Collecting your first payment via the dashboard
The GoCardless dashboard is designed to make it simple to collect payments from your customers on an ad-hoc or recurring basis. Let’s take a look at the steps involved to collect your first payment.
1. Add a customer
Before you can begin collecting payments from a customer, you first need their authorisation to do so. The simplest way to collect this is by inviting them to complete an online payment form. In this example, we’ll use the Email option to send the invite directly from your GoCardless account.
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Sign in to your GoCardless dashboard
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Select Customers from the left navigation menu
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Click Invite customers
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Select the Email option
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Enter their email address (and an optional message if desired)
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Click Send invite
2. Schedule a payment
You can schedule a single payment or recurring subscription for a customer as soon as you’ve added them to your GoCardless account.
IMPORTANT: A payment can only be collected if the customer has authorised you to do so and is showing as active in your account. If you specify a charge date that arrives before authorisation has been obtained (starting at the date/time of payment submission - see payment timings for more information), the payment will not be processed for collection.
This can be avoided when creating a payment for a customer who has not yet authorised by selecting to collect the payment ‘as soon as possible’.
The process for scheduling a single payment or recurring subscription via your dashboard is very similar. In this example, we’ll look at how to create a single payment.
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Sign in to your GoCardless dashboard
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Select Customers from the left navigation menu
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Click on the customer you would like to charge
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Click One-off payment and then on Collect via Direct Debit
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Enter the payment amount and description
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Choose when you would like the payment to be collected
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Click Create payment
3. Receive your funds
Once a payment has been collected on your behalf, the next and final step in the process is for those funds to be paid out to you.
There are three basic steps to receiving a payout.
1). Receive an email notification
You will receive an email when a payout has been processed to your nominated account notifying you of the details. These details include the date you’ll receive your funds, the amount, reference, and a link to view the payout breakdown in more detail (see next step).
2). Review your payout breakdown
The email you received in the previous step includes a link to view your payout in your dashboard. This provides a breakdown of the credits and debits that make up the total amount you receive in that payout.
What are credits and debits?
Credits are payments collected from your customers and paid out to you in that payout (minus any applicable transaction fees).
Debits are funds that have been deducted from the total you receive in a payout to balance out a negative balance on your GoCardless account. These are the result of refunds, late failures, or customer chargebacks. (See here for more information on debits).
3). Match your payout to your bank statement
Each payout has a unique reference number assigned to it. This reference is shared with you in your email notification and shown in your dashboard on both the Payouts overview and individual payout pages.
This reference will be included with the payout entry on your bank statement and enables you to verify that the funds you’ve received matches what is expected from the payout breakdown in your GoCardless account.