Direct Debit with GoCardless.

01 · Connect

Connecting your GoCardless account

Head to Admin → Setup and choose GoCardless (Direct Debit). GymFront hands you to GoCardless to sign in — or create an account there and then — and brings you straight back. That's it: no API keys, no copy-pasting.

The Admin → Billing → GoCardless page always shows your connection status. “Not connected” means Direct Debit subscriptions can't run yet; “Connected” means GymFront is linked to your GoCardless account and your gym's name and support contact are synced onto GoCardless's hosted pages, so members always see who they're paying.

02 · Mandates

Setting up a member's Direct Debit

When staff add a member and pick a plan, the signup wizard ends at GoCardless's secure hosted page. The member's name and email arrive pre-filled — they only enter their bank details, protected by the Direct Debit Guarantee.

The subscription activates automatically once the mandate is in place. If a bank ever rejects or cancels a mandate, GymFront clears it from the member's record and staff get a one-click “Reissue Direct Debit mandate” action.

03 · Billing

Subscriptions and collections

Each membership plan (weekly or monthly) becomes a GoCardless subscription that collects automatically on schedule. GymFront mirrors the real collection calendar — the member's “renews on” date is GoCardless's actual next charge date, not a guess.

One-off pulls ride the same mandate where they're needed: joining fees at signup, and catch-up collections when staff retry a failed payment.

04 · Recovery

Failed payments, retries and write-offs

A failed collection flips the member to arrears the moment GoCardless reports it, and they appear in the Admin → Billing attention queue with the bank's failure reason. Staff have three recovery rails: Retry DD queues a fresh pull against the existing mandate; Mark paid records an out-of-band payment (cash, transfer); Write off clears the balance with a full audit trail.

The moment any of those succeeds, the member flips back to active and drops out of the attention queue. Chargebacks and late failures are handled the same way — the original payment stays on the ledger with a linked refund entry, so the books always reconcile.

05 · Refunds

Refunds

Refunds flow back through GoCardless against the original collection — for example when staff cancel a whole class, every Direct-Debit-paid booking is refunded automatically. Each refund lands as its own ledger entry linked to the payment it reverses.

06 · Reconciliation

Statuses and reconciliation

Every mandate and payment status you see in GymFront is driven by GoCardless webhooks — a payment shows as collected only when GoCardless confirms it. Admin → Billing gives you the ledger view: gross, refunds and net over any window, split by payment method, with a CSV export for your accountant.

A nightly reconciliation sweep cross-checks GymFront's ledger against GoCardless and flags any drift, so the numbers on screen are the numbers in your GoCardless account.