Direct Debits: The preferred payment method for members

According to Memberwise’s market research in 2017, 77% of people who have a membership with an organisation agree that the payment process affects their overall experience as a member.

From the same Memberwise research paper, the most popular preference for membership subscription payments is flexible Direct Debit plans (monthly, quarterly, bi-annually or annual). With this in mind, we have focused our efforts on customer demand and have provided a seamless Direct Debit experience for members and staff within Subscribe360!

We want to show you how members can easily subscribe and set up a Direct Debit in this blog. And how employees workload can be reduced through Subscribe360’s processes and automation – powered by Dynamics 365, giving them more time to engage with your members.

Setting up a Direct Debit for Membership

Let’s assume that someone wants to become a member of your organisation and is in the process of registering to become a new member through the Subscribe360 Member Portal. The member can provide all the information needed to set up their membership and payment options with a few steps. In this case, setting up a monthly Direct Debit.


When the member has completed the membership stage of the process, they will be asked which payment method they would like to use. If a member decides to use Direct Debit as their form of payment, they can choose the subscription period and payment frequency. Then, having selected Direct Debit further through the process, they will be asked to fill out their details to set up their Direct Debit.


The final stage is to review all the details they will submit to the organisation, who will then begin their own reviewing stage. Depending on the reviewing stages of the organisation, employees can find the application and payment preference within Subscribe360 as all the details provided through the member portal is available in a single record.
 


With Subscribe360, organisations can manage paperless or paper-based Direct Debit processes to the organisation’s requirements.

Organisations can also incentivise new and existing members to choose a Direct Debit for their subscription by introducing discount offers. As Subscribe360 is built on top of Microsoft Dynamics 365, organisations can use the out-of-the-box features such as the product catalogue to set up their product items and price lists for their membership types.

Creating a Direct Debit Batch

Once the member has been approved, staff members can automate the renewal batches and payment plans as mentioned in our previous blog, “Making Membership Renewals a Quick & Easy Process”.

The Direct Debit collection can be processed through the subscription renewal batch. Using Subscribe360, employees can see all the information that is needed when completing the process, such as:

  • Collection Type
  • Tax Date
  • Collection date range
  • Direct Debit Amount due
  • Membership renewal generated date
  • Payment plans generated date
     


Employees can complete the entire Direct Debit batch through the Subscribe360 process flow, which can be done in under 10 minutes!

With Subscribe360, employees can generate the Renewal Batches, Payment Plans, Collection Batches and the Direct Debit Batch in the same process flow by following the steps to progress through to completion.
 


Automation takes the pain away from gathering multiple records to create a Direct Debit batch to generating payments.
 


When the process flow is completed, it will show what type of collection this is, in this example AUDDIS - First/Regular Collection, the collection date, collection batch and the total amount due.
 

The final step is to send the AUDDIS CSV file, automatically generated and uploaded to SharePoint Online, to the Finance Bureau.

Using the Subscribe360 Finance feature will allow employees to automate their Direct Debit collections and reduce the ongoing renewal administration through rolling subscriptions.

Members will also receive a more streamlined experience when signing up for their first membership subscription, echoing the Memberwise research mentioned at the beginning of this blog.

Contact Us today if you would like to see the Subscribe360 renewal and Direct Debit feature in action.