i already use gocardless outside of quickfile and i want to bring it all into quickfile.
ive added my gocardless account to quickfile.
This is my current setup outside quickfile:
i have customers pay me once per month, on the same date every month.
i have a mandate setup with gocardless.
i have them added to a ‘plan’ in gocardless and that automatically takes payment every month.
lets say for example that gocardless takes payment every month on the 22nd and i want this to be transfered into quicfile. how would i go about doing this?
Is this correct:
Add my customer to quickfile.
Move the existing mandate from gocardless to quickfile using the Mandate ID.
Create a recurring invoice in quickfile for 22nd every month (is this the right date?).
Choose to AutoBill with direct debit on the recurring invoice setup.
Set the Payable Within to be 0 days.
Set the Initiate request after 0 days.
Would that then create the invoice on the 22nd, email it to the customer on the 22nd, and debit them on the 22nd?
Would there be any extra delay in doing it this way over taking the payment on the 22nd in gocardless?
Could i somehow set the invoice to be raised a few days early and emailed to the customer, so as to act as a reminder a few days early so that the customer has enough money in their bank, but still take the payment on the 22nd?
Your best to set the invoice date a few days prior to the 22nd as we process this request on the 22nd. Direct Debit will take a few days to take the money following this.
According to GoCardless, payment is typically collected 2 working days after submission (unless you specify a delay, or it’s a new mandate):
Full details of the optimised collection time is provided below, but in summary:
If a Direct Debit mandate is already in place, payment is collected 2 working days after submission, can be considered 99% confirmed 3 working days after submission, and 100% confirmed after 4 working days.
If a Direct Debit mandate needs to be created, payment is collected 4 working days after submission, can be considered 99% confirmed 5 working days after submission, and 100% confirmed after 6 working days.
if i set a recurring invoice on the 19th with a due date of 3 days, what date would quickfile send the payment request to gocardless? would it be the 19th or 22nd?
“Payable within” has no effect on the direct debit, so you can set this to your standard terms if you wish.
“Initiate requester after” means we’ll request the payment at the earliest date possible after the number of days you state.
So, as an example, if you raised the invoice on 1st of a month, generally a direct debit can be collected 3 working days after the request.
Taking the 20th as the collection date, you’d need to work backwards. Raising the invoice on the 16th could very well work, or even the 17th. But the things to consider are:
Direct debits may take longer, especially if a mandate has to be set up too
Bank holidays and weekends will affect the timings
I would take a look at this to understand the timings of the collections, and maybe even speak with GoCardless directly to see what dates they would suggest.
i feel like im getting passed from one place to another.
gocardless say they dont have any control over how quickfile request the payments and i should take up my enquiry with quickfile.
quickfile suggest i speak to go cardless???
i personally think the answer should come from quickfile as its quickfile doing the payment request.
i dont see the difficulty in giving me a straight answer?
question: how exactly do i setup my recurring invoice in quickfile to request the customer is charged on the 20th every month (assuming its an existing customer, has a direct debit mandate already setup, and has been charged via gocardless before).
unless quickfile is not capable of actually requesting a payment on a specific date.
its straight forward to request a payment on a set date in gocardless.
you can request a payment every month on a set date in go cardless, or request a one off payment on a set date.
in go cardless if i want to get a payment on the 20th every month, i actually set a plan up to take the payment on the 20th every month, simple as that. i dont have to worry about weekends, bank holidays, different amount of days in the month or anything of the sort.
i set it at the 20th and thats it, it gets charged on the 20th.
i dont need to know about direct debit timings, submission timings or anything of the sort.
i pick a charge date and gocardless handle the rest.
My reading is that GoCardless take the money 3 days after the request is issued from Quickfile. You control the date of the request using the “initiate request after” parameter when creating the recurring invoice. To take the money on or about the due date I set this to three days less than the invoice terms.
again this suggest an ‘about date’.
if you are setting it 3 days less that the invoice term, what i it falls on a weekend or bank holiday? your charge date will be wrong.
in gocardless if its going to fall on a weekend it automatically charges them early.
in gocardless you can set an exact date. cant you do that through quickfile?
my monthly subscriptions are setup via gocardless but i want to change these over to quickfile. if i cant set the date it seems a bit pointless and ill have to keep them setup in gocardless
if you can choose the exact date in gocardless to charge the customer, i dont see why you cant in quickfile.
With a recurring invoice, there is no way to specify the charge date. That’s correct.
If you collected an amount against an already issued invoice or against a client account, then yes, you can specify a date.
With the latter, GoCardless dictates the earliest possible collect date inline with the Direct Debit timescales mentioned above. This takes into account new direct debits, bank holidays, and weekends etc. With a recurring invoice, this varies as the date is always different. It may be the 20th of each month (for example), but the 20th could be a Monday one month, and a Sunday another.
Im fully aware of how direct debits work and have had a similar message copied and pasted a few times.
I do not need direct debits explaining to me again.
You seem to be missing ths point and avoiding an answer.
Ive been using gocardless for a long time.
I use monthly billing.
In gocardless you can specify the CHARGE date to be the same every month.
Gocardless system automatically adjusts and handles this according to bank holidays and weekends by looking at the charge date.
If i have a payment due on the 20th and thats a saturday, gocardless puts that through early because of this. They know when a charge date is a weekend.
Ive spoken to gocardless multiple times and they said 3rd party programs like quickfile and xero are capable of this if the info they pass over is the charge date.
If quickfile send gocardless a charge date of 20th, gocardless system would auto adjust this.
It seems very poor of quickfile to not be able to choose a charge date when i can do it in gocardless.
This makes the use of quickfile pretty useless for recurring invoices using gocardless.
I cant charge my customers early because they might not have funds. I cant charge them late because they might have spent it.
Surely im not the only one who is facing this problem via quickfile?
As we have said previously, you cannot set a specific date with the recurring invoices this is not supported within QuickFile. If you wanted a set amount per month on a set date then you would need to do this directly through Go Cardless rather than through QuickFile.