How I built a Stripe billing health audit for SaaS

Running a subscription SaaS on Stripe necessitates vigilant monitoring, as a successful checkout does not guarantee a healthy billing state indefinitely. Subscriptions may become past_due, payments incomplete, invoices remain open, and customers may acquire multiple current subscriptions. To address these concerns, I developed Tresvio, a monitoring and audit tool specifically designed for Stripe billing.

The initial version of Tresvio concentrates on key Stripe billing states like past_due subscriptions, unpaid subscriptions, incomplete subscriptions, recent incomplete_expired subscriptions, open invoices with remaining amounts after attempted collection, and multiple active or trial subscriptions linked to a single customer. The primary objective is to alert users to states that require attention without attempting to alter Stripe's operations directly.

Tresvio functions as a monitoring and audit layer, offering visibility while leaving payment collection, retries, invoicing, and subscription management to Stripe.

I separated monitoring from recovery to prevent the tool from taking control over critical billing decisions. The workflow involves connecting Stripe for an audit, reviewing the findings, and opening the pertinent customer, subscription, or invoice within Stripe. Continuous monitoring can be enabled if it proves beneficial. This approach maintains a read-only integration with Stripe, ensuring that all billing decisions remain under the SaaS company's control.

Stripe's billing system alone cannot detect all potential issues. Some concerns, like customers being granted access without a paid subscription or discrepancies between the plan in Stripe and the application's plan, fall outside Stripe's scope. To address these issues, I incorporated an optional App Probe integration into Tresvio.

This extension is not mandatory for the standard Stripe audit but serves SaaS teams looking to correlate billing state with application access. The free audit begins with a low-friction process: connect Stripe, run the free audit, review the findings, and decide whether to enable continuous monitoring. No card information is required for the initial audit.

I am actively seeking feedback from developers and SaaS founders who utilize Stripe Billing. If you're interested in trying Tresvio, you can access it at https://tresvio.com. Additionally, I welcome insights into the most significant Stripe billing challenges you have encountered in your SaaS projects.