We are accountants in Bristol, but essentially we are a small business. This is why we understand what other small businesses (Micro and Nano!) are going through on a monthly basis, making sure that customers are making their payments and that suppliers are being paid. Making sure suppliers are being paid is the easier of the two things as we as business owners have the ability to push the button on the payment. We say when that payment is being made and we are advocates for mobile working, so most of our bank payments go from our mobile phone (Barclays Bank have a great app for this). The problem arises when trying to get customers to pay their bills on time.
We have looked at various solutions; Debit and credit cards, Paypal etc but they all seem to have the same thing in common. The transaction fees are high and some also charge a monthly rental fee (whether that service is used or not that month). So we have been looking for a solution for ourselves as well as our clients. So when we first heard of Go Cardless and the ability to use direct debit as a payment method, we sat up and listened. That was a couple of months ago now and we have gone through a couple of cycles of direct debiting and quite frankly Go Cardless is brilliant. We are finding that when a link is sent to our customers to set up a Direct Debit, this is being completed in minutes, rather than days (even weeks) from our old payment methods (waiting on clients).
We were worried about the costs at the beginning, however the cost is only 1% of the DD taken and Go Cardless cap this at £2. So a payment of up to £5000 can be received from a customer with a maximum fee of £2. You only pay for what you receive, so if the Direct Debit bounces you don’t get hit with bounce fees and report fees (to actually find out which direct debit bounced!).
Go Cardless has given us a referral link, so if you want the first £50 of transactions fees free of charge then sign up here: https://gocardless.com/?r=WT7ZFREB