription is cancelled outright rather than retried, so nobody is billed for loggers that were never paid for.

The fix is the same: put the loggers in your cart and check out.

7. Making it less likely next year

• Keep a working default payment method on file. Cards expire, and a card that worked last year may not work this year.
• Watch your renewal date. Your Billing page shows when your next charge is due and what it's estimated to be, under Annual Renewal.
• Keep balance topped up if you'd rather not rely on a card. Balance is spent before any card, so an organization holding enough of it renews without a card being involved.