Our bulk payment submission tool allows you to quickly create multiple one-off payments to charge your customers.
Using the bulk payment submission tool
You can access the imports section of your dashboard in two ways:
a) Open the Payments page of your dashboard and click Import
b) Navigate to this page and login to your GoCardless account if prompted
Once you've reached the Imports page...
1). Click on the Imports button in the top right of your screen
... and select Bulk create payments
2). A window will open to Create payments in bulk
First, click the link to Download template
3). You should see the CSV template downloading in the bottom right corner of your screen. The download has completed once the status dot turns green.
Click the blue .CSV link to download the file to your computer and open the spreadsheet
4). Once you've opened the spreadsheet you will see information for your active customers pre-populated
The spreadsheet comprises of the following columns.
Please note: if the field shows "Requires Input = No" in the table below, you should not add or edit any data within that column.
| COLUMN | COLUMN TITLE | REQUIRES INPUT / ACTION |
|---|---|---|
| A | mandate.id | No |
| B | customer.id | No |
| C | customer.given_name | No |
| D | customer.family_name | No |
| E | customer.company_name | No |
| F | customer.email | No |
| G | payment.amount | Yes |
| H | payment.currency | No |
| I | payment.description | Optional |
| J | payment.charge_date | Optional |
| K | payment.metadata.YOUR_CUSTOM_FIELD | Optional |
Optional input fields:
Description (Column I): This is the payment description that will be included in the customer's notification email.
Charge date (Column J): If this field is left blank, the payment(s) will be charged as soon as possible.
If you do enter a charge date it must be entered in the format YYYY-MM-DD(note that if you're using Excel, the date may automatically be changed to a different format).
You will also need to ensure the date is a minimum of 3-4 working days in the future. For more information, please see our article on Payment Timings.
Payment metadata (Column K): This is an optional field to add an additional reference to an individual payment. This reference is only visible to the merchant from within their dashboard.
Please note: You cannot add new (inactive) customers to this template
5). Once you've entered the information into the spreadsheet, first save it, and then upload the file via the create payments in bulk window (Step 2 shows you where to find this page)
6). Click Import payments to begin the upload process (this does not yet submit the payments)
If there are any errors in the CSV you've uploaded, you will be informed of this on the Imports page. You will then be required to correct the errors and then re-upload the CSV.
7). Once the upload has successfully validated, you will see confirmation of this on the Imports page.
Here, you can confirm that the payments you have created for each customer entry are correct via the Valid rows section at the bottom.
8). When you're ready, click Process payments
If you now navigate to the Payments page of your dashboard via the blue menu on the left, you should see these payments available to view with a pending submission status.
Changes from the previous bulk payment submission tool
Our bulk payment import tool now operates directly from within the GoCardless dashboard.
Whilst the process itself is virtually identical to the previous submissions tool process, there are some small changes to be aware of. These are:
- The tool is now incorporated into the Imports section of the dashboard
- This is also where you can find the ability to import new customers in bulk. The csv templates vary for each type of import and it’s important to ensure you download the correct template for the task you are doing.
- If entering a date, this must be in the format YYYY-MM-DD
- If you don't do this, the csv will validate correctly, but an error may be returned when you click to process the submission.
- The column titles within the payments submission csv template have changed slightly
Example:
mandate_id has changed to mandate.id
Notice the underscore has been replaced by a dot
If you were using the previous bulk payment submissions tool, please ensure you download a new import template before uploading a new submission.