Whilst Collect Now, Schedule Payments and Auto Collect are designed to help you automate your collection process and speed up your order-to-cash cycle, none of this would be possible if your customers don't want to be a part of it. It is important to make it easy for your customers to sign up to Direct Debit, and also provide a good enough reason to do so.
What is Auto Pay and Credit Term Extension
Auto Pay allows your customers to provide you with their Direct Debit Authority and set up automatic payment of their invoices on their due dates. It's as easy as ticking a check box on Simplypaid.
Credit Term Extension allows you to configure additional number of days beyond the invoice due date for your customers to make payment. It can be used as an incentive for your customers to sign up to Direct Debit or used to build relationships with those who are already on Direct Debit.
Adoption of these feature ensures a steadier cashflow for you and more time for your customers to make payment may drive better relationships, making this a win-win.
Organisation Level
Auto Pay can be enabled at the Organisation Level for customers who are not yet set up for direct debit in your ezyCollect.
*Note: This is only available for ezyCollect Payments and enabled by default.
Go to "Payment Settings" and you can choose to enable Auto Pay and whether to extend customer terms (with options from no extension up to 15 days).
Once enabled at the Organisation level, customers who have not already provided Direct Debit Authority to you will start seeing an option to setup Auto Pay and receive Credit Term Extension on Simplypaid. Simply tick the check box as seen in the example below.
Once the payment has gone through, your customers will receive a copy of their signed Direct Debit Authority form via email and their Direct Debit Authority status will change to "Acquired" in ezyCollect. If you have enabled Credit Term Extensions at the organisation level, this will also be reflected in the UI.
For those with existing DDAs, you can individually extend their credit term at the Customer level if you wish to do so (see steps below). Those of your Customers who have signed up to Auto Pay via Simplypaid will already have the default credit term extension value assigned but this can also be changed at the Customer level.
Cancelling Auto Pay
If your customer wishes to cancel Auto Pay, they can contact you directly and request the same using the Contact Us section on Simplypaid. In the subject line, simply select "Have a question about enable or disable auto pay".
Once you have confirmed with your customer, you can go into their detailed Customer Page and disable Auto Collect.
Note: If your Customer wishes to cancel their Direct Debit Authority altogether, then any applicable credit term extension will also cease to exist. If they're only disabling Auto Collect, but wish to retain the manual functions of Collect Now/Schedule Payment, credit term extension will still be an option as you still have their Direct Debit Authority.
Customer level
You can enable Credit Term Extension at the Customer level (for direct debit customers only).
Go to the detailed Customer Page and click "Edit" under Extend Credit Terms.
Select "Enabled", choose up to 15 days and hit "Save".
Your customer will not receive any Reminder emails until the extended date is reached. For example, if they have an invoice due on the 12th and you added a 6 day term extension, all Reminder emails are paused until the 18th.
If payment fails on the 18th, chasing resumes and considers the invoice to be overdue based on the original due date of 12th.
NOTE: Funds settlement does not happen instantly, especially if the amount is being debited from your customer’s bank account. The selected invoices remain frozen (un-selectable and un-actionable) on the ezyCollect UI for 2 days. Within 2 days if the invoices are paid, they are dropped in ezyCollect (upon the next successful sync). If the invoices remain open after 2 days, then it is assumed that the payment was not successful, therefore the invoices are activated again and chasing resumes.
All changes made are reflected in the Activity History section of the detailed Customer page.
Using another example, say if you've allowed a 10 day term extension for one of your customers. When they go into their Simplypaid Portal, they will see that the new invoice will have a "+ 10 days" next to it, noting that a 10 day extension has been applied to this invoice. Consequently, if today's date was anywhere between 13-23rd September 2022, this invoice would show as 0 days overdue.
