WHAT IS GOCARDLESS
WHAT IS GOCARDLESS?
Gocardless is a company which was founded in 2011, with a global focus on allowing customers and companies to set up recurring direct debits that suit us both. Specifically for window cleaning companies, the advantages are clear, you have a multinational company who collects the payments, and importantly only after the job has been completed the amount will be requested! Gocardless works with many companies such as Thomas Cook and Virgin, in fact Thomas Cook were recently using gocardless to allow customers to pay up holiday bookings.
HOW DOES IT WORK?
From our website, the customer clicks on "Online Payments" page and find the "Sign Up for Direct Debit with Go Cardless" Section for the correct service you are paying for and clicks the little blue box that says "Pay" and this is how its set up. We do not see your bank details because it is an encrypted system, but we do see your name, address and email address, this allows us to have a contact for you. When this form is filled in, you are also automatically linked to our cleaner planner (our cleaning organiser software we use to organise and complete our rounds. This links both our cleaning software and your Gocardless accounts together automatically for us to be able to contact you.
IS IT SAFE TO USE
Yes, on many levels. As a direct debit, you have guarantees in place by law, gocardless is a direct debit scheme. One which guarantee not everyone knows about is that on the small print of all direct debit guarantees it says “The direct debit guarantee protects customers from payments taken in error. In the case of an incorrect or fraudulent payment, the payer is entitled to a full and immediate refund from their bank”. We personally have 100s of customers using gocardless, and because all customers receive an email notification before any money can be taken by gocardless there has never an issue. Gocardless have a great reputation and are a growing company.
In fact even as recent as 2018 the financial times lists them as one of the top 1000 companies in Europe for sustained annual growth in revenue. Gocardless are within the top 50 companies on that list. Also, https://www.forbes.com/sites/trevorclawson/2015/07/24/the-upward-march-of-fin-tech-gocardless-breaks-the-1bn-barrier/#1ed54c6e19c7 here is an article highlighting their success by the highly respected Forbes magazine.
WHAT IS THE PROCESS OF GOCARDLESS
Once you have signed up, and you are added to our worksheet (cleaning software) and have future payment means set up. We will clean for you, and put a ticket through the letterbox to let you know we have been, and that evening we initiate all gocardless payments for that day.
We do that by going onto our gocardless dashboard and manually inputting all payments with a reference. Just before the payment charge date, you will receive an email saying “A22 Cleaners are debiting for X amount” because another part of the direct debit guarantee is that payments must involve notification. You do not need to repeat any form filling, this one set up is all you need to do.
WHAT ARE THE ADVANTAGES OF THIS SYSTEM?
If you used a bank standing order to pay, what if we are running late or early? you may pay more than you should over the course of a year. With gocardless you only pay once the job have been cpmpleted each and every time, nothing is debited until the job is complete.
This is contactless, so one form to fill in and that’s it! No more manual bank payments monthly or falling behind with payments, we will manage the regularity of all payments while you are notified each time as well.
This offers a paper trail, both of us have an agreed service and also an easy to access acount to verify the fact payments were made. If collecting money, payments can often be not ticked off on a manual work sheet, there is no grey areas of “I paid last time”, “but we haven’t marked that payment down”…it is all in black and white.
You are not tied into a contract. You can cancel at any time, or port the payment method to your new address-we can change the address to your new property on the dashboard (account).
HOW HAS THIS WORKED FOR OUR COMPANY
The one thing we noticed is that this drastically reduced collection time, and also improved cash flow. That’s why so many small businesses now use it. Have we had issues with gocardless? No. The only issue we have had is an occasional payment bouncing, where there are insufficient funds in the customers bank-in this case we have to click on resubmit and the process begins again.
We have had good feedback from customers, and once a customer was abroad on holiday and received the email notification to say payment was being taken (as per usual)-they liked the fact that they were then able to cross-reference when the servies wsa provided, even though they were not in the same country at the time.