Recurring charges
Scellus runs the recurring-billing process across subscriptions, retainers, and scheduled charges. We track card expiry, handle mid-cycle changes, trigger dunning, issue receipts, and reconcile payments before small billing gaps become operational noise.
Built for firms running subscription, retainer, or recurring-billing models: SaaS, advisory, agencies, member bodies, and professional services.
Where recurring charges break today
The card-expiry blackout. Twelve customers' cards expire in the same month. The first you hear about it is when Stripe’s failed-payment emails start landing three days after the cycle ran. By the time someone gets to them, two have already churned to a competitor and one has emailed accusing you of double-charging.
The mid-cycle plan change. A customer upgrades on the 14th. Someone has to figure the pro-rata on the old plan, raise the credit note, raise the new invoice, push the next renewal date forward, and update the recurring schedule. Five steps, four systems, one chance to get it wrong.
The retainer that quietly drifted. The engagement letter said the monthly retainer steps from RM8,000 to RM12,000 after six months. Nobody on the billing side knew. Twelve months in, the partner spots it on a year-end review. The firm under-billed RM24,000 and the awkward conversation with the client is next.
The dunning hand-off that never happened. Reminder one went out automatically on day three. Reminder two was meant to come from the account manager. It didn’t. By the time the controller pulls the aged-receivables report, the customer is two cycles behind and the relationship is in trouble.
Operating truth
None of this is incompetence.
It is what happens when the recurring book is run as a reaction to failures instead of as a calendar. The fix is not more chasing. It is a process that sees the break before the customer does.
Service specification
This is a managed service. Scellus runs the repeated work and prepares the exceptions. Your team keeps the decisions that need judgement.
The stack
Recurring charges run shorter than intake because nothing is inbound and no human review is needed when the rules are clean. The cycle is triggered by the calendar; the chasing happens before the charge, not after; verification is deterministic; delivery covers the charge, the receipt, and the GL line.
What you receive
Not capabilities. Outputs. Each one lands in your inbox, your billing system, or your GL on a defined rhythm. Most of them before the customer ever sees a failed-payment email.
A pre-cycle run sheet, three to five days before each billing date, listing every customer due, the amount, the payment method, and any held items requiring sign-off.
A live exceptions list covering expiring cards, failed mandates, mid-cycle changes, missing PO numbers, and customers on pause, with the action and owner against each one.
Same-day tax receipts to every customer charged, formatted to your tax-invoice template and matched to the GL line.
A reconciled payout file: payment-provider settlement on one side, GL postings on the other, with refunds, chargebacks, and partial payments already mapped.
A monthly recurring-revenue report: MRR movement, involuntary churn, dunning recovery, average days-to-receipt, and the customers we are flagging for next month.
The transition
Today
You find out the morning after the charge ran. The customer has already seen the failed-payment email and is forming an opinion.
We handle
We see the expiry on the run sheet two cycles ahead and ask the customer to update their method before it bites. Failed-mandate codes are translated and re-issued.
Your team
Approves the wording of the update-card request.
Today
An upgrade, downgrade, pause, or seat change becomes a Slack thread. The pro-rata is worked out by hand. The renewal date often doesn’t move.
We handle
We recalculate, raise the credit note, issue the next invoice, and shift the renewal date in one pass, written back to your billing system and confirmed to the customer in writing.
Your team
Confirms unusual cases and approves the customer-facing wording.
Today
Someone spends an afternoon a month linking Stripe payouts to invoices, then another afternoon fixing the partial payments and refunds the first pass missed.
We handle
Each payout is mapped to its invoices, fees, refunds, and chargebacks before the GL line is posted. The month closes with a zero on the unreconciled column.
Your team
Reviews the closing file and approves it for management accounts.
Compliance and data
Card numbers do not enter our environment. Card data stays with your payment provider under their PCI posture; we operate on metadata: expiry windows, mandate states, failure reason codes, settlement amounts, fee breakdowns.
Customer billing details, including name, address, tax ID, and bank-mandate references, sit under PDPA 2010 and the 2024 Amendment: DPO contact on every engagement, 72-hour breach notification, data portability, and the principle that pseudonymisation does not remove personal-data status.
Tax-invoice and e-invoice issuance follows LHDN MyInvois rules where mandated. SST classification per service is captured in the rule book, applied on Verify, and reflected on the receipt, then re-validated whenever a rate change is announced.
Integrations
Billing systems
Payment and settlement
Accounting and tax
If your stack is not listed, the Workflow Review confirms the integration scope before any commitment.
Operating cadence
Recurring charges are run as three repeatable processes. Each one has a trigger, a working list, and an output your team can inspect before the next cycle starts.
Operation cadence #2
Recurring charges are run as three repeatable processes. Each one has a trigger, a working list, and an output your team can inspect before the next cycle starts.
Indicative scope
Build phase
Four to eight weeks
Source-system connections, rule book capture, dunning and chase templates, tax-receipt template, GL mapping, reconciliation rules, parallel-run against one full billing cycle, go-live.
Operating retainer
Monthly engagement
Pre-cycle run sheets, exception handling, held-charge routing, dunning operation, receipt issuance, reconciliation, monthly closing file, and quarterly rule-book and template reviews.
Final scope, duration, and fee are confirmed at the Workflow Review against your subscription count, payment-provider mix, and accounting-system footprint.
What clients ask first
Start with the one workflow that keeps leaking time, context, and follow-up. We’ll map the breakpoints and recommend the first managed workflow to build.