How to monitor Stripe subscriptions in Slack

To monitor Stripe subscriptions in Slack, connect Stripe and Slack in ChargeBell and turn on four alerts: new subscriber, plan changed, subscription canceled, and trial ending. Route each one to a channel someone owns and send a test alert. The first three are on by default. Trial ending is off until you turn it on.

1. 1

   Connect Stripe and Slack

   Give ChargeBell read-only access to Stripe, add it to Slack, and pick a channel for each alert type.

2. 2

   Turn on the subscription alerts

   New subscriber, plan changed, and subscription canceled are on by default. Turn on trial ending if you offer trials.

3. 3

   Check delivery

   Send a test alert. When a real subscription event arrives, compare it with the subscription in Stripe.

Which Stripe subscription events reach Slack

Stripe reports the subscription lifecycle with a few events. customer.subscription.created fires for a new subscription. customer.subscription.trial_will_end fires three days before a trial ends. customer.subscription.deleted fires when a subscription has ended. Almost everything else arrives as customer.subscription.updated.

That last event covers plan switches, status changes, and scheduled cancellations, so you have to compare the new state with the previous one to know what happened. ChargeBell does that comparison. It posts a plan changed alert when the price or quantity changes and a cancellation alert when a customer schedules a cancellation. It ignores status flips and metadata edits. Stripe doesn't send an MRR figure, so ChargeBell calculates one when the price and billing interval are available.

New subscribers

A new subscription is good news, but created doesn't mean paid. A subscription can start as trialing or incomplete, and Stripe sends the created event before any payment is due on a trial. Check the status before you count the revenue.

• Who acts. The founder or whoever runs onboarding.
• What to do. Send a personal welcome and check that the customer reached the first useful step in your product.
• What to watch. For a trial, whether it converts. For an incomplete subscription, whether the first payment goes through.

Upgrades and downgrades

The plan changed alert shows a signed MRR change when the price data is there. A positive number is an upgrade and a negative number is a downgrade. Check the effective price in Stripe before you report it.

• Upgrades. The founder or account owner thanks the customer and asks what made them upgrade, such as more seats or a specific feature. That answer tells you what to sell next.
• Downgrades. The founder or customer success asks what changed. Customers often downgrade before they cancel, so ask while they are still paying.
• Patterns. Several downgrades from the same plan usually point at pricing or packaging, not at individual accounts.

Cancellations

Stripe records why a subscription ended in cancellation_details.reason. The value is cancellation_requested when the customer chose to leave, payment_failed when payment retries ran out, and payment_disputed after a dispute. Open the subscription in Stripe to see which one applies.

• The customer chose to leave. Send an exit question or a win-back offer. If your cancel flow collects feedback, Stripe stores it in cancellation_details.feedback, so read it first.
• A payment failed. The customer didn't choose to go, and a card update request often brings them back. The failed payment alerts guide shows how to catch these earlier.
• Who acts. The founder on a small team, customer success on a larger one.

Trials about to end

Stripe sends customer.subscription.trial_will_end three days before a trial period ends, or right away if the trial is shorter than that. It is the only subscription event that arrives before the outcome. Remind the customer what they get and check that they have a card on file. The trial ending alert is off by default.

ChargeBell doesn't post an alert when a trial converts, because that is a status change. Check the subscription in Stripe. A move from trialing to active means it converted. canceled, past_due, or incomplete means it didn't, or the payment failed. Treat a failed payment at conversion like an involuntary cancellation.

Subscription schedules and plan changes

A subscription schedule changes a subscription automatically on set dates. When a schedule moves to a phase with a different price or quantity, Stripe updates the subscription and sends customer.subscription.updated. ChargeBell can then post a plan changed alert, even though nobody clicked anything that day. ChargeBell does not alert on the subscription_schedule.* events themselves.

Reading the MRR change

When an alert has enough price data, ChargeBell converts the change to a monthly amount. An annual plan at $1,000 counts as $83.33 a month. Trial ending alerts have no MRR figure, and a payment alert is not an MRR report. Use Stripe and your accounting rules for the final numbers.

Each change falls into one bucket: new, expansion, contraction, churn, or reactivation. Net new MRR is new plus expansion, minus contraction and churn. The buckets tell you why MRR moved, which the total alone can't. See MRR movements for the definitions.

Where each subscription alert should go

Keep wins and cancellations apart. People read a #wins channel. A channel that mixes celebrations and cancellations teaches them to skim both.

The weekly MRR digest

Single alerts tell you when to act. The weekly pattern tells you what to change. ChargeBell's weekly digest groups the week's MRR changes into new subscribers, upgrades, and cancellations and downgrades, then reports the net change and the biggest single win:

Digests are on every plan and don't count toward the free plan's 50 alerts a month. For churn rate, LTV, and cohorts, use a metrics tool such as ProfitWell Metrics. ChargeBell tells you when a single subscription needs attention. For payment alerts in the same setup, see how to get Stripe payment notifications in Slack. For the full list of events worth watching, see what Stripe events a founder should monitor.