What is Auto Collect?
Auto Collect refers to the capability of ezyCollect to automatically collect payments from your customers and allocate the payment against the corresponding invoice(s) within your Accounting Software / ERP, with minimal manual intervention.
Pre-requisite: Auto Collect will only work if your customer/s has provided you with their Electronic Direct Debit Authority (DDA) (see How to Acquire Direct Debit Authority) or Automatic Payment Authorisation (US only).
How is Auto Collect different from Collect Now?
Collect Now requires you to login to ezyCollect, select invoices for a particular customer and click on the "Collect Now" button to initiate payment collection. Alternatively, you may wish to use the "Payment Scheduler" to schedule future payments. Whilst these payments will automatically run on the set date in the future, it still requires you to manually schedule the payment in ezyCollect.
Auto Collect schedules payments automatically for invoices based on its due date. A service will run periodically in ezyCollect to check if there are new invoices generated. Upon identifying new invoices that have not been scheduled yet, the service will automatically schedule the invoices for collection based on their respective due dates.
On the date, ezyCollect will automatically trigger a payment request, and upon successful payment, automatically allocate payment against the corresponding invoice and notify both the customer and client. In case the payment fails, this too will trigger a notification to both the customer and the client.
How does it work?
Upon request, Auto Collect is enabled by the ezyCollect Team. You will see a new “Global Auto Collect status“ icon/button on the top right hand corner of your ezyCollect Dashboard. By default, Auto Collect is set to 'disabled'.
ezyCollect Users with Manager access can click on the component to open the relevant settings shown below:
Test Mode - This means that the system will simulate Auto Collect by sending an email to your customers with a list of invoices that can be potentially collected on the day, but Auto Collect will not actually execute the transaction. This feature is helpful for you to be 100% confident in the capability before you enable the setting.
Enabled - When the Global Status is enabled, this means you can now use Auto Collect. However, you will need to select the specific Customer(s) that you want to enable Auto Collect for and switch it on for them (as by default all Customers are disabled from Auto Collect). Simply go to Customer - select the Customer to bring up their detailed page - change Auto Collect status to enabled.
You can also enable or disable Auto Collect for their customers in bulk.
Steps
Navigate to Customers page
Filter customers by Direct Debit Authority = Enabled
Select the customers you want to enable or disable Auto Collect for using the check box against each customer
Click on the Actions button
Select either Enable Auto-Collect or Disable Auto-Collect
Confirm action
At the Customer page, you can also apply an "Auto Collect State" filter to quickly identify those of your customers with Auto Collect enabled or disabled. For example, you may not want Auto Collect to be enabled for a special group of customers. Simply set the filter accordingly and use the Collect Now or Schedule Payment function instead to process a manual payment.
Note: If Auto Collect is disabled at the organisation level, the filter will not be displayed.
Once you have enabled the Customer, consider revising your Notifications and Auto-Collect settings in the "Payment Settings" tab.
Notifications:
The "Payments to be collected" email notification is sent to your inbox, showing how many invoices and the total amount that is scheduled for auto collection on the day.
The "notify customer before payment collection" email can be sent up to 5 days prior to the collection date of the invoice(s) to your customers giving them a heads up. This allows them time to take alternative action/get in touch with you if necessary and for them to ensure that there's sufficient funds in their account on the day
Auto-Collect settings:
You can configure the system to auto-collect your invoice(s) on the due date (at a specific time) or on your specific schedule.
You can also exclude certain invoices that are tagged with the following status(s): invoices under dispute; invoice paused; invoice excluded.
example: If you want to run auto collect on the 1st and 30th of every month at 10am, including any overdue invoices but excluding any invoices with the aforementioned tags, then you'd set it as follows:
Once you've updated the settings, you will receive an email notification summarising the changes so that all authorised contacts are kept in loop on the changes.
Scheduling of Auto-Collect
You can configure the system to schedule your Auto Collect up to 5 days in advance. On the schedule date, any invoice(s) marked as "Auto-collect on" will be scheduled by the system to be processed according to your preference above. I.e. scheduled to be auto-collected on the due date or another date.
Hovering your mouse on the green calendar icon under the invoice will reveal when that invoice is scheduled to be collected by the system.
All activities / change of status are logged in the Activity history report for the Customer. You may click into each activity to see further details - examples below.
Disabling Auto Collect at the Invoice Level
When the Global Status is enabled and the Customer(s) is also enabled, the invoice(s) will have "Auto-collect on" by default.
If you wish to disable Auto Collect for specific invoices, simply click on the toggle button against these invoices under the Auto Collect column. Similar to cancelling a scheduled payment discussed above, for any invoice(s) you've disabled Auto Collect for, you may still use Collect Now or Schedule Payment to collect payment.
Payment receipt to your Customer
After every successful payment transaction, a payment receipt is sent to your customer and you are BCC'd on the same email. This email ensures that both you and your customer are duly informed whenever a transaction has gone through.
User Permissions
Auto Collect operations can only be executed by Manager users. This is done for security purposes. If you need your user access to be updated, please send an email to CS at customersuccess@ezycollect.com.au.