A direct debit mandate is your customer's authorisation for payments to be collected from their bank account. This article covers why mandates can be cancelled without explanation, how you'll find out, and how to reinstate one.
Why mandates get cancelled by the bank
Sometimes a direct debit mandate is cancelled by the bank without any action from you or the customer. The most common reasons are:
The name on the mandate doesn't perfectly match the name on the bank account. Banks reject mandates that don't match closely.
A processing error at the bank. These happen occasionally and aren't anything either side has done wrong.
Unexplained. Banks don't always tell us why a mandate's been cancelled. We're notified that it's cancelled, but not whether the customer requested it or if the bank did it independently.
How you find out
When a mandate gets cancelled, three things happen:
The home dashboard shows an alert in the Actions Required section listing the cancelled mandate, with a Reinstate button.
You get an email from Adfin letting you know, with a reinstate link straight to the right place in the console.
The customer gets an email from Adfin telling them their mandate's been cancelled.
You can also find the reinstate option directly on the customer record. Open the customer from the Customers list, and you'll see the Reinstate direct debit mandate button at the bottom of the panel that opens.
How to reinstate
Click Reinstate on the home dashboard alert, or Reinstate direct debit mandate at the bottom of the customer's detail panel. The link in your cancellation email takes you to the same place.
Check the bank details Adfin has on file: account holder name, account number, and sort code.
Confirm you have the customer's explicit permission to reinstate. See "When you shouldn't reinstate" below for why this matters.
Click Reinstate.
Adfin sets up a new mandate using those same bank details and it goes straight to Active, so the customer doesn't need to do anything on their side. They will get an email from Adfin confirming the new mandate. There's one follow-up step worth doing now: see "What happens after reinstate" below.
What happens after reinstate
Once the new mandate is Active:
Reinstating creates a new mandate from the bank details already on file, so there's no new authorisation request for the customer to complete. They do get an email from Adfin confirming the new mandate.
The activity log on the customer record shows the reinstate, so there's an audit trail.
There's one extra step worth knowing about, though:
Switch outstanding invoices back to Auto Collect
When a mandate is cancelled, Adfin moves every unpaid or overdue invoice on that customer from Auto Collect (collected automatically) to On Demand (the customer pays manually).
After reinstate, the new mandate is Active, but those invoices stay on On Demand until you switch them back. To resume Auto Collect on the existing invoices, open each invoice and change the collection method back to Auto Collect.
Any new invoices you create on this customer from this point onwards will pick up Auto Collect by default.
If the mandate gets cancelled again shortly after you've reinstated it, that's a signal something's off on the bank's side. See "If it keeps getting cancelled" below.
When you shouldn't reinstate
Reinstating a mandate sets up a new one using the bank details Adfin already has. There are situations where you should not do that:
The customer hasn't given you permission. Don't reinstate unless the customer has been in touch to confirm the cancellation wasn't them.
The customer is changing bank accounts. A reinstate uses the old account details, which won't work. Instead:
If the customer is using the UK bank account switching service, that can carry the mandate over to the new account automatically. Adfin will pick it up.
Otherwise, cancel the mandate properly and send the customer a fresh direct debit request so they can enter their new bank details.
If it keeps getting cancelled
If you've reinstated a mandate and the bank cancels it again, the most likely cause is the name on the mandate doesn't match the name on the bank account closely enough.
A few things to try:
Check the customer's name on the customer record matches the name on their bank account.
Suggest the customer contacts their bank and requests additional information on the cancellation.
If the customer has switched banks and they did not use the switching service, send a fresh direct debit mandate request so they can set it up with the new account.
If a mandate cancels again shortly after you reinstate it, take that as the sign to stop reinstating. The bank is rejecting the same underlying problem each time, most often the account holder name not matching their records. Cancel the mandate, check the name you hold for the customer exactly matches the name on their bank account, and send a fresh mandate request.
Common questions
Does the customer need to authorise the mandate again? No. Reinstate creates a new mandate from the bank details Adfin already has, so there's no new authorisation request sent to the customer. They will receive an email confirming the new mandate, but there's nothing for them to do.
What happens to upcoming direct debit collections while the mandate is cancelled? Adfin moves open invoices off Auto Collect onto On Demand so the customer can still pay manually. After reinstate, switch those invoices back to Auto Collect to resume scheduled collection (see "What happens after reinstate" above).
Why doesn't Adfin switch invoices back to Auto Collect automatically after reinstate? So you can decide with your customer.
Can Adfin tell me why the bank cancelled it? Not always. Banks don't share the reason with us. We can see the mandate's been cancelled but not why.
The customer says they didn't cancel it. What do I do? You can reinstate it with the customer's permission. Cancellations driven by name-matching or processing errors at the bank are common.
I reinstated the mandate and almost straight away got another cancellation email. Is something broken? No. Both emails are genuine updates from the bank. A fast re-cancellation means the bank is rejecting the same issue again. We recommend you stop reinstating, and send a fresh mandate request instead.