Here at TMT Accounting we use Directli and Go Cardless and it saves us many admin hours each month. Here’s why we recommend you do, too:
- For a start, you’re being paid by Direct Debit. So the payment is going from your customer’s bank account straight to yours: cheques to get signed, posted or banked.
- You send a payment request to your customer and that’s it: you don’t have to do any more chasing, because who’s got time for that? And, if we’re honest, it’s an awkward conversation to have.
- Your customer stays happy because they’re protected by the Direct Debit Guarantee and they are always notified in advance of a Direct Debit payment being taken, so they can query it with you if need be.
- Go Cardless is the software that handles the Direct Debit payments – it’s really simple to set up, has low processing fees and will slash your admin time every month. We wouldn’t recommend it if it didn’t have API capability to integrate with your website and, of course, it gets on brilliantly with Xero to feed information straight in.
If you only bill the same amount each month then you can use Go Cardless straight out of the box.
But what if your invoices vary in price, for example if you bill by your time or by usage? This is where Directli comes in. Directli sits between Xero and Go Cardless, it connects to both systems and sends information between them. It allows you to request payments for variable invoices that can then be paid by Direct Debit.
With variable payments, you can now send out Direct Debit mandate requests automatically. Just ticking a box in Xero will let you import your customers invoices into Directli and then request payment. When they’re paid Directli tidies up for you by marking that invoice as being paid in Xero and also entering a transaction for the Go Cardless fee.
So, I have chosen Directli to run my Direct Debits, what do I do next?
Here's our guide, split into two sections, that will enable you to use Xero and Directli like a boss.
The first thing you’ll need to do is to get Direct Debit Mandates authorised by your customers (Pre Auth), these mandates will give you authority by your customer to take a Direct Debit payment.
Within Directli, the main way of doing this at the beginning, will be to import your customers from Xero and send an email to them immediately. When you hover over the 'Customers' tab on the menu, you will see an option of 'Import Customers'. This is where we need to be, so click on 'Import Customers'
This allows the customers from Xero to be imported into Directli:
The top section of the Import Customers screen has a couple of options:
There are a couple of reasons that we can think of when you may not want to create a Pre Auth. Maybe you already have a Pre Auth via Go Cardless and so do not want to create another. Maybe the customer is not longer a customer and you want to clear the import list (clearing the import list is very useful, especially if you want to automatically create a Pre Auth in the future when an invoice is raised against a new customer.
Under these circumstances, you will want to make sure the 'skip setting up a Pre Auth' box is ticked.
Directli will allow you to have multiple brands set up, so if you have a business that has different brands, then Directli can do this. You can point your customer to a Direct Debit sign up page that has a specific branding, depending on the service/product they will be purchasing. This option allows you to specify the brand they will see.
The next decision to be made is at what regular interval do you want to be taking payments from your customers?
When you enter text into the 'Details' box, then your customer will see this on your Direct Debit setup page under the heading of Variable Payments.
The next bit is the clever bit, if you select the ‘Send email immediately’ tick box then an email to your client requesting that they set up a Direct Debit with you and contains the link that allows them to set up a Direct Debit with you. If this tick box isn't selected then the emails will be sent out overnight.
If you know that you have a customer set up in Xero and they are not available to be imported to Directli, just check to see if there is an invoice raised to the customer. Xero has a concept of ‘Contact’, a 'Contact' becomes a 'Customer' in Xero only after a Sales Invoice is raised. So Directli can only import 'Customers' if an invoice has already been raised against them.
Once the email has gone out to your customers, the 'Pending Mandates' tab will show how many you have awaiting sign off.
This allows you to track each one and resend if required, making sure that non of them fall through the process. When you start with Directli, the mass import of customers and subsequent sign off on the Direct Debit Pre Auth will take some managing.
The next session will cover actually taking payments with Directli and Go Cardless for invoices that exist in Xero.