Copy of email to Go Cardless which is self-explanatory
"Can you clarify when the money is actually removed from my clients account? One client has written to me saying that although they received a payment confirmation from Gocardless, and my accounting system Quickfile recorded their account paid, no money seems to have left their account and certainly no money has reached mine. Do you hold the funds in a trust account?
So there is another issue of greater importance to me. The Gocardless account talks to my accounting account – Quckfile. In these instances the liaison between these two account was reporting to me that my account had been settled, when in fact it had not. In one instance I have allowed trading to continue in the belief that the account was settled, so I wait with interest to see what funds arrive between 2 and 4 Thursday."
Quickfile question.
It seems that Quickfile is recording payments as made when they are initiated by the Go Cardless system … rather than when the Go Cardless system actually pays out to the supplier/vendor/recipient…
In this case, where the Go Cardless system has a ‘glitch’ no payments were received by me, however Quickfile recorded the account as settled.
Go Cardless have explained the problem and are working on a ‘fix’. BUT … I believe that Quickfile should also re-examine the interface between the systems and make sure payment is actually made before marking accounts as paid.
Of course there is always the possibility that I have done something to create this problem … but I cannot see it.
Mark
PS love the system - this is a bug report not a complaint.
Currently we mark invoices as PAID only when GoCardless send the WITHDRAWN status to our systems. Once this status is received there is no possibility (to my knowledge) for that payment to fail. Withdrawn indicates that the funds have been transferred to the merchant.
Is it possible this status was sent in error by GoCardless? You mention that they are aware of a problem and are working on a fix?
Glen,
GoCardless (GC) have accepted that it was their problem and are working a fix. But I thought that you should be aware that whatever the trigger is that alerts QF that an account has been paid is not an indication that the funds have been paid to the bank account. In my case for some reason, and after a number of years, the GC system decided that my accounts had not been verified and therefore they stopped sending me the proceeds, which was only £1200.00 so not a big deal. But it could have been worse.
My consern was raised further when a client contacted me and said that they had recieved a payment confirmation, their account in QF had been credited but thier bank account had not been debited and my account had not been credited. You do not have to be too clever to work out that this could have led to a major problem, and still might be an issue if these accounts have not been debited when they should have and now do not have funds available.
GC have not replied as yet.
All this might just be a one off. My note to you was simply a heads up. I do not know what the ‘withdrawn’ status means, but can assure you it does not mean the intended recipient has been paid.
That’s exactly what it should mean though, if we’re receiving these status alerts when payments haven’t actually been lodged then this is an issue with the GoCardless API. It’s not a bug on QuickFile.
It seems however they are aware of this issue and are working on the fix.