Direct Debit

What it is

Direct Debit (DD) is one of the payment mechanisms Syndik8 supports for collecting outstanding member charges. It is a variable-amount, members-paying-the-syndicate Bacs flow: a member sets up a mandate once, and the syndicate’s collection schedule pulls whatever is outstanding from the member’s bank account on a configurable cadence (typically monthly).

DD differs from card payment in three ways that matter to members and admins:

Pre-debit notice is mandatory. Bacs scheme rules require an advance notice before each collection. The collection is dated about two London working days ahead, and the member is told before it runs. Members can object during the dispute window; if they do, the collection does not run.
Collections settle days after they’re requested. A DD instructed today does not arrive in the syndicate’s account until two to three working days later. Failures (insufficient funds, mandate cancelled, indemnity claim) come back even later, up to thirteen months for an indemnity.
Reversals are a real possibility. The Direct Debit Guarantee gives members the right to claim back any collection at any time without justification. Indemnity claims are a first-class case in the reversals model.

Who can use it

Member: sets up their own mandate, views their advance notices, raises a dispute on a notice during its dispute window.
Admin (including treasurer): configure the syndicate’s DD settings (notice days), see every member’s mandate status, monitor collection history.
Other members: do not see one another’s mandates or collections.

Where to find it

Members reach mandate setup from the Set up Direct Debit card on their My Balance screen. The card appears when the syndicate accepts Direct Debit and the member has no active mandate. An admin can also send a member straight there: the Prompt to set up Direct Debit action delivers a notification whose deep-link opens setup.
Admins (treasurer counts as admin) reach the Direct Debit settings from the admin Payments hub, where the collection schedule, mandate state, and Collect now action live. Taps on a mandate cancelled or debit failed notification also open the relevant screen.

The mandate setup card only shows when the syndicate’s payment account is active and the active provider supports Direct Debit. On a provider that does not support it, the card and the rest of the flow do not appear.

Concepts

Mandate

A mandate is the standing instruction the member gives their bank to permit collections from a specified payee. One row per provider mandate reference; a member can have several mandates over time (e.g. cancelled and re-set-up), but only one is active at a time per syndicate.

Status	Meaning
`pending`	Mandate created on the provider; awaiting member signature.
`active`	Member has signed; ready for collection.
`cancelled`	Member or admin cancelled the mandate.
`rejected`	Bank rejected the mandate (e.g. AUDDIS: invalid account details).

Mandates are scheme-tagged (bacs, sepa, ach). Today only bacs is in production; the others are reserved for future regions.

Advance notice

An advance notice is the pre-debit communication the member receives before each DD collection. The legal Bacs advance-notice email is sent by the payment provider about two London working days before the debit; Syndik8 also shows an in-app “debit incoming” notice. On the bank statement the collection appears as “Stripe”, so tell members to expect that name rather than the syndicate’s.

The notice carries:

The amount that will be collected.
The list of unpaid transactions being settled by the collection.
The charge date.
The dispute deadline (typically 24–48 hours before the charge date; varies by syndicate).

Status	Meaning
Issued	Notice sent; awaiting outcome.
Disputed	Member objected during the dispute window. The collection will not run.
Honoured	Notice ran through to a collection without dispute.
Superseded	A later notice replaced this one (e.g. amount correction).

Advance notices are issued automatically when a collection is dispatched, with the charge date set about two London working days ahead. A notice only appears once the collection is genuinely on its way; members with no outstanding balance to debit on a given run do not receive phantom notices.

Collection (settlement)

When the charge date arrives and the notice is issued, Syndik8 instructs the provider to collect the noticed amount. The instruction creates a settlement record with mechanism Direct Debit and lifecycle:

Status	Meaning
Scheduled	Bacs submission queued for the charge date.
Submitted	Bacs file submitted to the bank.
Captured	Bank reports successful collection (typically T+2 working days).
Confirmed	Bank has confirmed the collection (Direct Debit only).
Settled	Funds landed in the syndicate account.
Declined	Bank rejected the collection (e.g. insufficient funds, mandate cancelled).
Cancelled	Collection was cancelled before submission (e.g. dispute lodged after notice but before submission).
Reversed	A later reversal (indemnity claim, AUDDIS) overturned a previously captured collection.

When the settlement reaches captured, the underlying transactions are marked settled. A subsequent reversal re-opens those transactions for re-collection unless the reversal is recorded as forgive.

Cancelling a mandate

A member can cancel their own mandate from the mandate setup screen. The screen sends the cancellation to the payment provider, which forwards it to the member’s bank; the local mandate flips to cancelled once the provider confirms it, so the chip in the members list and the screen header reflect the new state without any further action.

A cancellation is forward-looking only: it stops future scheduled collections but does not undo collections that have already captured. To recover money from a past collection the member must use the reversal flow (specifically the DD-indemnity cause, which is the formal route under the Direct Debit Guarantee).

Once cancelled, a new mandate can be set up from scratch on the same screen. The cancelled row is preserved in history so admins can see when collection stopped against it.

When a member starts mandate setup, the payment provider emails them a consent link. If that email is missed, deleted, or filtered into spam, the member should start Direct Debit setup again from the mandate setup screen, which sends a fresh consent link from the payment provider.

Admins can trigger this via the Prompt to set up Direct Debit action on the edit-member dialog (see below). When that prompt fires against a member with a pending mandate, Syndik8 sends the member an in-app notification and email prompting them to start setup again.

Collection scheduling (admin)

The syndicate’s DD cadence is set on the Payments & Schemes screen under “Direct Debit collection”. An admin configures two values:

Interval: how often the runner should fire. Expressed as a count and a unit: e.g. 1 month, 14 days, 1 year. The count must be at least one.
Next collection date: the date the runner should pick the schedule up. Cannot be in the past when first saved.

A daily background runner picks up every schedule whose next collection date is today or earlier, fires a DD collection for each member who has both an active mandate and outstanding charges, and then advances the schedule’s next collection date by the configured interval. The runner skips members with no outstanding balance, since there is nothing to debit, and the daily check is cheap whether or not the date is due.

Pausing collection. To pause without removing the schedule, push the next collection date forward by hand. The runner will keep skipping until that date arrives. To stop collections entirely, use the Stop scheduled collection action; this removes the schedule row and the daily runner then ignores the syndicate until a new schedule is saved. A schedule that is more than ninety days out from today shows a hint reminding the admin that collection is effectively paused.

Collect now. The same section has a Collect now button. Tapping it shows a per-member preview (name, number of charges, total amount) and a reminder that collection follows the usual Bacs timeline once dispatched. Confirming fires the collections immediately. The next collection date on the schedule is not moved by Collect now; the next scheduled run still fires on the configured cadence. Collect now is admin-only and goes through the same eligibility checks as the daily runner (active mandate, outstanding balance).

Admin nudges to set up Direct Debit

If a member hasn’t set up DD yet, an admin can nudge them from the members list. Opening the member’s edit dialog and tapping Prompt to set up Direct Debit sends them an in-app notification and an email asking them to set up (or finish setting up) their mandate; the notification deep-links to the mandate setup screen.

The copy and tone of the nudge are decided server-side from the member’s current mandate state:

No mandate at all: the nudge invites the member to start setup from scratch.
Pending mandate (signature still outstanding at the bank): the nudge invites the member to start setup again, which issues a fresh consent link from the payment provider.
Active mandate: the action does nothing and the admin sees a “Direct Debit is already active” message, because nudging a member who is already set up would be confusing for them.

Members can mute the nudge from their notification preferences if they have decided not to use Direct Debit and don’t want repeat reminders. There is no cool-down on the admin side; an admin can send the prompt more than once if the member needs another reminder.

Behaviour rules

Variable amounts are the default. The collection amount is whatever the member has outstanding at notice time, not a fixed monthly figure. This matches the use-case (variable hours flown, variable expenses) but means each notice must reflect the actual amount.
The dispute window is enforced server-side. A member’s dispute auto-flips the notice to disputed, and the server refuses to submit for any notice not in issued at submission time.
Mandate cancellations are not retroactive. A cancellation prevents future collections. Past collections on the now-cancelled mandate are not affected; a member with grievances must use the reversal flow (specifically the DD-indemnity cause).
Failed collections do not auto-retry. A declined settlement leaves the underlying transactions unpaid; the next billing cycle picks them up via a fresh advance notice.
The Direct Debit Guarantee is honoured. Members can claim back any DD collection at any time without justification; the resulting DD-indemnity reversal is processed exactly like any other reversal.