Billing Grace Period Playbook for AI Assistants
Usage-based assistants need predictable revenue without surprising customers. A structured billing grace period keeps the bot online briefly while finance resolves payment issues. Here is how to design one.
1. Detect payment failures
- Monitor Stripe webhooks for failed invoices, expiring cards, or missing payment methods.
- Stamp the tenant record with grace_start_at and grace_state.
- Capture plan tier, message quota, and last successful payment for context.
2. Communication timeline
| Day | Action | Channel |
|---|---|---|
| D-4 | Gentle reminder with link to billing portal | Email + in-app banner |
| D-2 | Warn about grace window and quota cap | Email + Google Chat alert to ops |
| D-1 | Final warning including disablement date | Email + admin dashboard modal |
| D+0 | Begin grace period, limit new chats | Chat widget banner + analytics log |
| D+7 | Disable assistant if unpaid | Widget returns billing message |
3. Grace period behavior
- Cap total chats per day or disable new sessions while allowing ongoing conversations to finish.
- Display a banner: “Billing issue detected. Please contact your admin to restore chat availability.”
- Prevent crawl jobs or re-index runs that would incur more cost.
- Record all actions in an audit log for compliance.
4. Ops visibility
- Send Google Chat alerts when grace starts, when D-1 warnings fire, and when disablement occurs.
- Provide an ops dashboard filter for grace_state so support can prioritize outreach.
- Include deeplinks from alerts to the tenant billing page in the admin app.
5. Recovery path
- When payment succeeds, clear grace_state, trigger a “services restored” email, and re-enable crawls.
- If a tenant churns, schedule data deletion per retention policy (default 30 days after disablement).
- Export grace events for finance reporting.
CrawlBot automation
CrawlBot enforces a seven-day grace window with proactive emails, Chat alerts, and widget messaging. Administrators see a billing status pill on every page. Replicating this playbook keeps revenue predictable without burning trust.***