No. of receipts and Timing of weekly payments - expectation

[petednz]

Testing GC. Hoping you can confirm this all looks correct in terms of outcome.

I set up a page for recurring and entered 2 x weekly for £1 each from my UK account.

I did this on March 6th and got 2 receipts from GC

• You've set up a Direct Debit
• You've set up a Direct Debit subscription

What I see in CivICRM is:

Recurring Contribution

£ 1.00 | Every 1 week | March 12th, 2018 12:00 AM | 2 | In Progress

Contribution

£1 recurring Received: March 12 Status: Pending (Incomplete Transaction)

In GC what I see is

Status = submitted Description = Online Contribution: gocardless Charged 12.03.18 Paid out 14.03.18

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So this all seems to make some sense but I have two specific questions

• is it expected that I should get those 2 responses from GC? I would only expect one.

• is it expected that eg Weekly contributions always start on a certain day of the week (Monday)

I tried to answer these questions myself by reading

https://gocardless.com/direct-debit/timings/

and searching for info about receipts but didn't succeed

[artfulrobot]

Looks right to me.

• yes you get 2 emails from GC. Technically one says you've set up a mandate, ie you've given this organisation the right to take money from you. The subscription is notice that they are going to use that right to actually take money from you.

• subscriptions start asap, I think. So not on any set day but typically 5 days after setting up the mandate, I think.

• in about a week's time, but a few days after the payment date, if you've got the webhook set up right, the contribution should change to complete.

[Upperholme]

Although it's not a major issue, I would query the use of the 'Pending (incomplete transaction)' status. With Paypal website payments standard, this status is reported when someone initiates a payment and for whatever reason it doesn't complete (maybe Paypal rejects their card, or maybe they choose to walk away). So, for me, this status is often indicative of something not happening as it should.

Of course, with other payment processors the experience may differ. Would a status of 'Pending' or 'In progress' be more appropriate?

In terms of the delay between initiating the mandate and the first payment being taken, I think this is a requirement of the direct debit guarantee - that the contributor has a period of time in which they can change their mind.

[artfulrobot]

"Pending" is the built-in status. This is what is being used.

The "incomplete transaction" text is added by the CiviCRM UI template unless the contrib is marked "pay later". Pay later is usually used when some manual process is going to happen, e.g. cheque in post or something, so I think it's OK, though it is a bit unhelpful to have it described as "incomplete" I agree. The other built-in option would be 'in progress', but 'pending' is truer.

[petednz]

Yes it sounds like there could be a better descriptor than 'incomplete' but understand that may require some development by someone

[artfulrobot]

I'm closing this now as I think it was a support request that's been dealt with.