When a member agrees to pay by Direct Debit, two things have to happen in CiviPlus: the membership needs a payment plan that collects by Direct Debit, and the member needs a mandate holding their bank details. You do both on one screen, in one pass.

This gets the member set up. It does not yet tell your bank anything, and no money moves until you run the batches described in How to run your Direct Debit batches.

This assumes Direct Debit is already configured for your organisation. If the options below are missing, an administrator needs to work through Setting up Manual Direct Debit first.

What can I do in CiviPlus?

Create a membership paid by Direct Debit instalments, with the schedule worked out for you.
Record the member's mandate, including their bank details and your Service User Number.
Move a member onto a new mandate when they change bank, without disturbing payments already collected.
Correct a mistake on a mandate without raising a new instruction to your bank.

Before you start

What this needs: permission to create memberships, and access to custom data so the Direct Debit Mandate tab appears on the contact record — without it you can create a mandate but not see or correct it afterwards. You also need a contact record for the member and their bank details from a signed Direct Debit instruction; if you have the signed form as a file, have it to hand so you can attach it to the mandate.

Step 1 — Start the membership

Open the member's contact record, go to the Memberships tab and click Add Membership. You can also go to Memberships → New Membership and pick the contact there.

Choose the member before anything else. Direct Debit needs to know whose mandates to offer, so if you pick the payment method first CiviPlus stops you with "In order to use Direct Debit as payment method, a contact must first be selected". Starting from the contact's own record avoids this entirely.

Choose the Membership Type. Member Since, Membership Start Date and Membership Expiration Date fill in automatically from the membership type, and you can override any of them.
Fill in Membership Source if you record how members found you. It is searchable later.
Leave Status Override? set to No so the membership follows the normal status rules.
Select Paid Membership. This reveals the Contribution and Payment Plan section further down the page.

Step 2 — Choose Direct Debit and create the mandate

In the Contribution and Payment Plan section there are two tabs, Contribution and Payment Plan. Direct Debit lives on the second.

Click the Payment Plan tab.
Set Schedule to Monthly, Quarterly or Annual. The instalment table underneath updates as you choose.
Set Payment Method to Direct Debit. A Direct Debit Mandate section appears, and the instalment dates change to fit your collection cycle.
In Mandate, choose Create New Mandate... for a member who has not paid you by Direct Debit before. If they already have a mandate, it is listed here and you can reuse it.

Choosing Create New Mandate... opens the Create Mandate window.

Enter the Bank Name, and the bank's address in Bank Street Address, Bank City, Bank County and Bank Postcode if you hold it. Only the name is required.
Enter the Account Holder Name exactly as it appears on the account, then the A/C Number and Sort Code.
Leave DD Code as 0N for a new mandate. Change it only when you are recording a mandate your bank already holds: 01 if the bank has set it up but nothing has been collected, 17 if payments have already been taken, 0C if it has been cancelled.
Set Start Date to the date the mandate was established, and Authorisation Date to the date the member signed, which is usually the same day.
Use Authorisation File to attach the signed instruction if you have it as a file.
Check the Originator Number. It defaults to your main Service User Number, so change it only if you are collecting for a different entity.
Click Save. CiviPlus confirms the new reference, for example Mandate created with reference number DD000037, and selects it in the Mandate field.
Click Save on the membership itself.

Checking it worked

The member now has an active membership, a payment plan with all its instalments listed as Pending, and a Direct Debit Mandate tab on their contact record showing the mandate and its code.

Nothing has reached your bank yet. The mandate sits at 0N, which means new and unverified, and no payment can be collected against it. It will be picked up by the next New Direct Debit Instructions batch, which is where it gets sent for verification. See How to run your Direct Debit batches.

Changing a member's mandate later

There are two ways to change a mandate and they do very different things. One raises a fresh instruction to your bank; the other only tidies up your own records.

Never use Edit to change the account a live Direct Debit collects from. Editing changes CiviPlus only. Your bank keeps collecting from the old account, and the member's next payment fails or comes out of an account they thought they had closed. Any genuine change of bank details needs a new mandate.

The member has changed bank — use a new mandate

On the member's contact record, open the Contributions tab and then the Recurring Contributions subtab. Find the payment plan and choose Use a new mandate.

Fill in the new bank details in the Add Direct Debit Mandate window, exactly as you did when the member first signed up.

Tick Send mandate update notification to the contact if you want the member emailed the new details as soon as you save.
Click Save.

A new mandate is created at 0N with its own reference, and every instalment not yet collected moves across to it. Payments already taken stay recorded against the old mandate, so your history stays accurate. Because the new mandate is at 0N it joins the next New Direct Debit Instructions batch automatically.

If the member has genuinely closed the old account, cancel the old mandate as well so your bank stops collecting on it: edit it, set its DD Code to 0C, and include it in a Direct Debit Cancellations batch.

Something is wrong on the mandate — edit it

Use this for a misspelt account holder name, a missing bank address, attaching the signed form, or setting the code to match what your bank already holds. The mandate is updated where it stands, its code does not change on its own, and nothing is sent to your bank.

Open the member's contact record and click the Direct Debit Mandate tab.
Click Edit Direct Debit Mandate.
Change what you need to. Tick Send mandate update notification to the contact if the member should see the corrected details.
Click Save.

That is the member set up. The mandate now waits for the next batch run. To send it to your bank and start collecting, see How to run your Direct Debit batches.

Setting up Manual Direct Debit — the administrator configuration this page assumes is in place.
How to run your Direct Debit batches — sending mandates for verification and collecting the money.
How to send Direct Debit notifications and letters — confirming the sign-up to the member.
Creating memberships — the wider membership screen this page builds on.
Introduction to Manual Direct Debit in CiviPlus — what the Direct Debit codes mean.

How to put a member on Direct Debit