GoCardless: Setting Up, Inviting Customers & Charging Them Manually or Automatically

Learn how to connect your GoCardless account, invite customers to sign up and also how to manually or automatically charge them.

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23 steps
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3 minutes

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Connecting Your Account

First, you will need to connect your GoCardless Account. To do this, head to Settings > Invoicing & Payments > Connected Services > GoCardless > **Connect Your GoCardless Account**. This will redirect you to GoCardless and require you to sign up or sign in.

Once connected, you can go back to this screen to see your current Account Status. If this is a new GC account, you may need to wait until this has been approved.

Inviting Customers to Signup

If looking to invite an individual customer, you can click into the customer > Automatic Payment Method.

If you scroll to the bottom, you will see the option to 'Send Invite'. You can also preview the signup page if you want to see what this looks like. Please note that each customer will have their own, unique signup link. If you 'Copy Link', you should only send this to the customer it relates to.

If sending the invite, you will need to compose the message > preview > send. This will use the Email/SMS Automatic Payment Invite Template as set in Settings > Notifications & Messages.

Your customers will also have the option to sign up to GoCardless via a link displayed on their invoices. If you want this enabled, you will need to ensure that the 'Hide Setup Direct Debit from Invoices' option is *disabled* in Settings > Invoicing & Payments.

Inviting Customers to Signup in Bulk

Instead of finding the unique invite link, you can also just use the \[inviteLink\] message token. This will generate the unique link for each customer it is sent to. Simply copy this message token into a message to the customer. You can use the \[inviteLink\] to invite customers **in bulk**, but will need to be on one of the plans compatible with bulk messaging in order to action this. You can find some guidance for bulk messaging on the **Advanced** here. <https://scribehow.com/viewer/Bulk_Messaging_from_the_Planners__ej7vfasBSb6gGsKhJSg3SA> For **Ultimate** users, you will also have the SEND option available - you can find a tutorial for this here<https://squeeg.ee/academy/squeegee-send>

Syncing & Linking

If your customers have signed up to GoCardless *outside* of Squeegee, you may need to sync & link the mandate with the existing customer record. To do this, head back to Settings > Invoicing & Payments > Connected Services > GoCardless > **Sync & Link GoCardless Customers**.

You will see any 'Confirmed' matches in this section. You do not need to take any further action with these customers.

If there are any customers pending sync & link, you will see them in the 'Unmatched' section.

You may see that the system has accurately suggested the customer match - in this case, you can just confirm this by clicking 'ATTACH'. If this is not the correct customer, or if no customer match is suggested, you can click 'FIND' and attach the mandate to the correct customer. You can also 'IGNORE' a mandate if needed. If the customer record doesn't yet exist in Squeegee, you can click 'CREATE'.

Setting a Customer up for Automatic Payments

Once matched, you can click into the customer > Automatic Payment Method.

Here, you will be able to view their mandate status and history. Please note that any mandates will need to be confirmed by GoCardless. If a customer has just signed up, their mandate will show as 'pending' - you will need to wait until this has become 'active' before you can charge the customer. You can also cancel the direct debit here.

If you want payments to be raised *automatically* for this customer, make sure that the 'Take Payments On Invoice Using' drop down menu is set to 'GoCardless'. This will mean that a charge will be raised against the customer automatically upon job completion/invoice creation. Please note that you will need to have Automatic Invoice Creation enabled for this customer in order for the payment to be triggered.

If you want automatic payments to be enabled for all customers who sign up to GoCardless, head back to Settings > Invoicing & Payments > Connected Services > GoCardless and switch the 'Automatically Take Payments on Signup' toggle to *enabled*. This will be applied to any customers who sign up from that point on.

Payment Confirmation

You may want to enable Payment Confirmation in Settings > Invoicing & Payments. If enabled, and your customers are set up for *automatic payments,* the payment confirmation screen will pop up when you mark the job as done, requiring you to confirm the charge before it is raised.

The payment confirmation will look like this - you will need to review the payment amount and confirm it with the 'Charge' option at the bottom. If this form is not completed, the customer will go into the Owing list and no charge will be raised.

Raising Payments Manually

If you do not want your customers to be set up on *automatic* payments, you should ensure that the 'Take Payments on Invoice Using' drop down menu in customer > Automatic Payment Method is set to 'None'.

To raise a payment manually, you can click the pink three dots on the customer and then use the 'Payment' option.

This will allow you to 'Charge' the customer. You can adjust the charge amount accordingly before confirming to raise the charge. You can also do this from the Owing list.

Other Settings

Back in Settings > Invoicing & Payments > Connected Services > GoCardless, you will see the option to 'Enable Payment Account For GoCardless'. Clicking this will add a GC payment account to the Chart of Accounts section, so that you can track all GC payments in one place.

In the same section, you will see the 'Duplicate Automatic Payment Protection' setting. If enabled, only one automatic payment of the same type will be able to be raised against the same customer on the same date.

Searching for GoCardless Customers

You can search for your GoCardless in the Customers list by searching 'gocardless active' for active mandates, and 'gocardless pending' for pending mandates. If the customer is set up for *automatic* payments, you will see the GoCardless logo on their customer record in the Customers list.