Alert the team and draft an email when a Stripe invoice payment fails
On invoice.payment_failed, Slack gets an alert and Gmail gets a draft to the customer. A person reviews and sends it.
A guide, not professional advice. Test before you use it for real. See terms.
A business that bills clients with Stripe invoices or subscriptions.
Not sure which one to use? See Make vs n8n.
Problem
A card declines on a recurring invoice and nobody notices until the client asks why service stopped.
What you need
How it connects
- StripeNative app
Make: Watch Events with invoice.payment_failed. n8n: Stripe Trigger with Invoice Payment_failed. Set a Signature Secret on the n8n credential so unsigned requests are blocked.
- SlackNative app
Make: Send a Message. n8n: Message > Send.
- GmailNative app
Make: Create a draft email. n8n: Gmail node, Draft > Create.
Steps
Watch failed payments
Make: Stripe Watch Events with invoice.payment_failed. n8n: Stripe Trigger with Invoice Payment_failed. Stripe sends this on a declined payment or when there is no stored payment method.
Alert the team
Slack Send a Message (Make) or Message > Send (n8n): customer email, invoice number, amount due (cents divided by 100), and attempt count if your payload has it.
Draft the customer email
Make: Create a draft email. n8n: Draft > Create. Plain and polite: the payment didn't go through, here is the invoice link, reply if you need help. No threats, no late fees.
Let a person send it
Stripe may retry the payment on its own. Whoever reads the Slack alert checks the invoice first, then sends or deletes the draft.
Time
Build time is about 30 minutes, estimated by the recipe’s author. It is not a measured average.
Saves spotting failures in the Stripe dashboard and writing the first email from scratch.
Cost
Your Stripe account, Slack, a Google account, and Make or n8n per their current pricing.
What it doesn’t do
It doesn’t retry the charge, pause the subscription, or send anything to the customer by itself. If Stripe’s own failed-payment emails are on, your customer may also get those.
Build it
The account is yours. The Make link is an affiliate link.
Sources
- Stripe in Make
- Stripe event types
- n8n Stripe Trigger node
- Slack modules in Make
- n8n Slack node
- Gmail modules in Make
- n8n Gmail node
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