Bacs (GBP) customer migration

Covers Bacs scheme only. For all other schemes, please see Non-Bacs customer migration.

Moving your customers from your current Direct Debit provider to GoCardless? A bulk change transfers their existing mandates to GoCardless, so your customers don't need to set up a new Direct Debit. To learn more about the process, please see Move Customers to Gocardless.

Before you start

Complete your GoCardless account verification
Know your migration dates (all must be business days):
- Final collection date: The day you collect your last payment with the current provider (must be at least 1 business day before the Bulk Change date). If you're on a non-AUDDIS SUN, see step 5 below – your dates may work differently depending on which option applies to you.
- Bulk Change date: The day GoCardless sets up your mandates, and the current provider cancels them on their systems.
- First collection date: The first date of payment collection on GoCardless (Bacs: 5 business days after the migration date; other schemes: at least 1 business day after the migration date)
Know if you are FM or MA:
- FM – You are on a bureau and don’t own your SUN.
- MA – You are the owner of your own sun.
- Unsure? Ask your current provider, don’t guess. Displaying this incorrectly will eventually cause delays.

Good to know:

It takes 4 to 6 weeks. This is a Bacs requirement, so we can't speed it up.
If your billing cycle is complex and has no quiet period for a migration, we can do a phased bulk change across a few dates. Let us know when opening the request, as this will be a special request and not the default option.
Only mandates transfer. Payments and subscriptions don't - you'll need to recreate them in GoCardless afterwards.
If you've already completed a bulk change once, submit this form to initiate the request.

The steps

1. Start your request.

Is this your first Bulk Change?
Create your GoCardless account, then go to Settings → Imports → Import → Bulk migrate customers.

Or have you already done a Bulk Change before?
Submit the request through this form.

Have these ready to open a request:

Your SUN (service user number) and the name registered to it
Whether the SUN is/is not AUDDIS live
How many mandates are you moving
Pick a migration date at least 4 weeks out on a business day.

2. Sign the deed.

This legal document transfers liability to GoCardless. Download it from your dashboard or find it here:

If your company is an incorporated entity, download this deed.
If it's an unincorporated entity, download this deed.
If your company is a registered charity, download this deed.
If it's an unregistered charity, download this deed.

How to fill in the deed?

Keep it clean: no scribbles, no extra info, and your witness can use your company's address. Submit it via the same import link.
Get the deed printed, hand-signed, and scanned back – no e-signatures.
FM? Your bureau completes it. Download the correct deed and ask your current provider to fill it in.
MA? You complete it, with your SUN issue date and long SUN name confirmed by your sponsoring bank (must exactly match your legal name – "Ltd" ≠ "Limited").

Where the secondary signature is required (Secretary/Director/*Witness), make sure to cross out the irrelevant roles to highlight who is signing.
The SUN names in sections 1.1 and 3.3 must match exactly, unless there is a confirmed exception from your old provider.

3. Notify your customers.

We'll send you a Bacs-approved template once your request is in. Get it out to everyone ahead of the migration date. No information should be removed from it, but you can add your customisation.

4. Prepare your data.

For each customer, you need: name (or company name), account number & sort code, email, and address. Missing emails? You'll need custom notifications turned on (an extra add-on, extra cost) – without unique email addresses or custom notifications enabled, we can't process that customer record.

You can test your upload in Sandbox, if you have a Sandbox account or you can upload the file to your live GoCardless account, validate it and request approval. We'll only approve it and create customer records on the authorised bulk change date.

Click here to see client migration data requirements

COLUMN	DATA	INFORMATION
A, B, C	Customer.given_name & customer.family_name OR customer.company_name	Enter either customer given name + surname OR company name. If your previous provider exported your customers' full names in a single cell per whole name, rather than splitting between given name and family name, you can use the text to columns function in Excel to separate. Example: John & Smith OR John’s Gym Ltd
D	customer.email	A valid email address is required for each customer so that they receive notifications from GoCardless about their payments. If you are planning to send your own notifications to your customers, please speak with your Account Executive. Example: john.smith@example.com
E, F, G, H, I, J	Customer.address_line1 Customer.address_line2 customer.address_line3 customer.city customer.postal_code customer.country_code	BACS require an address to be stored against a customer's Direct Debit mandate. Address line 1, City, postcode and country code are required fields. Postcodes can be entered with or without spaces. The country code should be listed as a two character reference only. For UK addresses, use GB. Example: 65 Goswell Road, London, EC1V 7EN, GB
K	customer.phone_number	(Optional) Example: +44 20 8338 9540
L	bank_account.account_holder_name	This is separate to the 'name' entry fields, since account holder name can differ from the individual (e.g., it could include a middle name) or company name. Example: John Smith
M	bank_account.account_number	A GBP bank account must be used for Bacs Direct Debit payments. 8 characters in standard format. Example: 55779911
N	bank_account.branch_code	6 character format. This can be entered with or without hyphens / spaces e.g. 200000, 20-00-00, and 20 00 00 will all work. Example: 200000
O	bank_account.metadata.bank_custom_key	(Optional) - Use this field to add a custom reference for your customer if required. This will be assigned to your bank account within your dashboard and is a searchable field. Example: JAM12251
P	customer.metadata.custom_reference	(Optional) - Use this field to add a custom reference for your customer if required. This will be assigned to your customer within your dashboard and is a searchable field. Example: GYM441231
Q	mandate.metadata.mandate_custom_key	(Optional) - Use this field to add a custom reference for your customer if required. This will be assigned to your mandate within your dashboard and is a searchable field. Example: WIL12251
R	customer.language	This will determine the language of customer notifications. Example: en

5. Migration day.

AUDDIS live, FM: Your bureau cancels the old mandates.
AUDDIS live, MA: You cancel them via your current software.
Non-AUDDIS live – there are two options here:
- Option 1 (recommended): your Final collection date and Bulk Change date are the same day. Your old provider submits transaction code 19 for each mandate on that day – wait for our go-ahead first.
- Option 2 (only if you can't align the dates): your Final collection date and Bulk Change date fall on different days. No code 19 is needed, but this means your customers will briefly see two active Direct Debit mandates in their bank account – the old one and the new GoCardless one. We'll send you an extra notification letter (alongside the standard one) that tells customers to cancel their old mandate once the Bulk Change date has passed. Let us know if this is your situation, as it isn't the default option.
Then upload your CSV. Once approved, your new mandates go live – all by 3:30 pm, the Bacs cutoff.

Miss the 3:30 pm cutoff?

The migration has to be rescheduled. Since the old mandates are already cancelled, any collections due soon after could be delayed – so it's worth building in a buffer.

Once you've migrated

Set up your payments and subscriptions again – they don't come across automatically. We can't liaise with your old provider or touch your customer data on your behalf, but we're around if you get stuck.

If you are using a partner integration, make sure the customer mandates are matched, so payments can be scheduled against them.

Using GoCardless for Xero?

If you are using GoCardless for Xero (GC4X), it matches mandates in both directions. Once connected, it imports your mandates and your Xero customers and matches them by email address. Where a mandate's email address doesn't match the Xero contact, you'll need to match it manually.

Two things to be aware of:

Matching runs automatically whenever a new mandate is imported, a new Xero contact is imported, or an existing Xero contact is updated. When an Xero contact is imported, matching runs only if the contact doesn't have a mandate linked.
Xero contacts are imported only after a sales invoice has been raised against them. A draft invoice is enough.

Using GoCardless in Xero?

If you are using GoCardless in Xero (GCIX), it handles mandate matching within Xero, so you'll follow the process for that in Xero rather than GoCardless. Migrated mandates appear as unmatched Direct Debit forms in Xero, which you match to contacts manually. See Xero's guide to matching a GoCardless Direct Debit form with a contact for the steps.

After the bulk change, matching a mandate to a contact triggers payments for all invoices for that contact with a future due date. For any overdue invoices, you can edit the invoice, click save without making any changes, and Xero will schedule the payment to be charged via GoCardless as soon as possible. For any invoice to be collected via GoCardless, it must have GoCardless selected as the payment method (Direct Debit), and the contact must have a mandate linked.

Using any other partner integration?

If you are using another third-party partner integration, contact the partner's team to confirm their requirements — whether they can import mandates, how mandate matching works, and when in the process is most optimal for you to connect. Most partners can import mandates into their system, but it's worth confirming before your migration date.