This is not true!  What you said is not true.  When you have recurring billing set up for a client and the charge is initiated it produces a paid sales receipt that is emailed to the client (if you have it set to go to them).  At the same time, it triggers a transaction to happen at Intuit, where your merchant account exists.  If the payment is declined the client does not get an email stating it.  They hold a receipt that claims the transaction was paid when it was declined.  If you have many transactions happening, I recommend you go to your merchant account on a monthly basis to make sure nothing was declined.  Some business have lost a large amount of money because of this problem and the fact that they are not notified of declined transactions, no email goes to either party to alert of the payment rejection >> yet the client has "Paid" sales receipt. There has been a change just recently  showing unpaid activity in the dashboard now, which is better than it was but it still leaves the client with a paid receipt.