How to get paid on time, every time

Small businesses are open to a wide range of risks. One of the biggest is cashflow. Getting the money you’re owed when you need it can make or break an SME.  Which is why any solution that gives a business the chance to get paid faster has to be good news. Go Cardless – an online direct debit management system – gives a business owner more options, at less cost, than ever before. Before Go Cardless entered the market place setting up direct debit facilities for small businesses was time consuming and costly.

Controlling cashflow – keeping your business on track

So how does Go Cardless help? The first, and most crucial feature that benefits business owners is the ability to reduce bad debt. Getting paid on time, every time doesn’t just help with cashflow, it also assists the organisation in other ways too:

  • Improved cashflow. Frees up your business to do what it was set up to do. No more credit control. No time spent chasing up bad debts or dealing with the endless excuses of those who don’t want to pay.
  • Swift set up. Crucial to being able to run your business effectively is the ability to manage payments by importing your existing customers into the Go Cardless system. With its simply plug and play features, Go Cardless immediately allows you to start taking payments.
  • Transparency. Go Cardless charges are very clear and minimal. You don’t get any nasty surprises, unlike traditional banks which can impose unexpected charges without warning.
  • Speed of payment. Go Cardless doesn’t hang on to your money. With its clear charging system and instant access to your funds, you can operate much more efficiently as your cashflow isn’t tied up in bank transfer processes.

 Repeating payments and Go Cardless

While all this sounds fantastic, there is one key feature that makes Go Cardless even more of a support to small and new businesses. The way that it handles regular payments or instalment sales. A key feature for organisations like gyms, therapists and for anybody who needs to invoice on a regular basis to get paid. By using Go Cardless, repeating payments become a doddle. The direct link-up with Xero accounting software allows an organisation to generate repeat invoices without adding to its administrative burden. Essentially you set up the repeating invoice once and then the funds are collected on the due date by Go Cardless. The cycle continues on an ongoing basis without human intervention.

Just like Go Cardless itself, Xero is also cloud-based. Which means you can access the whole system through any web browser. In other words, you can invoice immediately, whenever you have internet access. Combining these two tools gives businesses maximum flexibility in three different ways:

  • Financial transparency. An at-a-glance understanding of where your money is can help avoid the cashflow pitfalls that hurt many SMEs.
  • Certainty about charges. The simple charging system means you can accurately predict what every transaction will cost and when you’ll be able to get hold of your money
  • Business on the go. Run your business wherever you are, rather than being tied to a desk!

If you would like to find out more about Go Cardless or Xero then please get in touch with us here.