Go Cardless (along with Cleaner Planner) is the future of payment processing for window cleaning IMO.
GoCardless is a direct debit service provider. Here is my understanding of how it works and problems that arise:
First you need a GC account. Really straightforward; took me less than 5 minutes. Once you have an account you need your customers to have an account too and to get them to authorise you to take payments. The best way I've found to do this is to have a link on your website that customers use to create their account. Then, tell your customers you now accept direct debits and point them towards your website. You are not allowed to do it for your customers, if you do GC will notice and stop your account. Matt Bateman also has a very professional looking email that you could steal:
https://app.cleanerplanner.com/forum/how-to-promote-gocardless-to-customers-933bug him until he gives you a copy, it works well.
When someone signs up you get notification from GC via email. This is where the problems start. All you get is a name and an email address, unless you have this information already on file it is difficult to identify your customers. GC are unwilling (I suspect it's due to data protection) to give out any further information. Luckily Rob has devised a widget that gets your customers to give you additional information prior to sign up to help you work out exactly who they are:
https://app.cleanerplanner.com/forum/pay-with-gocardless-widget-for-website-payment-page-1632There are other issues with the accounts being linked to email addresses. I had one yesterday where a customer had used his works email to set up the account and subsequently left his job. He did manage to rectify it but if your customer isn't particularly tech savvy there could be issues there. Also, I personally have 5 email addresses. I'm sure most of you are similar. Your customer may want invoices etc sent to one email address but their GC account is on another. Unfortunately CP only lets you have one email address per customer. Vote here to get it changed:
https://app.cleanerplanner.com/forum/more-fields-for-phone-numbers-and-emails-3510Once set up you can see the additional information that your customer has provided by going on the GC website and selecting the customer > authorisations. Once you have worked out who they are, find their customer record in Cleaner Planner and fill in their email address. Once your integration with CP and GC is done (can't remember how to do this I'm afraid - I think Rob did it for me), sync GC (on Cleaner Planner > Settings > GoCardless > Sync), you are now ready to start taking payments.
To take a GC payment you go to the debts page on CP > filter the list to only show GC customers (top right) > if there are any customers due you money that have an active GC account they will appear on the list > click 'start'. This will start the GC payment process. Your customer gets an email notification and the money leaves their account after 3 days. 3 - 4 days after that it's in your bank (less the 1% GC fees). You have 2 options how CP handles the payments, you can set it so the debts clear straight away or when the money arrives in your account. Settings > GoCardless to set it. Personally I have the debt clear immediately, like you would a cheque.
I'm sure everyone does it differently but I run my payments on a Friday. This means that I get a decent payout from GC once a week, rather than small amounts every day. I believe that there are plans to allow you to start the payments when you submit the worksheet. I think that's a mistake. What if you (or your employee) click the wrong button somewhere, or forget to knock off money for something? People's bank accounts are not something that lowly window cleaners should be making mistakes with, I can see some serious issues arising there. I go over all the worksheets the next day, making sure all the information is correct, reasons for money knocked off / added on are noted on the transactions. Mistakes are easily made, not so easily rectified after GC have notified your customer of them though.
I reckon that GC (and especially with CP integration) is the best thing since carbon poles. I looked into getting direct debits about 10 years ago and was laughed out of the bank. If I could get all my customers to sign up to it I would. Unfortunately it's not going to happen, analytics on my website show that around 5-10% of people who fill in their customer number and email address on my widget don't complete the sign up process. I guess that people are cautious about providing their bank details to their window cleaner through a company they've never heard of. I had one customer tell me there was no way I was getting 'free reign on her bank account'. If only that were the case, lol.
Currently I have a very small percentage of my customers on GC (about 5%), but it's going up all the time and most of the customers who are signed up were serial bad payers. I might start telling the ones who are always really late that if they don't sign up I won't clean them. Obviously bacs, being free, is always going to be a favoured payment method but the beauty of GC is; you are in control.
Anyway, I think that about covers it.