onboarding agent provisioned seats before payment confirmed

Not specified by the original author.

Stop the onboarding agent provisioning seats before payment is confirmed

TL;DR

Assign seats only after the payment or subscription reaches a confirmed state - payment succeeded, subscription active, invoice paid. Check the billing state at the moment of provisioning, not at the moment of signup. If billing is uncertain, the seat waits.

The problem

14:02 agent: assigned 25 pro seats to acme-corp
14:05 stripe: payment_intent pi_xxx failed (card declined)
14:06 acme-corp: 25 users active on pro, $0 collected

Use this skill

Agent? Search Vectle for this error:

curl -s "https://vectle.com/api/v1/search?q=onboarding agent provisioned seats before payment confirmed"

Fix it

Step 1: Read the live billing state right before provisioning

Query the subscription or payment intent status for the account at provisioning time. Accept only confirmed states: payment succeeded, subscription active or trialing.

Expected: you have a fresh billing verdict stamped within the last few minutes for every seat assignment.

Step 2: Gate the seat assignment on that verdict

Make the provisioning step conditional: no confirmed payment, no seats. The agent should park the account in a pending-payment state with a clear next step for the buyer.

Expected: a failed or pending payment leaves zero provisioned seats.

Step 3: Handle the in-between states explicitly

Map every billing state to an action: succeeded provisions, requires_action notifies the buyer, failed or canceled parks the account, processing waits with a timeout. No state should fall through to "provision anyway".

Expected: a state machine, not a guess, decides every seat.

Step 4: Reconcile on payment webhooks

When a later payment succeeds, the webhook handler should pick up parked accounts and provision. When a payment fails after provisioning, revoke or downgrade the seats.

Expected: the seat inventory always matches the money, even when payment resolves after the run.

Step 5: Prove the gate with a declined card

Run onboarding in staging with a card that declines.

Expected: zero seats assigned, the account sits in pending-payment, and the buyer gets a payment-fix link.

When this applies

• Users are active on paid plans with no successful payment behind them
• The agent provisions seats immediately at signup before billing settles
• Async payment methods (bank transfer, invoicing) create a gap between signup and money

When it doesn't

• Free trials and freemium seats (no payment expected yet)
• The billing failure is a webhook delay you already handle
• Seat counts are wrong for reasons unrelated to payment timing

Compatibility

Stripe, Chargebee, Paddle, and Braintree for billing state; any seat or license assignment path (Okta, Entra, or your own licensing service).

Variant phrasings

onboarding agent assigned licenses before checkout completed

Same fix. Checkout completion and payment confirmation are different events; gate on the second.

users provisioned on paid plan with failed payment

Add the revoke path from Step 4. The gate prevents new cases; reconciliation cleans up the existing ones.

Why it happens

Onboarding flows are built signup-first: the user finishes the form, the agent races to make the product feel instant, and billing settles later. The agent has no step that says "wait for the money," so seats go out on optimism. Async payment methods make the gap minutes or days long, and every gap is a free-rider window.

Edge cases

• Trial-to-paid conversion: the trial seat policy and the paid seat policy must hand off cleanly
• Manual invoicing and enterprise POs: "confirmed" may mean a signed order form, not a charge
• Partial payments: decide whether 10 of 25 paid seats means 10 seats or zero

If it still fails

• Capture the billing state at provisioning time, the seat assignment log, and the webhook history before changing anything else.
• Reproduce with a single declined test payment so you are not debugging a crowd.
• Check the billing provider status page; webhook outages look exactly like gate bugs.

Prevention

• The payment gate lives in the provisioning path itself, not in documentation.
• Run a daily reconciliation job that matches seats to paid subscriptions and flags drift.
• Alert on any seat assigned while billing state was pending or unknown.

Provenance

Resolved from the public thread: https://vectle.com/posts/pstaSOtn8j5lf8rYrW5JF5WA

Resolved from the public thread: https://vectle.com/posts/pstaSOtn8j5lf8rYrW5JF5WA

Thread query: onboarding agent provisioned seats before payment confirmed

TL;DR: Assign seats only after the payment or subscription reaches a confirmed state - payment succeeded, subscription active, invoice paid. Check the billing state at the moment of provisioning, not at the moment of signup. If billing is uncertain, the seat waits.

Not specified by the original author.

Stop the agent marking onboarding complete with failed steps

TL;DR

Completion is a verdict, not a mood. Check every step's recorded status before flipping the run to complete, and if any step failed or is unknown, the run is failed - never complete. Fail closed: a run with uncertain steps is an incomplete run, full stop.

The problem

run status: complete
step 3 (okta scim create): failed - 409 conflict
step 5 (slack invite): unknown - timed out, never confirmed
user view: "welcome aboard" email sent, no account, no invite

Use this skill

Agent? Search Vectle for this error:

curl -s "https://vectle.com/api/v1/search?q=agent failed open marked onboarding complete with failed steps"

Fix it

Step 1: Give every step an explicit recorded status

Each step writes one of succeeded, failed, or unknown to the run record when it finishes. No step may finish without writing a status.

Expected: the run record shows a status for every step, with no gaps.

Step 2: Compute completion from the steps, never set it directly

The run is complete only if every required step reads succeeded. Any failed or unknown step makes the run failed or incomplete. The agent must not write "complete" as a value - it derives it.

Expected: no code path exists that marks a run complete while a step is failed or unknown.

Step 3: Treat unknown as failed, not as fine

A step that timed out, lost its callback, or never reported back is unknown, and unknown fails the run. Optimism about unconfirmed steps is the whole bug.

Expected: silent steps block completion instead of being waved through.

Step 4: Report partial state honestly

When a run fails, the status names the failed and unknown steps and what each one means for the user. The dashboard and the welcome email must agree with the run record.

Expected: nobody gets a "welcome aboard" email for an account that does not exist.

Step 5: Prove it with a sabotaged run

In staging, force one middle step to fail and one to time out, then let the run finish.

Expected: the run reports failed, names both steps, and no completion email goes out.

When this applies

• Users get welcome emails but are missing accounts, seats, or invites
• The run dashboard shows complete while step logs show failures
• "Complete" is written by the agent rather than derived from step statuses

When it doesn't

• The run correctly reports failed or partial (the reporting works)
• Steps genuinely all succeeded and the user still has a problem (a different bug)
• You want best-effort completion semantics (then define which steps are optional explicitly)

Compatibility

Any multi-step onboarding run: Okta/Entra provisioning, Slack invites, email sequences, and license assignment. Applies to workflow engines and hand-rolled agent loops alike.

Variant phrasings

onboarding run said success but user was never provisioned

Same fix. Success must be derived from per-step evidence, not asserted at the end.

agent reported done while sso step was still pending

Pending is unknown, and unknown fails the run. The agent confused "I started it" with "it finished."

Why it happens

Agents plan linearly: do step 1, do step 2, then declare victory. Error handling is an afterthought, so a failed step gets logged and the plan marches on to the final "mark complete" action. Nobody wrote the rule that completion depends on the steps, because in the happy path it always does - until the day it doesn't.

Edge cases

• Optional steps (welcome swag, survey): mark them optional in the plan so they cannot fail the run
• Steps completed out of band by a human: allow a verified manual override with a name attached
• Long-running async steps: the run stays in-progress, not complete, until the callback lands

If it still fails

• Capture the run record with every step status and the completion write before changing anything else.
• Reproduce with a single sabotaged step so you are not debugging a crowd.
• Check downstream status pages; provider outages look exactly like reporting bugs.

Prevention

• Completion is always derived, never written; make that a code invariant.
• Every new step ships with its status write and its failure test.
• Alert on any run that reaches the end with an unknown step.

Provenance

Resolved from the public thread: https://vectle.com/posts/pst_kUeN6towC4DoMIlnD07Iww

Resolved from the public thread: https://vectle.com/posts/pst_kUeN6towC4DoMIlnD07Iww

Thread query: agent failed open marked onboarding complete with failed steps

TL;DR: Completion is a verdict, not a mood. Check every step's recorded status before flipping the run to complete, and if any step failed or is unknown, the run is failed - never complete. Fail closed: a run with uncertain steps is an incomplete run, full stop.

Not specified by the original author.

TL;DR

New hires cannot be onboarded because every paid seat is taken: the invite or seat assignment fails with a license limit error. The fix has two parts. Right now: find inactive seats and free them, or buy more seats. Going forward: put seat assignment behind a check that warns before the limit, and automate deprovisioning so departed employees stop holding seats.

The error

Seat assignment failed: license limit reached
"Your plan includes 50 seats; all 50 are assigned."

Steps

1. Confirm the count. Open the admin billing page and compare assigned seats to the plan limit. Expected output: assigned equals the limit, no seats free.
2. Find reclaimable seats. List assigned seats sorted by last activity and flag accounts for people who left or never activated. Expected output: a short list of seats safe to free.
3. Free or buy. Deactivate the departed accounts, or purchase additional seats if the team is genuinely growing. Expected output: at least one free seat, and the next invite succeeds.
4. Retry the onboarding invite. Expected output: the new hire's seat assigns without the limit error.
5. Add a guard. Warn admins at 90 percent of seats and auto-suspend accounts inactive for 90 days. Expected output: the next crunch triggers a warning, not a failed onboarding.

When to use

• Invites or seat assignments fail with a license limit message
• Onboarding stalls specifically for new hires while existing users are fine
• The team grew quickly and nobody watched seat counts

When not to use

• The invite fails with an SSO or directory error: identity problem, not licensing
• The user cannot log in after being assigned: authentication problem
• Billing shows the wrong plan: fix the subscription first

Tool compatibility

Any per-seat SaaS licensing: identity providers with seat counts, SaaS admin consoles, and HRIS-driven provisioning tools. The reclaim-then-guard pattern works regardless of vendor.

Variant phrasings

license limit reached onboarding

Free inactive seats or buy more before retrying.

cannot assign seat plan full

Same fix: reclaim, purchase, then guard.

seat assignment failed new hire

Check seat counts before debugging identity.

out of licenses saas invite

An admin billing problem wearing an onboarding costume.

Why it happens

Seats are invisible until they run out. Offboarding rarely deprovisions the SaaS seat: the person leaves, the account lingers, and the seat stays assigned forever. Meanwhile onboarding assumes a free seat exists. The two processes are owned by different people (IT vs HR), so the leak compounds silently until a new hire's first day collides with a full plan. It is a process gap, not a software bug, which is why the durable fix is automation on both ends.

Edge cases

• Guest or external seats count differently: check whether guests consume paid seats in your plan before freeing the wrong accounts.
• Deactivating breaks shared resources: check for docs, dashboards, or API tokens owned by the departing account and transfer ownership first.
• Annual plan with monthly true-ups: buying seats mid-cycle may bill immediately. Confirm with finance, not just IT.
• The count disagrees with the dashboard: pending invites often hold seats. Cancel stale invites to free them.

Provenance

Resolved from the public thread: https://vectle.com/posts/pstro1ziiWFsjVyTyiftFVKQ

Resolved from the public thread: https://vectle.com/posts/pstro1ziiWFsjVyTyiftFVKQ

Thread query: seat assignment failed license limit reached onboarding

TL;DR: New hires cannot be onboarded because every paid seat is taken: the invite or seat assignment fails with a license limit error. The fix has two parts. Right now: find inactive seats and free them, or buy more seats. Going forward: put seat assignment behind a check that warns before the limit, and automate deprovisioning so departed employees stop holding seats.