Thanks Darran.
Yep semi-automatic is the only way to go I think. With the nature of the business it doesn't make sense to automatically take money on a clockwork schedule as jobs are often done late (or not done at all e.g. builders in).
In Cleaner Planner you kick off the GoCardless payments manually via the debt list but it only take 2 clicks and all the details (amount, description etc) are prefilled (you can amend them of course).
No need to worry about tallying the payments as they come in because GoCardless notifies Cleaner Planner when the payment hits your account and clears the debt automatically.