Unpaid invoices on a cancelled subscription

When a SaaS customer cancels or is cut off with invoices unpaid: keep collecting, issue a credit note or write the debt off, and how to book each.

By Achekam · 11 October 2026 · 4 min read · For Software (SaaS) businesses in South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya

A customer on a monthly plan stopped paying three months ago. The access was switched off after the second missed payment, and last week the customer formally cancelled. The receivables list still shows three unpaid invoices against their name. The finance person asks a fair question: are these still debts, or should they just go away?

The answer depends on what happened to the service in each of those months, and on what the business is prepared to chase. Getting it wrong either way is costly: chasing money for a service never delivered sours relationships and may not be recoverable, while quietly dropping money that is genuinely owed rewards customers who stop paying. This article sets out how subscription states interact with unpaid invoices, and the three ways each open invoice can end.

Past due, unpaid and cancelled

Stripe's description of how subscriptions behave is a useful model, whichever provider or system runs your billing.

Stripe states that when a customer does not pay a subscription invoice, further collection attempts are paused while the subscription keeps generating invoices each billing period. Its status becomes past due or unpaid, depending on the business's failed-payment settings. Stripe also notes that an active subscription does not necessarily mean all the invoices linked to it have been paid.

That second point is easy to miss. A customer can be "active" in the product while their account in the books is months in arrears, because nobody connected the two.

Cutting off access, and what cancelling does

Stripe advises revoking access to a product when a subscription is unpaid, because payment has already been attempted and retried while the subscription was past due. By then the business has given the customer every reasonable chance through the automatic process.

Cancellation has its own effect. Stripe explains that, by default, cancelling a subscription stops new invoices and automatic collection of its outstanding invoices, and a customer who wants to come back must give new payment information for a new subscription. In other words, cancelling closes the automatic route for the old debts. Whatever is still open has to be dealt with deliberately, in the books and with the customer. Stripe's overview of how subscriptions work explains the full lifecycle, from trials and recurring invoices to payment collection, status changes and cancellations.

Three endings for an open invoice

Take each unpaid invoice in turn and ask one question: did the customer receive the service that invoice billed for?

In the opening example, the first unpaid month was delivered in full, so it is a debt to pursue. The months after access was cut off were not delivered, so crediting them is fairer than chasing them, unless your terms say the customer must pay for the full commitment regardless. Whatever is left, if the customer will not pay, becomes a write-off candidate.

Stripe gives examples of recovery automations, such as a custom dunning flow for annual subscribers, notifying the team when high-value invoices are overdue, and e-mailing a confirmation when a subscription is cancelled. The last one is worth copying in any system: a cancellation confirmation that also states any balance still owed sets expectations from the start. The earlier stage, before the subscription lapses, is covered in failed subscription payments.

Recording each ending in Achekam

Keep collecting. The server produces a customer statement of account as a PDF that can be e-mailed, and the screen says whether it was sent. Send the cancelled customer a statement showing only the periods they used, with a short covering note. Receivables are aged into 0-30, 31-60, 61-90, 91-120 and over 120 days, with overdue totals, so you can see how long each debt has been open and decide when to escalate.

Credit the service not delivered. A credit note is issued from the invoice it corrects, in full or for chosen lines, posted to the ledger, and can be downloaded as a PDF or e-mailed. Any leftover credit is held for the customer. There is no credit note without an invoice, so each credit traces back to the month it corrects. A similar approach for partial reductions is covered in credit notes for seat downgrades.

Void a mistake. If an invoice should never have been issued at all, for example one generated after the customer had already cancelled, an administrator can void it, provided it has no payments or credits against it. Voiding reverses its journal.

Write it off. An unpaid debt can be written off once a partner approves. That second person matters: the decision to give up on money owed should never rest with the person who chases it, and the approval leaves a record of who decided and when. Ask your accountant whether any VAT already declared on the invoice can be recovered, and how the write-off should be treated for tax.

A routine for cancelled accounts

Each month, list every customer who cancelled or was cut off, and for each one:

1. Match the open invoices to the periods when the customer actually had access.
2. Credit the periods not delivered, unless your terms clearly say otherwise.
3. Send a statement for what remains, with a clear due date.
4. Review anything still unpaid after your agreed collection effort, and put it forward for write-off approval.

Run that list for the customers who cancelled last month, and decide an ending for every open invoice before this month is closed.

General guidance only, not advice on your own circumstances. Tax and payroll rules change: check the current position with the authority or your adviser.