Direct debit, e-invoices and bank statements

Besides cards, Nola can collect memberships in two ways that suit gyms well:

• Direct debit: the member signs a mandate once, and Nola collects every payment from their bank account through your GoCardless or Mollie account.
• E-invoice: every period the member gets an invoice with their own reference number. They pay by bank transfer or set up a standing order. You import your bank statement and Nola marks the payments.

Both work for desk sales, and a membership can be switched to either one later. Direct debit also works for online joins.

#Direct debit

Connect GoCardless or Mollie

Money goes from the member's bank straight to your own GoCardless or Mollie account. Nola never holds it.

1. Open Payments → Online and find the Direct debit card.
2. Click Connect and pick GoCardless or Mollie.
3. Paste the Access token from your provider. For GoCardless, also create a webhook endpoint with the Webhook URL shown and paste its Webhook secret.
4. Click Connect. Nola checks the token before saving it.

The card then shows how many mandates are active and how many are waiting for the member. Click Disconnect to stop: open charges then wait for another way to pay.

Sell a membership paid by direct debit

1. In Clients → Members, click Sell a plan and choose Direct debit as the Payment.
2. If the payer has no direct debit yet, Nola emails them a link to set it up. The charges wait until they do.
3. Once the mandate is active, Nola collects the open charges, and then every period's charge on its billing date.

Members who join online can pick Pay by direct debit. Their membership starts when the mandate is set up. See Join and manage your membership.

Follow a member's direct debit

Open the member. The Payment method box shows the provider and the mandate's status: Active (with the last digits of the account), Waiting for the member, Setup failed or Stopped.

• Email setup link sends the link again. Copy link copies it, for example to send by text message.
• Stop direct debit ends the mandate here and at the provider.
• Change moves the membership to another way of paying: Direct debit, E-invoice, Pays at the desk, Prepaid balance or Account invoice. Charges already made keep theirs.

When the bank returns a payment (no money, mandate cancelled, chargeback), the charge becomes Failed and the membership Past due. Click Try payment again to collect it again. See failed payments.

#E-invoices with reference numbers

Before you start

Under Settings → Payment methods, in VAT & e-arve (Estonian e-invoice), fill in the Seller legal name and IBAN. Invoices ask members to pay to that account. With the Registry code added too, each invoice also gets an e-arve XML file. See Send invoices.

How it works

1. Sell a plan with E-invoice as the Payment, or switch a membership to it with Change.
2. Every period, Nola creates an invoice for the charge and emails it to the payer with your IBAN, the due date and their reference number.
3. The reference number belongs to the payer and never changes. They can set up a standing order with it once, and every month's payment is matched.
4. The invoice is due after the number of days in your invoicing settings (14 by default). It is listed under Invoices too, and Mark paid there pays the membership charge.

In Estonia, the reference number is a standard viitenumber. Elsewhere it is an international RF creditor reference.

#Import your bank statement

1. Download a statement from your bank: camt.053 (XML, offered by most European banks) or a CSV with date, amount and reference (or description) columns.
2. On Payments → Online, in the Bank transfers and e-invoices card, click Import bank statement and pick the file.
3. Nola reads the incoming payments and shows how many were matched.

For each payment, Nola finds the member by the reference number (also inside the payment description) and pays their open charges, oldest first. One payment can cover several charges. An entry imported before is skipped, so importing the same file twice is safe.

Payments to check

Payments Nola couldn't place appear under To check:

Click Not a member payment for anything else (a supplier refund, a transfer between your own accounts).

#When nobody pays

Nola checks every night:

• An e-invoice still unpaid 3 days after its due date becomes Failed, and the membership Past due.
• A direct debit charge whose member hasn't set up the mandate within 7 days becomes Failed too.

A payment that arrives later still matches the charge, and the membership goes back to Active. Your rules for putting memberships On hold apply as usual. See Member documents and failed payments.

#Related

• Take online payments
• Sell plans and manage members
• Send invoices
• Collect unpaid balances