When adding a new customer to your GoCardless dashboard, you're sending them a request to authorise Direct Debit payments.
Customers authorise future payments by setting up a Direct Debit mandate. The mandate will need to be in place before we can take payments from the customer's bank account.
There are three options for inviting a new customer to create their mandate:
Link
The link option gives you the ability to enable customers to sign up via your website, newsletter campaign, or other online presence. You can also send these via your own email.
To use this option:
1. Click Customers in the left menu
2. Click Add customers in the top right of the page
3. Click Copy to copy the link to then paste in your desired location
The email option sends authorisation requests directly from your dashboard; you can also track recipients via your dashboard.
1. Click Customers in the left menu
2. Click Add customers in the top right of the page
3. Select the Email option
You can then enter your customer's emails (you can enter as many as you like), and add a message to be included in the email they receive.
4. If you've already created a plan, you will see a Add to payment plan option
Select this option to open a dropdown menu where you can select to have your customers automatically added to a particular plan when they authorise their Direct Debit.
5. Advanced options provides two additional settings:
a) Selecting the option to Require customer to approve each payment will result in the customer(s) receiving an email for each payment or subscription created for them with an approval button they must click before the payment will process.
b) Select the language for the authorisation form. (By default this will be in the language determined by your IP address)
6. When you're ready, click Add customers to send the mandate request emails
CSV
The CSV option enables you to add multiple customers in bulk through a template file in which you can include their name, company, email address, and custom references.
1. Click Customers in the left menu
2. Click Add customers in the top right of the page
3. Select the CSV option
4. Click the Download template link
Open the spreadsheet in Excel (or similar) and enter your customers' information in the corresponding columns.
One option in the CSV file is to specify the language in which your customers will receive email notifications from GoCardless. Please note that if this column is left blank, notifications will be sent in English.
Once all information has been entered to the CSV spreadsheet, make sure you Save the file.
5. Upload the spreadsheet to your dashboard
Under Step two in the CSV option, click Choose file, and upload your saved spreadsheet.
6. When you're ready, click Import customers
Your CSV upload will then run through a short validation process to ensure the details have been entered in the correct format for our system.
7. Once validated, click Send invitations
This will send authorisation request emails to your customers which they can then use to create their mandate.