Use a Direct Debit Bureau to migrate to AUDDIS

Direct debit is a hugely popular means of collecting regular payments from your customers – or, if you’re a membership organisation or a charity, from your members or donors. The traditional paper-based system has many advantages – but as an organisation grows, can become cumbersome. For this reason a decision to migrate to AUDDIS, the Automated Direct Debit Instruction Service, can help streamline your direct debit processes – and a direct debit bureau can help!

What is AUDDIS?

The Automated Direct Debit Instruction Service was introduced in the late ‘90s to allow service users to submit direct debit instructions to BACS electronically.  As organisations have moved over to AUDDIS, they have seen the advantages of a system which

• Reduces processing costs and set up time (there is no waiting for DDIs to be posted to the bank)
• Offers increased accuracy – if the AUDDIS instruction fails to lodge you will find out via your Bacs reports – whereas with a non-AUDDIS system you do not find out until the collection fails
• Allows you to accept Paperless Direct Debit instructions

So far, so good – however, there are additional obligations on a service user looking to migrate to AUDDIS, such as the need for Know Your Customer checks which require you as the service user to verify the identity of the individual setting up the direct debit instruction.

Options for moving over to AUDDIS

While AUDDIS offers significant advantages in the longer term, migrating to the automated system involves a number of important decisions. If you are already using a traditional direct debit sign up, you can

• Migrate your existing Direct Debit Instructions to become AUDDIS instructions under your existing Direct Debit Service User Number
• Obtain a new AUDDIS Service User Number
• Run 2 Service User Numbers in parallel (one AUDDIS enabled, one for traditional direct debits)

Each option presents a number of pros and cons – but the main problem for an organisation contemplating a move to AUDDIS is that it’s not something you will have done before. As AUDDIS migration is something most service users will only experience once, you may feel that your organisation doesn’t have the knowledge and experience to make sure you are making the right decisions.

Using a Direct Debit Bureau to support AUDDIS migration

While your organisation will only migrate to AUDDIS once, a direct debit bureau will have experienced the process many times, offering support and consultancy to a wide variety of organisations. A direct debit bureau:

• can use the experience they have from working with other organisations to help you weigh up the advantages and disadvantages of each approach and decide the best way for your organisation to migrate to AUDDIS.
• will have experience of the different software available, and can introduce you to the software providers, or even assist in the procurement process, which can save your organisation time, and crucially, money.
• can support you through the ‘test’ phase that will be critical to the success of your migration to AUDDIS.
• can help you migrate your existing direct debit instructions to AUDDIS
• can support you beyond the migration, offering follow up support, without the need for you to have an ‘in house’ expert.

If you are considering migrating to AUDDIS, Clear Direct Debit can help. We are a BACS-approved Direct Debit Bureau and Direct Debit training provider with many years’ experience supporting direct debit service users in all aspects of direct debit. Get in touch to find out how we can help you migrate to AUDDIS!