Discover how to prevent duplicate payments via GoCardless when offering payment plans to your customers
This is the scenario: Your customers' direct debits are finally active! You now can generate and send your invoices, and relax: you will receive every payment on time. As GoCardless gives you the peace of mind and security you need, you go ahead and create payment plans for your customers. This time, no instalment will be missed!
However, to your horror, you discover that your customers have received a double charge! Does this sound familiar?
Wrong DD settings for payment plans in your customer profile
One of the most important things to do when setting up a direct debit is to understand what actions in Class Manager might trigger a payment request in your customer's bank via GoCardless:
a) When an invoice is generated
b) When a payment instalment for a payment plan is generated
You can, therefore, choose wisely which of these actions should be enabled depending on each customer's needs.
Duplicate payments are an outcome of enabling both actions simultaneously. And therefore, triggering a payment for the invoice and also a payment for each payment instalment of that same invoice.
How to prevent this?
Before invoicing, set up the right individual DD settings in your customer profile
Please go to 'Customers' > 'View All' and click on the name of your customer. Then, click on the tab 'Settings' at the top of their page:
At the bottom, you will find the section Direct Debit Settings.
a) If you are not creating payment plans, there is nothing to worry about!
As you can see, by default, the system will trigger a payment when an invoice is approved for a customer. So you are all set!
b) If you are creating payment plans, disable the creation of a payment when you approve an invoice. Make sure that you have the following settings:
This ensures that you will receive ONLY one payment for your invoice (in instalments).
How to fix this?
Issue a refund from your GoCardless Dashboard
If you already have triggered duplicate payments, you will have to refund your customers.
Unfortunately, Class Manager has no Refund feature at the moment. You will have to log into your GoCardless and issue a refund for your customers from your Dashboard.
Go Cardless strongly recommends that payments are not refunded within 7 days of being charged. This allows sufficient time for the payment to be settled into your bank account, ensuring that it was successfully collected and protecting you from refunding unreceived funds.
Please contact our customer service team to provide further support! We will walk you through each step.