Please Note: The stages below only apply if sheepCRM has been connected to your GoCardless account and you have created GoCardless direct debit payment plans in your settings.
If you are not using sheepCRM to manage your GoCardless payments and would like to please get in touch with us at support@sheepcrm.com to discuss.
What are the Automated Payments Steps?
When a member chooses a direct debit payment option when signing up for, or renewing a membership within their self-service account, these are the automated steps;
The member completes a GoCardless mandate during the process, this creates a customer record in GoCardless.
If the member already has a mandate in process or active they will not be asked to complete another.
GoCardless automates the activation of the mandate with the member's bank. This goes through several stages to become 'active'. The time it takes can vary between banks but it is usually active within 3-10 working days.
The member's contact record in sheepCRM will sync with the GoCardless customer record. Once this is complete you will see an auto-tag called GoCardless-customer. This will take up to 24 hours.
In the payments/transactions tab on a contact record you will see the mandate and its status, this will update automatically as the status changes.
The membership record in sheepCRM is created with the chosen payment plan, ready to 'unpack the payments'. This means sheepCRM will automatically request the number of payments from the chosen plan and the correct amounts.
Payments will be unpacked within 24 hours.
When a payment needs to be collected sheepCRM automatically submits the request to GoCardless.
Requests to GoCardless are only made when a valid mandate is in place.
Sheep will keep checking for a valid mandate indefinitely.
sheepCRM will use any active mandate to request payments via GoCardless based on these rules.
If there is a mandate on the contact record of the main member (organisation or person record) it will use this unless;
If there is a mandate on the contact record of the person specified as the admin contact for a membership, it will use this unless;
If there is a mandate on the contact record of the person specified as the billing contact for a membership, it will use this.
What happens to a Membership following an Automated Payment is created?
The first payment for a new membership will be collected as soon as the mandate becomes active, future payments will be requested in line with the membership dates e.g. 5th of each month or 10th June annually.
The membership record is set to auto-renew for direct debit payment plans, this means that sheepCRM will automatically renew the membership and unpack future payments on the expiry date.
On the day a Membership is renewed, payments are created by sheepCRM and raised with GoCardless (this can be any time on that day)
GoCardless will notify the payer of the payment collection and collect within 3 working days.
This can not be turned off and timing cannot be adjusted.
Payments successfully collected will be updated as received and reconciled to the membership.
Payout duration's to you are based on your agreement with GoCardless.
What are the Manual Steps that can be taken?
Memberships can be created by sheepCRM users on behalf of members by following these steps;
If no mandate in place ask the member to log into self-service > payments > add a mandate. This will create a GoCardless customer record. See steps above for stages of activation.
Add a membership record, edit it to select and add the desired payment plan.
The payments will be automatically unpacked by the system once an active mandate is in place. You can press unpack payments on the membership but this will only work when an active mandate is in place.
Troubleshooting
Why isn't a payment showing as requested?
Is the mandate active? sheepCRM will only unpack and request payment when an active mandate exists.
Is the mandate for a different currency? GoCardless won't allow, for example, a GBP payment against a "sepa-core" EUR bank mandate.
How do I manually connect a person to their GoCardless record?
Connections between GoCardless and sheepCRM is automatic based on email addresses. If the automatic connection hasn’t connected a contact you can manually connect by adding an external id record through the meta tab. The “service/system” is gocardless the “identifier” is the GoCardless UID for the customer and will begin with “CU”. Once submitted Sheep will use that UID to sync mandates and payments (note this occurs in the background a few times a day)
(If your database is missing lots of GoCardless contacts please contact support and request a full sync).
How do I check for errors with GoCardless Payments?
Select Reports>Usage>sheepCRM Notices
The columns presented are Date, Notice, Record, System and Categories.
In the 'System' column it will say GoCardless and in the 'Category' column it will say 'Error'.
Select the underlined 'Notice' information to view more information about the details of the error.
How long will it take once I have corrected an error with a GoCardless Payment to process?
Once submitted Sheep will use that UID to sync mandates and payments (note this occurs in the background a few times a day).
GoCardless will then look to match the UID on their system, check for an active mandate, validate the connection, request the money from the member and the status on sheepCRM will change to 'Requested from Bank'.
The member will be notified of the request for payment, usually by email.
Monies are collected by GoCardless and then processed within 3-4 days.
Payment collected status is then made available to sheepCRM and on receipt, the status will change to 'Paid'.
This process can take up to 12 days but is much quicker for many banks now.