Direct Debit for Business

At Codeframe we are always looking at ways to automate your business. Historically, Direct Debit has been avoided by businesses who quietly acknowledge that the traditional game of cat and mouse must be played when it comes to collecting payments for customer accounts.

In recent time, more and more organisations are looking for a way of eradicating this time and cash-consuming practice. To meet this challenge, we have developed a quick and easy to use Direct Debit system which can be deployed in your company colours.

Cost Advantages

Something not to be over-looked is the cost benefit of moving to this payment model. How much are you paying now to chase customer payments? Even if you are using more “modern” debit/credit card facilities, this is likely costing you anywhere between 2 and 5% of your billing. Direct Debit provides you with an opportunity to get that cost right down. Below 1%.

Automation Benefits

We have developed software that encompasses the entire finance function, automating wherever possible. This includes:

• Raising and issuing Invoices and Credits
• Recording and reconciling customer payments and refunds.
  • This includes automatically reconciling payments received via Credit Card, Debit Card and Direct Debit.
• Issuing statements and credit control reminders.

Wouldn’t it be better to automate your credit control and refocus staff onto more productive, customer-focussed tasks? The customers will prefer that, and so will your staff.

“Our customers just won’t accept it…”

Yes, this is possible. However, we’d urge you to think a little more outside the box on this.

• Nobody is forced to do it. You can happily operate a smoother, more-automated system for clients who do see the benefit whilst retaining the previous system for customers too reluctant to change right now. (Do you recall the resistance you met when asking customers to pay via BACS? We all got past that, right?).
• Why not offer a (small) discount for customers who do move across. A discount offering gives you a solid way of presenting this to clients and a permanent incentive to do it. They may resist to begin with, but once their Finance Director hears about it, things may change!
• Consider other offers and inducements for the clients to move. All businesses must improve their productivity to survive and grow and, after all, if you’re saving costs yourself – why not share some of those benefits whilst you reap the rewards of freeing up staff for more “valuable” tasks.

So, what’s involved

We develop systems specific to the needs of each client, so a chat is the first place to start – if you’d like to do that now, get in touch via our Contact Us page. For now, here are the elements that we’ll talk about:

• We organise everything from the server, the code, the maintenance and support – it’s just like renting a service. In fact, in the technology world, we refer to these systems as SaaS (Software as a Service).
• The system will hold basic details of your Clients.
• Either you or they themselves, setup the direct debit via the system – all online, 24x7x365
• Then, you can raise charges for them. Any immediate charges can take 7 days to clear but thereafter, it is just 3 days.
• Once the charge is raised, receive updates as the payment progresses and then get paid.
• If you also ask us to help with the wider Finance system, we can reconcile the payment, issue an email confirming payment, update their account and issue a new statement.
• Lastly, if you have an existing system, we’ll integrate this into your current system (assuming your current system is able – we certainly are; otherwise lets talk about how we can improve the whole thing).

So, there you have it

A fully secure, encrypted, maintained and supported, low-cost credit control or full finance system for your business! Intrigued? Get in touch and we’ll happily go through it and answer any questions.