Subscriptions follow-up payments controller and missed schedule

[remcotolsma]

The subscriptions follow-up payments controller will only initiate follow-up payments for subscriptions where the next payment date is between now and 1 day ago:

wp-pay-core/src/Subscriptions/SubscriptionsFollowUpPaymentsController.php

Lines 350 to 368 in bd197f4

	/**
	* Get query start date for subscriptions that require a follow-up payment.
	*
	* @return \DateTimeImmutable
	* @throws \Exception Throws exception in case of error.
	*/
	private function get_follow_up_payment_query_start_date() {
	return new \DateTimeImmutable( '-1 day', new \DateTimeZone( 'GMT' ) );
	}
	/**
	* Get query end date for subscriptions that require a follow-up payment.
	*
	* @return \DateTimeImmutable
	* @throws \Exception Throws exception in case of error.
	*/
	private function get_follow_up_payment_query_end_date() {
	return new \DateTimeImmutable( 'now', new \DateTimeZone( 'GMT' ) );
	}

Because this routine has to run every day, it should always work. However, there are situations where the routine does not run for a day or several days. For example, if a website is offline for a longer period of time due to a malfunction or something similar.

We cannot securely initiate payments for subscriptions with a next payment date in the past?

Subscriptions for which a follow-up payment has not been initiated on time remain active and administrators are not informed that there is a 'missed schedule'.

Should we introduce an extra controller that will put the 'missed schedule' subscriptions 'on hold'? By putting subscriptions with a next payment date that is more than 2 days in the past 'on hold'?

Or are there other options to better inform administrators about this?

CC @rvdsteege

[rvdsteege]

Should we introduce an extra controller that will put the 'missed schedule' subscriptions 'on hold'?
[…]
Or are there other options to better inform administrators about this?

I'm not sure if putting the subscription 'On Hold' is "informing", should we not add an admin notice with a link to a list of such subscriptions and an option to somehow manually (bulk) try again? Clearly something has gone wrong in these cases.