Your first sync
Starting the wizard's last step kicks off a full sync: SSA's first real pull of your Stripe data. Everything after that runs in the background, whether or not you keep the wizard open.
What the first sync pulls
A full sync pulls customers, charges and invoices created on or after your chosen Historical window (3 to 24 months back, 24 by default). Subscriptions are always pulled in full, with no date limit at all, so an active subscriber who signed up before your window still counts.
A customer created before the window still appears if one of their charges or subscriptions falls inside it: Stripe hands SSA the customer record along with that charge or subscription, and SSA backfills the customer row from it.
How long it takes and what you see
There is no fixed duration: the wizard's own copy says "2 to 10 minutes depending on volume," and the README says "a few minutes." Both are estimates, not measurements. While it runs you see a spinner, a records counter, a percentage and a progress bar; the same information is echoed by the small sync status pill in the top-right corner of every SSA page.
| Pill state | Color | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| Never synced | Gray | No sync has ever run on this site. |
| Syncing… | Blue, pulsing | Stripe data is being fetched right now. |
| Processing… | Blue, pulsing | Fetching is done; SSA is recalculating your dashboard figures. |
| Synced | Green | The most recent sync finished successfully, at the time shown. |
| Last sync failed | Red | The most recent sync could not finish after repeated retries. |
| Sync cancelled | Amber | The most recent sync was cancelled before it finished. |
Cancelling
The wizard itself has no Cancel button; closing it just lets the sync continue in the background. To stop it, go to Settings > Data Sync and click Cancel sync, which is the same running job. SSA cancels every part of that sync at once and reports "Sync cancelled."
When it finishes
Once every record is fetched, the sync pill switches to "Processing…" while SSA turns the raw data into the figures your dashboard shows. In plain terms, it works through these steps in order:
- Look for recurring payments that are not native Stripe subscriptions, and record them as detected subscriptions.
- Match a trial's first real charge back to the trial subscription it belongs to.
- Recalculate every dashboard figure: MRR, subscriber counts, lifetime value, at-risk MRR, and more.
- Rebuild the cohort data behind 90-day retention.
- Rebuild the month-by-month history the dashboard uses to compare periods.
- Match your Stripe customers to WordPress user accounts by email.
Once all of that finishes, the sync is marked complete: the pill turns green with the finish time, and if the wizard is still open it shows "Sync complete" and takes you to the Dashboard a moment later. If you already moved on, any open SSA page shows a "Sync complete. Refresh to see your data." notice instead.