What are the built-in Collection methods Donorfy uses?

The following built-in Collection Methods are below, and they use the associated Payment Methods:

GoCardless => Direct Debit

Stripe => Payment Card

Standing Order => Standing Order

When do Payments Start?

For recurring card payments, Donorfy will:

• Collect the first payment on the day the donor made their recurring donation
• The start date of the instruction is then set to the first of the following month - no payments will be collected before this date.
• Subsequent payments will be collected based on the payment frequency - e.g. monthly payments will start one month later, annual payments one year later

New Direct Debits take a few days to set up; the exact number of days can be affected by weekends and bank holidays. To allow for this the first payment will be set for collection 7 days from the signup. However if allowing 7 days results in a collection day later than the 28th of the month, we will take the collection into the following month, so that future collection days are consistent. For example if you sign up on 22nd, 23rd, 24th Feb for a monthly donation, we'd collect on the 1st of March, then 1st of April, and so on. 

Once set up, Direct Debit payments will be collected in the months they are due on the specified collection day. The months a payment is due in is controlled by the payment frequency and start month.

What gets added to the timeline?

Once the payments are verified, a transaction is added to the constituent’s timeline with a payment for the amount requested and one or more allocations linked to it based on the recurring payment instruction. For example, if a constituent was paying £15 per month for £10 membership fees and a £5 donation, the transaction generated would reflect this split.

The amount will be the full amount you requested. Any charges made by the payment gateway will be recorded in the processing costs for the transaction. The amount that ends up in your bank account will be the amount requested less the gateway charges.

What happens if the constituent is archived?

If a constituent is archived - see Archiving and Deleting Constituents for more information - then no further payments will be collected under a Recurring Payment Instruction, even if the status of the Recurring Payment Instruction is Active.

What happens if the wrong amount if collected?

This is very unlikely but if it did happen Donorfy would create a timeline entry for the amount actually collected rather than the amount of the Recurring Payment Instruction, with the allocations prorated. For example, if we expected a constituent to pay £15 per month for £10 membership fees and a £5 donation but only £12 was collected, we would generate a transaction of £12 with allocations of £8 and £4.

How do I tell if a payment will be collected this month?

Recurring Payment Instructions which are active will be collected based on the payment frequency and start month of the instruction:

• Year: a payment will be collected in the start month
• Half Year: a payment will be collected in the start month and six months after the start month
  (If the start month is August, payments would be collected in August and February)
• Quarterly: a payment will be collected in the start month then 3, 6, and 9 months after the start month
  (If the start month is August. payments would be collected in August, November, February, and May)
• Monthly: a payment will be collected every month

What will appear on the Donor’s Statement?

It depends on the payment gateway. For example, Stripe will use your organisation's name or you can provide custom statement text. See the Knowledge Base article for your payment gateway for more information.

What happens if a payment is missed?

A few days into the start of a new month Donorfy will check through the payments received in the prior month. If a payment was missed then the Recurring Payment Instruction is updated as follows:

• The number of missed payments is increased by one
• The month and year of the last missed payment is updated
• The number of consecutive missed payments is updated - i.e. how many payments have been missed in a row

Donorfy will only try and collect a payment once, in order to avoid incurring fees from the payment gateway for repeated failed attempts.

What status can a recurring payment instruction have?

• Active - instruction is up and running and payments should be received against it
• Overdue - payments have been missed but we will try and collect more payments. See below for more details.
• Cancelled - the constituent cancelled the instruction
• Paused - the constituent asked for the instruction to be paused for a period of time - this option is not available for all payment gateways

When does a recurring payment instruction become overdue?

A monthly Recurring Payment Instruction becomes overdue after three consecutive missed payments.

All other Recurring Payment Instructions become overdue after one missed payment.

What should I do if someone misses a payment and then pays by another method e.g. cheque?

• Add the transaction to the constituent’s timeline using the same allocations as the Recurring Payment Instruction
• Include a comment explaining how this is a manually entered payment against the Recurring Payment Instruction
• Link the transaction to the correct Recurring Payment Instruction by clicking on the down arrow to reveal more details of the payment, then make a selection from Linked Recurring Payment Instruction:

• Open the Recurring Payment Instruction the payment relates to and check its status. If it is Overdue or Lapsed, press the ‘Make Active’ button. This will set the status of the instruction to Active and reset the number of consecutive missed payments to 0.

How can tell what payments have been processed?

The History tab on the Recurring Payment Instruction form shows expected payments, payment reports provided by the payment gateway, and transactions linked to the Recurring Payment Instruction.

Also Financial > Recurring Income shows items that need resolving and the history of updates that have happened.

How are new instructions set up?

The best option is to add web widgets to your website to allow people to make regular donations - this will automatically create a Recurring Payment Instruction.

If you need to create an instruction for a donor this is best done on their behalf using a web widget.

You can add instructions directly to a constituent's timeline - however for money to be successfully collected you have to add the donor to the payment gateway using the payment gateway's dashboard and make sure the payment gateway customer code is allocated to the instruction in Donorfy.

What happens if I upgrade a Recurring Payment Instruction?

If a donor upgrades their instruction then the new amount is added as a new allocation to the instruction. This allocation will be collected when starts - i.e. based on the 'Starting' setting for the allocation - it will be collected on the day given in the start date.

How can I report on or analyse my Recurring Payments?

See this Knowledge Base article: Analysing & Reporting on Recurring Payments

How do I refund a payment?

To refund a payment you need to open the dashboard of the payment gateway (e.g. Stripe), find the payment in question, and use the refund function in the gateway.

In Donorfy find and open the transaction you want to refund, and from the manage menu select Delete.