Wise-Pay Automatic Payments Overview

What's a Wise-Pay Automatic Payment?

Automatic Payment scheduling provides the flexibility of automating and debiting a saved client's bank account or credit card for a variable invoice amount every month.  This functionality is perfect for MSA invoices which can often change based on the number of users, devices or elements managed under the agreement.

Note: Payments via both bank account and credit card are able to be processd via Automatic Payments for payments processed through our Global Payments, Ezidebit and Payrix integrations.

How does Wise-Pay Automatic Payments work?

Automatic Payments provide a method of direct integration between ConnectWise Manage and Datto Autotask PSA Invoices, the Merchant Service providing the payment gateway for ACH/DDR and credit card debits, and your accounting package. Wise-Pay uses the Wise-Sync service to send invoices to your accounting package (Xero or QuickBooks Online), checks if the customer has been setup as a Wise-Payer for Auto-Payments, and by matching the billing terms, it will schedule the payment based on those billing terms using the saved payment method - ACH / DDR or saved Credit Card.

What do I need to do?

    1. Add Wise-Pay Payers & Configure Automatic Payments
    2. Configure Automatic Payment Settings & Billing Terms
    3. Sync to Schedule Automatic Payments

Note: Configuring Automatic Payment settings and Billing Terms will be a once-off setup while adding Wise-Payers and configuring Auto-Payments will be required for each customer.  The syncing of existing invoices is already happening, so no extra steps!

Configuring automatic payments is a multi-step process that involves merchant and payer admins. For the automatic payments to work successfully without any errors, you need to ensure that:

  • You have an agreement with the payer to draw automatic payments
  • You have configured the appropriate billing terms in ConnectWise Finance or Agreement (or both) modules
  • You select the appropriate billing terms on invoices to trigger automatic payments
  • The payer has configured their Wise-Pay account and added the following:
    • Credit card or bank account details, or both
    • Configured an automatic payment mapping that maps an invoice with a specific billing term to a specific payment method
  • You have configured Wise-Pay with appropriate billing terms to drive automatic payments
  • The payer has configured the bank account or credit card (or both) in Wise-Pay

Helpful Suggestions:

  • To encourage clients to agree to automatic payments, you are able to discount or waive credit card surcharges
  • It is recommended that you send the invoice to the payer a few days before the payment date, informing them about the automatic payment

Functionality

With a Wise-Pay and Wise-Sync Invoice sync, once you have set up Automatic Payments, you are able to:

  • Send the invoice to your Accounting Package
  • Schedule the debit based on the billing terms set on the invoice
  • Update the scheduled debit amount if you re-sync the invoice
  • Add on any transaction fees you choose to pass onto the customer (and provide them with a separate invoice for the additional fee and or/surcharge)
  • Match the payment into your Wise-Pay clearing account with the invoice for simple reconciliation
  • Send payment confirmation back to ConnectWise when the next sync after the scheduled debit occurs

Payer Communication

It is recommended to let Payers know about Wise-Pay before signing them up for Automatic Payments. Below are some messaging examples you may like to use, or tweak to suit your needs: 

Invitation to New Clients - Not currently on DDR/ACH

New Clients - Not currently on DDR

Dear [Client Name],

 At [Company Name] we are always looking for opportunities to innovate and make things easier for our clients. We are pleased to be partnering with Wise-Pay and [Payment Gateway Name] for all Direct Debit payments from [DATE] onwards, and we would like to invite you to pay your monthly [Name of Monthly Invoice/Service type] invoices via direct debit.

 Paying with Wise-Pay provides some distinct advantages:

[NOTE: Amend as needed]

  • Get your invoices earlier – Invoices for customers paying with Wise-Pay will be sent out at the start of the last week each month. Any contract changes for the month will be updated by this date, and your invoice will be provided to advise you of the amount to be debited
  • Pay by Credit Card – Are you a big fan of Credit Card points? We can set up your Direct Debit to be taken from your credit card. Please note, this option will attract a surcharge, which will be sent to you as a separate invoice. 
  • Set and forget - Direct Debit payments for non MSA invoices can be set up on Wise-Pay to ‘set and forget’! This means, put in the date for payment and nominate the method, and payment will be processed via your chosen method on that date. No manual handling necessary!

If you would like to pay by Direct Debit:

  1. You will need to complete a [Payment Gateway Name] Direct Debit form
  2. You will receive a Wise-Pay login – which allows you to pay any other invoices via Direct Debit (or credit card) if you wish
  3. Invoices will be released one week prior to the Direct Debit date of the 1st of each month
  4. Any changes to your Schedule of Services during the last week of the month will be incorporated into the following month
  5. If you chose to pay via Credit Card, surcharges are automatically applied for Visa / Master Card (2.5%) or AMEX (3.5%) and an invoice issued at time of payment for the surcharge. [NOTE: (Adjust to match your terms]

 Please advise if you would like to pay via direct debit or credit card and we will send you a form to complete.  

If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to get in touch.

Kind regards,

Invitation to New Clients - Already on DDR/ACH (with previous provider)

Existing DDR Clients - Transferring to Wise-Pay

Dear [Client Name],

 At [Company Name] we are always looking for opportunities to innovate and make things easier for our clients.

 We are pleased to be partnering with Wise-Pay and [Payment Gateway Name] for all Direct Debit payments from [DATE] onwards.

 What will this mean for you?

  • You will need to complete a new [Payment Gateway Name] Direct Debit form
  • You will receive a Wise-Pay login – which allows you to pay any other invoices via Direct Debit (or credit card) if you wish
  • Invoices will be released one week prior to the Direct Debit date of the 1st of each month
  • Any changes to your Schedule of Services during the last week of the month will be incorporated into the following month
  • If you chose to pay via Credit Card, surcharges are automatically applied for Visa / Master Card (2.5%) or AMEX (3.5%) and an invoice issued at time of payment for the surcharge. [NOTE: Adjust to match your terms]

 Please take a moment to complete and return the attached Direct Debit form. Once returned, we will set you up on Wise-Pay for your monthly direct debit, and a Wise-Pay login will be sent to your email address. Direct Debit forms must be returned by [DATE].

 Please inform us if you wish to pay by Credit Card, so that we can make the necessary arrangements for processing to occur on the debit date each month.

 If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to get in touch.

 Kind regards,

Automatic Payments FAQs

FAQ: How to setup Automatic Payments without Credit Card Surcharges

Wise-Pay allows you to setup Auto-Payments without Credit Cards surcharges, you can do this if:

  • You take bank account payments (DDR's) and want to offer this method without any additional fees
  • You don't want to charge surcharges (and you will wear the cost).

How do I configure them?

You will need to make sure your PSA setup has a Billing Term for no surcharge, if it doesn't you will need to create one. Here's how to do it:

    1. Select Configure > Automatic Payments from the top toolbar menu
    2. Select the Account you wish to edit
    3. Click on the Edit Auto-payment settings icon
    4. Click on the + Add Billing Term button  
    5. Enter the field details
    6. Click Save
    7. Select the new Billing Term you just created and click on the edit Billing Term icon 
    8. You will now see a Surcharges tab on the Billing Terms Settings screen
    9. Click on the Add a Surcharge button
    10. Add the Card Types you wish to change surcharges for
    11. Default amounts are displayed, you are able to edit the charges by clicking on the edit auto-payment surcharge icon for each card type.

You will then need to ensure the customers are allocated to the correct Billing Term both in Wise-Pay and your PSA.

What do they look like?

FAQ - What happens if I apply a credit to an invoice due for Automatic Payment

There is a configuration setting to allow partially paid invoices to have the remaining balance paid, otherwise a payment will generate an error.

How do I configure it?

  1. Click Configure

  2.  Click  Automatic Payments

  3.  Click on the edit auto-payment settings icon on the Account you would like to make changes

  4.  Click on the Don't Allow button under 'Finalise Partially Paid Invoices'; it should now show: 'Allow'

  5. Click Update


Note

Wise-Pay will check for existing payments and attempt to modify the automatic payment amount.

DDR's are currently checked when queuing and scheduling

Credit Cards are checked when they are queued, scheduled and processed

Important: If a credit note has been applied to an invoice after it has been scheduled, then the full amount will still be deducted (or tried to be deducted).

What do they look like?

FAQ - How do I temporarily disable Automatic Payments for a payer?

Where Automatic Payments are enabled, Wise-Pay will attempt to queue invoices for Automatic Payment by matching the billing term on each invoice with a Wise-Pay Automatic Billing Term. If it finds a match, and your payer is setup for Automatic Payments, the invoice will be queued and scheduled as determined by the billing term.

To temporarily disable a payer's invoice from being queued automatically, you need to update the payer's Company in your PSA to use a billing term that is not Wise-Pay enabled. That is, instead of using a Wise-Pay Billing Term (e.g. Wise-Pay (15 Days)), set the customer's billing term to a Non Wise-Pay Billing Term (e.g. Net 15 days).

How do I configure it?

To update the payer's billing term in ConnectWise:

    1. Locate your payer's Company in ConnectWise.
    2. Click on the Finance Icon - This will take you into the Finance Screen.
    3. Change the Billing Term to a Non Wise-Pay Billing Term
    4. Click Save & Close

What do they look like?

Company Finance screen in ConnectWise 

FAQ - Are my customers able to save their credit card details with Wise-Pay for automated payment processing?

When setting up your Wise-Payer, you may have authorisation by your customer to add Bank or Credit Card details they have given you.

What do Payers need to do?

When you have added a new Payer, Wise-Pay automatically emails your customer with an invitation for them to set their user account password, and to provide further information such as name and contact information, if not entered already. Once they have set and confirmed their password, accepted Terms, and registered, they will then be able to view their invoices, and update their own Bank or Credit Card details themselves, if they prefer not to disclose this information.

As a part of updating these details they will be prompted again to accept Terms & Conditions for billing on the new Payment Details. Not until they accept the T&C's will the changes be accepted. This validates that you have permission to use the updated payment method.

Payers are still able to go into their Wise-Pay Dashboard and view all of their Payment Transactions. They can also obtain copies of their invoices, including Surcharge Invoices.

What do they look like?




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