A common issue amongst my clients is the time it takes to receive payment from their customers. One solution to this is direct debit, for most small businesses this has been an expensive service provided predominately by banks. New players have come into the market making Direct Debit a more affordable option.
One such provider is GoCardless and they make it a simple two click process for customers to sign up and have an equally simple pricing structure. GoCardless charge 1% of any direct Debit collected with no other hidden charges, it also has no minimum on payment receipts unlike other online payment methods such as PayPal.
So how does it work? There are two methods of Direct Debit collection:
Fixed collection – This is where you collect from customers the same monthly amount.
Variable collection – This is where you want to collect varying amounts of money depending on the amounts your customers have ordered in any given period.
For each method all you need to do is email your customer a link to GoCardless where they will find your own branded payment page and from there they will sign up to the Direct Debit. For Fixed collection you simply wait for the money to start coming in, for the Variable collection you simply log in once a month and update the payment request for the amount required.
By using GoCardless you do not have to hold customer payment information, GoCardless holds of all that information. Reports are provided detailing failed payments, notification of cancelled payments and confirmation of successful payments. All information can easily be exported into CSV format if you want to integrate the information further.
GoCardless works great when used with the cloud accounting software Xero, GoCardless integrates with Xero so that you can automatically reconcile payments received. It also integrates with other accounting packages including Sage.
I recently spoke to a business that LOVES Xero and is now using GoCardless and they could not recommend both Xero and GoCardless enough. Each month having sent the regular invoices to their customers by email they send out a statement from Xero stating the amount outstanding and a note to say this will be collected automatically by Direct Debit; two weeks later they have the money.
If you would like to find out more about Xero and/or GoCardless please do get in touch.
