Recurring Revenue Stack Migration (Handoff)
A handoff with 7 steps: Inventory every live subscription, plan, coupon, and dunning rule before touching the old system.
By InnovaAI ResearchPublished
What are the steps?
Recurring Revenue Stack Migration (Handoff)
- 01
Inventory every live subscription, plan, coupon, and dunning rule before touching the old system
Export active and past-due records with next-billing dates, currency, and tax treatment. A migration that misses grandfathered pricing or a paused plan surfaces as a client-facing invoice error within one cycle.
- 02
Map who owns tax liability and merchant-of-record status in the new arrangement
A Merchant of Record model such as Paddle absorbs global tax filing across 300+ markets, while a gateway-plus-billing-tool stack leaves remittance with the client. Write the answer into the handoff doc so nobody assumes the other party filed.
- 03
Freeze plan and price changes for the migration window
Lock catalog edits for the duration of the cutover. Mid-migration price edits are the most common cause of duplicate charges and reconciliation disputes during agency handoffs.
- 04
Run a parallel billing cycle in the new system against a test cohort
Push 10 to 20 real accounts through a full invoice, payment, and receipt cycle. Compare line items against the legacy system to the cent before widening the cohort.
- 05
Recreate dunning and failed-payment recovery logic, then test it with a declined card
Recovery sequences are the first thing lost in a migration. Tools like Recurly or RecoverFlow carry their own retry schedules, so confirm the new cadence matches what the client's finance team expects.
- 06
Reconcile the first live cycle line by line and sign off with the client's finance contact
Match gross revenue, refunds, and tax collected against the prior period. Any variance above 1 percent gets a written explanation before the retainer invoice goes out.
- 07
Document the rollback path and the 30-day support window in the handoff pack
Name who answers billing escalations, the response window, and the exact steps to revert if the new stack fails a cycle. Handoff is not complete until the client can operate the system without the agency in the loop.