GoCardless and Stripe for Accountants
As our business has grown one of the things that has stayed the same is the payment methods for clients. There have been times when we have been reluctant to change pricing as we knew the Standing Order would not get changed. We were still receiving cheques from some clients who wanted to pay by Credit Card and it would take me months to bank those cheques. With the introduction of Stripe and GoCardless there is absolutely no excuse for making it so difficult for people to pay you. The banks no longer have a monopoly in this area.
Jon Jenkins, Smart Team – www.yoursmartteam.co.uk
Business Name: Smart Team
Commencement Date: April 2018
Nature of Job: Credit Card and Direct Debit integrated with Xero accounting software
Systems Used: GoCardless, Stripe, Xero
- Dictating payment method to clients
- Payments mainly received by Standing Order. When fees or services changed very reliant on the client updating mandate
- Clients wanting to settle invoices by credit card cannot so debt remains outstanding longer
- Spending to much time chasing clients for money rather than working on their affairs
- Slow cash collections have a knock on effect on cashflow
We’ve worked with Smart Team on several projects now so we have become their first port of call for all things IT related. We really enjoy working with them. Although they are more clued up than your average bear they know the limitations of their own time and skills. We are always on hand to offer advice and support on any client related projects so it works well. As they were using Xero and have a good understanding of the payment add-ons this was a quick and straight forward job. They knew what they wanted they just needed a partner to implement.
To assist the company in addressing these key issues, we worked alongside the client to decide which would be the most appropriate payment methods and how this could be delivered with a very light touch. These sessions helped to identify whether the objectives and systems were aligned. The key outcomes of these sessions were:
- As there are no ongoing subscription fees that both credit card and Direct Debit be offered to clients
- The sign up options needed to be delivered in such a way that clients could selfserve
- When credit control was being completed that it was super easy to enable clients to pay at the time of call
- Needed to make it super easy for the Direct Debits to be allocated against specific invoices. A subscription type Direct Debit would not work as it is no different to the issues with Standing Orders
- Each person dealing with the sales invoice process and cash collection knew how to access and use the new systems
As we knew both the client and the systems being used well we knew what would be a good fit and could deploy a solution pretty quickly. We tested, implemented and trained key staff. We even created a payments page for the clients website to hold the payment methods.
- Can now offer payment methods to clients including debit card, credit card and Direct Debit
- Dedicated payments page added to website so clients can make payments at a time to suit them
- No ongoing fees or subscriptions as products pay as you go on as little as 1% of transaction
- Improved cash collections and debtor days whilst decreasing bookkeeping and credit control resource
- Better client relationships as we can now offer terms that fit with their preferred method of payment
- Bank Reconciliation automation enabling accurate allocation to Direct Debits.
- Automated email reminders can be emailed from Xero.
