Direct Debit manager - How to set your invoice due date and charge date

Invoice due date

The due date of an invoice is the date at which you expect the invoice to be paid by. This is normally a date agreed with your customer, for example 30 days from the invoice date.

Why is the due date important?

When requesting a Direct Debit payment from a customer, you use the due date to determine when the request is made, not the invoice date.

Set the invoice due date for a customer

You can set the due date using the customers payment terms:

1. Click Customers then then double-click the customer you want to edit.
2. Click Credit Control.
3. Edit the terms as required.
   
   The following Payment Due From options are available:
   

   Payment Due From	How the due date is calculated
   Days after the invoice	Invoice date + value entered in Payment Due If you leave the Payment Due box as zero, the default setting of 30 days is used to calculate the due date.
   Days from the first day of the following month	First day of the month after the invoice + value entered in Payment Due. If the invoice is due on the first day of the following month, enter zero here.
   Days before the last day of the following month	Last day of the month after the invoice - value entered in Payment Due. If the invoice is due on the last day of the following month, enter zero here.
   Day of the month	The day of the month based on the value entered in Payment Due. If the invoice is dated after that date, then Sage Accounts uses the same day in the following month.
   Days from 1 month after the invoice date	A month from the date of the invoice + value entered in Payment Due

4. Click Save and then click Close.

Common due date scenarios

Here are some examples of how to set the payment terms for common scenarios:

Direct Debit charge date

The charge date is the date a Direct Debit request is made. This is not necessarily the date you receive the payment, as normally there's a few days delay before payment is made.

To allow for this, in Sage Accounts you can set how many days prior to the due date you want to request payment:

1. Click Settings then click Company Preferences and click GoCardless for Sage 50.
2. In the Charge date section under Invoice due date minus xxx days, enter the number of days prior to the due date you want to request payment.
   
   The number of days here is normally 3-5 working days, depending on your bank.

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