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Getting started with direct debits

An in-depth guide to Adfin direct debits

Chris Carty avatar
Written by Chris Carty
Updated this week

1. Sending direct debit mandates

To send a direct debit mandate to a customer, navigate to the "Manage customers" tab, select the customer, and click "Send direct debit mandate." This will prompt a confirmation pop-up, and the mandate will be sent to the customer. It is optional, but you can provide a custom message if you would like.

To send multiple mandates at once, tick the boxes next to the relevant customers and click "Send direct debit mandates" at the bottom of the screen.

This will send a direct debit mandate request by email to the selected customers.

2. Understanding mandate statuses

  • No mandate: A mandate has not yet been sent to the customer, or the previous mandate was cancelled.

  • Awaiting signature: The mandate has been sent, but the customer hasn’t yet completed it. We will automatically remind the customer to authorise the mandate according to your Auto Collect workflow.

  • Signed: The customer has signed the mandate with valid bank details, and we’re awaiting bank confirmation before we can submit a payment (usually 3 days).

  • Active: The mandate is confirmed and ready to collect payments. For a quick overview of specific actions, hover over a status. For example, hovering over “Awaiting signature” will show the date you sent the mandate to the customer.

3. Invoicing customers on direct debit

If your customer has been sent or signed a direct debit mandate, any invoice you send to them will automatically schedule a direct debit payment on the due date (occasionally this may be later than the due date - see direct debit timings below).

  • Via Adfin: If you manually upload an invoice, Adfin will automatically match the invoice to the corresponding customer and schedule the direct debit.

  • Via your Accounting Software: Any approved Auto Collect invoices will follow the same process, scheduling the payment to be collected on the invoice due date.

4. Direct debit timings

Where possible, we will always schedule a payment to be debited from your customer’s bank account on the invoice due date - this may be delayed if a mandate is not yet signed or we need more time to pre-notify the customer of the payment.

  • Invoice is uploaded to Adfin and will have the status “scheduled”

  • Working day -1 (15:00 UK time) customer notified of direct debit payment - invoice still shows as Scheduled

  • Working day 0 (16:00 UK time): payment process initiated - invoice status transitions from Scheduled to Submitted

  • Working day 2: customer has funds debited from their bank account

  • Working day 4 (18:00 UK time): funds are paid out to your bank account

Please note, new mandates need to be confirmed by the payer's bank before any payments can be initiated - this typically takes 3 working days.

If a payment fails, we will notify you and your customer and try the payment again. The process will start again from the working day 0 step above. We will automatically retry a failed payment twice on direct debit and then send a card payment link instead.

5. Syncing payments to your accounting software

If you raise the invoice using Xero or QuickBooks:

  • Adfin will mark each invoice as paid when the payment is submitted

    • If the payment fails, we will automatically remove and undo this payment

  • When Adfin makes a payout, we will initiate a ledger transfer on Xero / QuickBooks between Adfin bank and your external bank.

    • This transfer amount will be for all invoices collected in a given day.

  • You should reconcile the payout received from Adfin on your bank statement to the transfer between Adfin bank and your external bank ledger on Xero.

You will see details of the payout for a given day for cards and direct debit in the view transactions dashboard.

6. Failed payments and cancelled mandates

Failed payments

If a payment fails (e.g. insufficient funds on customer account), we will notify you and the customer and then attempt to collect the payment according to your Auto Collect retry configuration. If the retries also fail, you have the option to configure a card payment to automatically be send to the customer.

Cancelled mandates

If a mandate is cancelled we will send you an email notifying you of this. If you wish to send a new mandate then you can do this again from the customer view.

7. Switching your direct debits from another provider

See our direct debit switching guide here.

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