Automations Overview

Build powerful workflows to automate your billing operations

Automations are event-driven and scheduled workflows that respond to billing events, quote and subscription lifecycle changes, and CRM activity. From dunning emails to renewal opportunities in Salesforce or HubSpot, automations let you scale operations without manual intervention.

Automations are built and run entirely in the dashboard. There is no public automations API.

---

What Are Automations?

Automations are configurable workflows that:

• Trigger on a platform event, or on a schedule
• Filter with a condition and an execution policy, so only the events you care about start a run
• Execute actions like sending an email, retrying a payment, or writing to your CRM
• Branch and wait with condition and delay steps

---

Key Concepts

Triggers

A trigger defines when an automation runs. There are two trigger types:

Type	Description
event	Runs when a platform event of a chosen event type occurs
schedule	Runs on a calendar or interval schedule

Every trigger can carry an optional condition and an execution policy that decides whether a matching event actually starts a run.

Conditions

Conditions filter whether work happens. They are written in the expr expression language and appear in two places: on the trigger, and on the paths leaving a condition step.

status == "overdue" and amount > 1000

Actions

Actions are the operations performed — sending an email, retrying an invoice payment, creating a quote, writing a CRM record. The action list is a closed set of twenty-six actions; you cannot add custom ones.

Steps

Steps are the building blocks of a workflow:

Step type	Purpose
action	Executes one action
condition	Splits the graph into branches, each guarded by its own condition
delay	Waits for a duration before continuing
for_each	Runs a sub-flow once per item of an array
do_until	Repeats a sub-flow until an exit condition is met

The builder currently offers action, condition, and delay steps.

---

Supported Triggers

Twelve event types can start an automation.

Event type	Fires when
payment_failed	A payment attempt fails
card_expiring	A customer’s stored card enters its expiry month
invoice_status_updated	An invoice status changes
prepaid_usage_update	Prepaid usage is updated
credits_depleted	A customer’s credits balance is fully depleted
subscription_sent_for_signature	A subscription is sent for signature
quote_signed	Every signer has signed a quote and its signature session completes
subscription_status_updated	A subscription status changes
subscription_renewal_window_entered	A subscription’s contract end date falls within the renewal window
flow_session_completed	A hosted flow session is completed
salesforce_opportunity_changed	A Salesforce opportunity is created or changed
hubspot_deal_changed	A HubSpot deal is created or changed

Schedule triggers run on a calendar schedule — hourly, daily, weekly, monthly or yearly at a chosen time — or on a fixed interval. Automations do not accept cron expressions.

See Triggers for each event’s data, and the reference for the full payload of every event type.

---

Available Actions

Category	Actions
Notifications	send_email, send_slack_message, send_webhook, send_billing_info_request, share_customer_portal_link
Payments	send_card_expiration_reminder
Invoicing	retry_invoice_payment, send_invoice_reminder, send_invoice_reminders_bulk
Subscriptions	cancel_subscription, send_subscriptions_autorenewal_notification_bulk
Quotes	send_subscription_signature_reminder, create_quote, activate_quote
CRM	get_crm_opportunity, create_crm_record, update_crm_record, set_opportunity_stage, create_quote_from_opportunity, void_open_quotes_for_opportunity, cancel_renewal_for_lost_opportunity
Lookups and general	get_invoice, get_invoices, get_subscription, get_subscriptions, set_tags_on_entity

See Actions for what each one does and the reference for every parameter.

---

Creating Automations

Step 1: Create the Automation

1. Navigate to Automations
2. Click Create Automation
3. Choose how to start:
   • From Template: start from a pre-built template
   • From Scratch: build a custom automation

Step 2: Configure the Trigger

1. Select the trigger type:
   • Event: runs when something happens, e.g. a payment fails
   • Schedule: runs on a calendar schedule
2. For an event trigger, choose the event type
3. Optionally add a condition to narrow which events start a run
4. Choose an execution policy:
   • Execute every time — run whenever the trigger fires and its condition passes
   • Execute only once per unique value — pick a field from the event, and run only the first time each value is seen

Step 3: Add Steps

1. Click to add a step on the canvas
2. Choose the step type:
   • Action: pick an action and fill in its inputs
   • Delay: wait a duration before the next step
   • Condition: split the flow into branches, each with its own condition
3. Fill in action inputs. Any input can be a literal value or a reference to earlier data, inserted from the variable picker

Step 4: Test and Activate

1. Use Test to run the automation against sample trigger data
2. Review the result of each step
3. Activate the version when it looks right

Example: Payment Dunning Workflow

1. Trigger: payment_failed, execution policy once per invoiceId
2. Action: send_billing_info_request so the customer can update their payment method
3. Delay: 3 days
4. Action: get_invoice to read the invoice’s current state
5. Condition: continue only when {{get_invoice_step.outputs.amountDue}} is still greater than zero
6. Action: retry_invoice_payment
7. Activate

See Dunning for the collections-focused version of this workflow.

---

Referencing Data Between Steps

Action inputs and path conditions can reference the trigger’s event data and any earlier step’s outputs:

{{trigger.inputs.invoiceId}}
{{get_invoice_step.outputs.amountDue}}

The builder offers a variable picker on every input, so you rarely type these by hand. There is no filter or formatting pipeline — a reference is a path into the run’s data. See Template syntax.

---

Managing Automations

View Executions

1. Navigate to Automations and open an automation
2. Open its executions
3. Each run shows its trigger input, every step that ran, and any errors
4. Open a run to see the step-by-step log

Pause/Resume

Deactivating an automation stops it from triggering. Its history is preserved and it can be reactivated later.

Version History

An automation holds a series of versions. Only one is active at a time, and editing an active automation creates a new draft rather than changing the running version.

---

Automation Templates

Every organization starts with a library of templates covering the most common workflows:

Template	Description
Failed Payment Notification	Sends a billing info collection request when an invoice payment fails for the first time
Overdue Invoice Reminder	Sends multiple reminders for overdue invoices with delays between them
Invoices Due Reminders	Sends email reminders a set number of days before invoices are due
Subscription Signature Reminder	Reminds the customer 3 days after a subscription is sent for signature if they haven’t signed
Autorenewal notice	Emails the customer a heads-up once their subscription enters its renewal window
Usage Threshold Alert	Emails an alert when a customer reaches 80% of their prepaid usage
Notify on failed payment	Sends a Slack alert to your team whenever a payment attempt fails
Onboarding kickoff on activation	Sends a Slack alert to your team as soon as a subscription becomes active

A further set of CRM templates covers Salesforce and HubSpot: creating a quote when an opportunity enters a stage, closing the opportunity as won on signature, creating a renewal opportunity, voiding open quotes when a deal is lost, and cancelling a renewal when a renewal opportunity is lost.

---

Versioning

Automations support versioning for safe updates:

Version state	Description
draft	Work in progress, not active
active	Currently running version
inactive	Previously active, now disabled

The automation itself is draft, active, or archived.

Version Workflow

---

Execution Tracking

Monitor automation runs from the automation’s execution view:

• Execution status
• Trigger input data
• Step-by-step execution log
• Error messages, and the outcome reason when an action deliberately wrote nothing

Actions that may legitimately do nothing — because a quote was already signed, or no CRM opportunity is linked — report a reason rather than failing. See Execution outcome reasons.

---

Failure Handling

There is no per-step retry or fallback configuration to set up. Invalid inputs fail a step permanently; transient execution failures are retried automatically by the workflow engine. To react to an action’s result, read its outputs in a following condition step.

---

Best Practices

Start Simple

Begin with single-step automations, then add complexity.

Test Thoroughly

Use draft versions and test runs before activating.

Use Once-Per-Value

Set an execution policy of once per invoice or account so customers aren’t contacted repeatedly.

Monitor Executions

Regularly review execution logs for failures and skip reasons.

---

Use Cases

Dunning Management

Automate payment recovery:

1. Trigger on payment_failed, once per invoice
2. Send a billing info request so the customer can fix their payment method
3. Wait a few days
4. Look the invoice up again and check whether anything is still due
5. Retry the payment
6. Escalate with an invoice reminder if it is still unpaid

Renewal Motion

Get ahead of renewals:

1. Trigger on subscription_renewal_window_entered
2. Notify the customer that the subscription is about to renew
3. Create the renewal quote, and a linked CRM opportunity so the deal is in the pipeline

Usage Alerts

Monitor and alert on prepaid usage:

1. Trigger on prepaid_usage_update with the condition usagePercentage >= 0.8
2. Set the execution policy to once per accountId so the customer is alerted once per commitment period
3. Email the customer that they are approaching their limit

---

Next Steps

Triggers

Learn about trigger configuration.

Actions

Explore available actions.

Conditions

Master conditional logic.

Reference

Every trigger, action and parameter.