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What is a mandate?

Before you can collect payment by Direct Debit, your customer must issue you with a mandate. A Direct Debit mandate is an authorisation from your customer to collect future payments. This mandate is a Direct Debit Instruction, or DDI, although it’s commonly referred to as a Direct Debit mandate.

The details of each authorisation are:

• You can collect any amount from your customer at any time
• You must notify your customer of each payment before you collect it. When you request a payment, the system automatically sends an email to your customer

• The Direct Debit Guarantee covers all payments, protecting customers from payments taken in error.

   Find out more about the Direct Debit Guarantee

Often, your customer will have a specific schedule of payments in mind, such as a fixed subscription, when they authorise a DDI to you. The notification requirements of a DDI and the Direct Debit Guarantee help protect them from any other payments taken in error or fraudulently.

 TIP: You can see an error message if you request a mandate from a record which has special characters in the company, or contact name. To resolve this, remove any special characters from the record or contact. 

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Requesting mandates

You can generate a generic mandate request link. Use this on your website or in general communications to encourage customers to set up Direct Debit with you. It isn’t customer-specific.

1. Click Customers then double-click the required customer.
2. Enter your customer's Direct Debit email then click Set up mandate and click Yes.
   Just click Set up the mandate if there's already a direct debit email on the record.
3. Click Send Direct Debit request, the Direct Debit Manager Status now shows Requested.
4. Click Close.
5. The customer receives an email with a link to authorise the Direct Debit mandate. They should click this link and enter their contact and bank details on the secure page.
   

   If the customer doesn't receive the email, or you need to resend it, select the customer in the Customer list, click Request Mandate on the toolbar. Select Send Direct Debit request.

6. Once the customer has authorised the mandate, the Direct Debit Manager Status changes to Active.
   To refresh the status, on the toolbar click Refresh mandate.

You're now ready to request direct debit payments from your customer.

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Mandate status

To refresh the mandate status, click Customers then click Refresh mandate.

Below is what you may see and what the status means.

NOTE: The wording should match the status on the GoCardless website. 

<>	No mandate or request exists.
Requested	The mandate exists but the customer has not set up the mandate yet.
Setup Failed	The customer has failed to set up the mandate.
Pending customer approval	The second customer hasn't signed the mandate yet, if required.
Pending submission	You haven't submitted the mandate to the customer's bank yet.
Submitted	The customer's bank hasn't processed the mandate yet.
Active	The customer's bank has set up the mandate.
Failed	Creating the mandate has failed.
Cancelled	You, or the customer cancelled the mandate.
Expired	The mandate has expired.

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