Skip to main content

Rechargly onboarding guide

Below are the steps required to fully onboard to the product

Alex Millar avatar
Written by Alex Millar
Updated yesterday

Thanks for making the decision to sign up for Rechargly. We are thrilled to have you onboard. Our goal is to get you live, billing, and fully automated as quickly as possible.

To get started, follow the checklist below. You can be confident that our team will check in along the way and ensure everything is configured correctly.

Best practice for a smooth onboarding:

  • Follow the onboarding steps in order

  • Use our in-app onboarding agent to guide you through each stage. If you get stuck, you can refer back to this document



Part 1: Initial setup

đŸ§© Setup (10 - 15 mins)

Goal: Connect your accounting system and start pulling in charges.

Video: Watch the step by step video showing you connect Xero and setup the email forwarding.

  • Sign up and connect your firm’s Xero to the Rechargly platform. Our recommendation is that you use Sign up with Xero button which uses Xero’s authentication.
    ​


🔌 Manually import your first charges (5-10 minutes)

Goal: Import recent charges and clean up what should or shouldn’t be recharged.

Video: Watch the step by step video showing you to manually import charges.

  • Find your unique Rechargly email address

You can find your unique email address in the screenshot below:

Manually forward your Xero invoice to Rechargly. When it’s successful, you will see (Received Correctly). To find your Xero invoice, follow one of the options below:

Option 1: Forward the invoice email from Xero

  1. Forward that email directly to your unique Rechargly email address.

  2. Find the email sent from subscription.notifications@post.xero.com in your inbox.

Option 2: Forward the invoice URL from Xero

  1. Log in to your Xero account and go to the Billing and Subscription page.

  2. Click on View Invoices and open the missing invoice.

  3. Copy the URL (the one that has www. on it) of the invoice and compose a new email.

    1. Write “Your Xero Invoice” as the email subject

    2. Paste the invoice URL into the body of the email.

      • See screenshot below

  4. Send the email to your unique Rechargly email address (you can find this unique address on the Setup page in your Rechargly account.)

  5. Wait a couple of minutes and check the Imports page to see if the invoice has been received.

  • Check Imports page to ensure the invoice has been forwarded succesfully

  • Charges will appear on the Charges page


🔌 Review Vendor Plans (5-10 minutes)

Goal: Remove any vendors or charges that you don’t want to setup for Rechargly

Remove plans by vendor:

  • Forward the invoices of any other vendors to your unique Rechargly email

  • Go to the Charges table and exclude any plans you don’t want to manage in Rechargly.



📋 Setting Up Additional Vendors

Your onboarding specialist will help set this up for you

đŸ§Ÿ Billing and Invoicing (15 mins)

Goal: Decide whether you want to oncharge the cost of Rechargly with an admin fee and how you want to pass on the Xero discount

  • Go to the Billing page, click the [
] to set the admin fees and discount split (Xero):

    • Set what Xero discount will be passed on (if any)

    • Confirm the admin fee (if any) to include on invoices. We recommend adding a $2-3 admin fee per invoice to offset the cost of Rechargly, but this is optional.

Part 2: Mapping

đŸ—ș Client Mapping

Goal: Ensure all charges are correctly linked to a client.

  • Go to the Mapping page and assign each charge to a customer

  • Ensure all customer have emails and names.

You can check customers who have missing emails by going to Mapping, Confirmed tab and clicking the “Contact Person” column twice. This will sort, and show you any emails that are missing. You can also export this list by clicking the [
]

How to Exclude Individual Customer Charges:

  • Go to the Charges table, search the organisation that you want to exclude

  • Hit the “Exclude Charges” button to remove them

  • If you are using Practice Connect, you will need to complete the Client Mapping

Part 3: Stripe Billing

Set up Stripe for Rechargly (15 - 45 mins)

Goal: Ensure that Stripe is configured and enabled to allow BECS and credit card payments from your clients.

  • Go to the Integrations page in Rechargly and click ‘New Connection’

  • Login/Create a Stripe account and complete the verification process.
    ​

If you already have a Stripe account, you will be able to use the same email address. However, it is separate to your Stripe/Xero account. Below is a screenshot of what it would look like. Ensure you’re in the account with a Rechargly logo

  • Go to Business Details and ensure that all your information is completed to verify your account. It’s common that your support email is empty.

  • Follow the specific instructions in your region to enable BECS (direct debit) as a payment method.

  • Go to payment methods

  • Choose the first option titled ‘Default’ your configuration

  • Scroll down to BECS/BACS and hit the turn on button.

  • When you click, you will be prompted to complete an additional verification step. A director will need to take a photo and submit a photo of their ID.

  • When it says “Active”, it’s been enabled correctly.

Other:

  • Search “Revenue recovery” in the search bar at the top of the Stripe page.

    • Turn on Recovery emails

Part 4: Configure Xero

Set Up Billing Template In Xero

Goal: Ensure invoices are generated in the correct currency and routed through Rechargly’s billing flow.

  • Go to the Invoice Settings in Xero

  • Create/duplicate an invoice template in Xero and name it Rechargly.

Ensure that all payment types are removed from the invoice template (terms and payment advice, payment services etc. should all be empty.

  • [Optional] In the payment terms you can add “Paid with direct debit through Rechargly - DO NOT PAY”
    ​

Branding theme screenshot

In the screenshot below, you would need to remove Stripe from Payment Services (Credit Card, PayPal and Bank) and other providers


​
​

GoCardless users:

Ensure that you turn off Automated Payments from the Rechargly invoice template in GoCardless? Follow these steps to check.

đŸ§˜đŸ» Set Up Auto-Reconciliation (10 mins)

Goal: Ensure that invoices are automatically reconciled in Rechargly when the first payout from Stripe hits your bank account.

If you are not collecting payments through Rechargly, you can skip this step.

  • Go to Xero and check to see if you’ve created Rechargly and Stripe as a contact

  • Go to Integrations page and refresh the integration

Integration screenshot

Steps to refresh the Xero integration

  1. Go to Settings, Integrations, Accounting

  2. In Status, click on Active

  3. Click Re-sync now

  4. Wait for two minutes before proceeding to the next step.

  5. Go to the Setup Reconciliation page, complete the information and hit Submit


​Why do we do this?

Read the auto-reconciliation guide for more information on how it works.

Preparation to go live call

Communicating Rechargly

  • Read this article to see what emails your client will receive from Rechargly

  • Read this article to understand what communication should be sent by your firm when signing up to Rechargly.

  • Go to Mapping Confirmed, click on the [
] beside the search bar and export all the Customers with address. This is the list of customers that need to be contacted about the change to Rechargly.

  • Send emails to your clients

Email forwarding

Setup Inbox Forwarding Rules (Outlook)

Goal: Ensure that vendor invoices are automatically forwarded to Rechargly.

Set up forwarding rules

  • Read the instructions in step two on the Setup page on how to setup automatic email forwarding for either outlook or gmail

  • For each vendor you recharge, you need to repeat the process.

Enable forwarding to your Rechargly email


​If you are not the IT Administrator, you won't be able enable forwarding to third-party emails. Request your IT provider to do this on your behalf.
​
If this is configured incorrectly, you will block emails from being received by your email address.

Bulk Connections in Xero (15 mins)

Goal: Connect client accounts to Rechargly.

Video of how to use the bulk connection functionality

Screenshot

Bulk Connection Screenshot If the bulk option isn’t visible, contact Rechargly support to enable it for your account

Why we do this

  • We access the country location of each client (CountryCode) to determine the tax rate applicable to them.

  • Improve the accuracy of recharging calculations by triangulating information from the software vendor’s CSV/Invoice, the firm and client’s accounting software.

  • Ensure that each recharge is appropriate and compliant with legal standards.

  • Firm-level data on benchmarking and insights on software you can recharge in the future.

For more information on how this works, read this article

Final Setup:

Add your logo under the profile page (this logo will appear in the agreements page that goes out to all clients).

  • Contact Rechargly team to perform the final review

  • Go to the Setup page, scroll to step 5: Enable First Batch of Automatic Recharging

  • Enable customers

Post onboarding FAQ

When will the first payout happen from Stripe?

Stripe will withhold the first payout for ~5 days for KYC purposes. After this period, you will receive your first lump sum payment.

How do the invoices appear in Xero? The invoices that are created from Rechargly will appear in your Xero at the first billing date defined in the billing terms. When they arrive to your Xero, they won’t be marked as “sent”. It’s important to communicate to your team that they shouldn’t send these invoices from Xero.

Rechargly invoices appearing on debtor statements? If a client has not signed an agreement, their unpaid invoice will appear on your debtor statement which may automatically be sent to clients. It’s important to communicate to your clients that they don’t pay the invoice, they need to set up their direct debit through their Rechargly agreement.

Did this answer your question?