Take the customer’s standing permission once, and collect each cycle without a phone call.
A mandate is the customer’s standing permission to charge them each cycle, taken once through your payment gateway or your bank. The module keeps the mandate, sends the notice before each debit, raises the charge on the due date and records what came back. Collection stops being forty phone calls and becomes a list of the few that failed.
Recurring collection is where small businesses lose the most time for the least reason. The service was delivered and the customer is willing. Still somebody has to call, send a link, wait, and check the bank in the evening. A gym with three hundred members loses a person to this work.
With a mandate, the customer approves once, in their banking app or at their bank. After that the charge is raised on the due date, and they are told before it happens. Your side becomes a list of failures and not a list of everybody.
What your team uses today.
The module takes over these, one at a time, so nothing has to stop while it is set up.
- Monthly reminder calls
- A spreadsheet of customer payment promises
- A paper form kept in a file
- A chat group with the finance team about failures
The problems this is meant to ease.
What mandates and auto-debit does.
What this looks like in a working week.
Illustrative scenarios, written to show the shape of the work. They are not accounts of client systems.
The people who open this every day.
From first conversation to daily use.
Choosing the payment route
We review your gateway or bank and the kinds of mandate it supports. You provide your account details for set-up. You get a short note on what is possible.
Billing cycles and amounts
Plans, due dates and limits per charge are set out. The owner approves them. Wording of customer notices is agreed.
A trial with test accounts
Test mandates and debits are run in the gateway’s test mode. Accounts checks that results post against invoices.
A small customer group
A few willing customers are invited to sign up. The team watches notices, debits and failures.
Wider rollout and reviews
Remaining customers are invited in stages. The register is reviewed with the accounts team at regular meetings.
How you would know it is working.
Record where you stand before it goes live, so the change is measured against your own figures.
- Customers with a live mandate against all billed customers
- Debits that succeed on the first attempt
- Failed debits by reason given
- Mandates expiring soon
- Opt-outs and cancellations, with the stage at which they happened
It is one part of a system, not an island.
A module earns its place by what it passes to the next one. These are the connections we set up most often.
- Subscription billing
- Invoice management
- Payment gateways and direct debit
- WhatsApp and SMS
- Your accounting software
Products that include it.
How we would put it in.
Questions owners ask about mandates and auto-debit.
Is auto-debit allowed for a small business?
Yes, through a payment gateway or your bank, under the recurring-payment rules where you operate. The customer must get a notice before each debit and must be able to opt out of one charge or of the mandate itself. The rules sit with the gateway, and we build to them.
Do you hold our customers’ money?
No. We are not a payment aggregator and never touch the funds. The money moves from your customer through your own gateway into your own account. Which gateway suits you is settled when you share your requirements, before anybody signs anything.
How many customers will actually approve a mandate?
Fewer than you hope, and more each year. Ask at the counter while somebody is signing up, and not by sending a link three weeks later. Keep a payment link for the rest.
What happens when a debit fails?
It is retried on the schedule you set, the customer is told with a link to pay another way, and a short grace period runs before service stops. All of that lives in subscription billing, which this module collects for.
Which items move the price of auto-debit?
The gateway or bank route, billing plans and the link to invoices decide it. Customer messaging is a further part. The quotation is split after we read your cycles, and any part can be removed.
How quickly can recurring collection begin?
That hangs on gateway approval and your plan design. The usable release holds mandates, notices, debits and the register. You supply plan details and account access. Dates are given in the proposal.
Businesses that ask for this.
Modules that work with it.
Tell us how you handle mandates and auto-debit today.
A spreadsheet, a register or another system: say which, and we will tell you plainly what is worth changing.
What happens after you share your requirements
- A senior engineer reads your answers. Nobody phones first.
- Within one business day you get a written note: what we understood, what we would start with, and the questions we still have.
- If it fits, a proposal follows with the order of work, what we need from you and what you receive at each step.
- No call is booked and nothing is paid until you have read the note. Your details stay with us.
Start with your requirements
Seven short steps that tell us what you need. A senior engineer reads them before anyone gets in touch.
Share your requirements