Most Direct Debit messages go out on their own once they are set up. There are still times when you need to send one yourself: the first batch when you go live, a member who asks for their details again, a correction, or someone who has no email address and needs a letter in the post.
All of it starts from a search. You find the members or payments concerned, then pick a Direct Debit action and the template you want.
This assumes the templates have been prepared. They arrive with placeholder wording in the Direct Debit Guarantee that has to be replaced first. If nobody has done that yet, see Setting up Direct Debit notifications before sending anything to members.
What can I do in CiviPlus?
Email any of the five Direct Debit communications to a set of members you have searched for.
Produce the same content as a printed letter for members with no email address.
Adjust the wording for one send without changing the underlying template.
Re-send a notification a member says they never received.
Before you start
What this needs: permission to search memberships and contributions and to send email from CiviPlus. Be clear which template you want before you start, because you choose it near the end of the process.
Start from the right search
Which action you are offered depends on what your search returns, and this catches people out.
Search | Send Direct Debit Notifications | Print Direct Debit Letters |
Find Memberships | Yes | Yes |
Find Contributions | Yes | No |
So a letter always comes from a set of memberships, never from a list of payments. If you have found the payment and now want to post a letter, redo the search in Search → Advanced Search with the same contribution criteria and set Display Results As: Memberships.
Email a Direct Debit notification
Go to Memberships → Find Memberships and search for the members you want. Narrowing by membership type, status or join date is usually enough; for something more specific, use Advanced Search and set Display Results As: Memberships.
Tick the members to write to, or tick the box in the heading row to take everyone on the page. To take every match across all pages, use the All Records option above the results.
Open the Actions menu and choose Send Direct Debit Notifications. Typing direct debit filters the list. CiviPlus goes straight to the Send Email screen.
Check From and the Recipient(s) list.
Choose the template in Use Template. All five Direct Debit templates appear there, and the subject and body load from the one you pick.
Make any changes needed for this send. Editing here affects this message only, not the stored template.
Send the email.
Watch for the warning at the top of the Send Email screen. If any of the people you selected cannot be emailed, CiviPlus says so before you send, with wording like "Email will NOT be sent to 1 contact". Those members are silently left out, so note who they are and send them a letter instead.
Print letters for members with no email address
Letters are the only Direct Debit communication that works without an email address, and they come from the same five templates.
Go to Memberships → Find Memberships and search for the members concerned. If you are working from a collection date, use Advanced Search, set your contribution criteria, and set Display Results As: Memberships.
Tick the members you need. The search matches contacts, so a member holding more than one membership appears on more than one row. Check you have the right one.
Open the Actions menu and choose Print Direct Debit Letters.
On the Print/Merge Document screen, choose the template you want in Use Template. Any of the five can be printed, not only the sign-up notification.
Leave Document Type as Portable Document Format (.pdf) for posting, or pick Word or Open Office if the letters go into a mail-merge process.
Click Preview to check the result, then Download Document.
Three things to know about printed letters. They do not mark a collection reminder as sent, so the reminder job keeps picking that payment up. They are recorded as a Print PDF Letter activity rather than a Direct Debit one, so they will not appear in reporting on Direct Debit reminders. And the letter is drawn from the membership's most recently created instalment rather than a payment you filtered on, although the "your next payment will be collected on" line always shows the earliest instalment still due.
Do not use "Thank-you letters - print or email" instead. It is a general CiviPlus action and it does not supply the Direct Debit information, so the letter comes out either showing raw markup such as {$mandateData.bank_name} or almost entirely blank. Use Print Direct Debit Letters.
Sending to everyone a Direct Debit event just happened to
To reproduce what an automatic reminder would have sent, search on the activity that the event recorded, then display the results as memberships so the Direct Debit actions appear.
Go to Search → Advanced Search.
Open the Activities section and set Activity Type to the one you want: New Direct Debit Recurring Payment for sign-ups, Update Direct Debit Recurring Payment for plan changes, Offline Direct Debit Auto-renewal for renewals, or Direct Debit Mandate Update for mandate changes.
Set an activity date range covering the period you are catching up on.
Set Display Results As: Memberships.
Search, select the members, and use Send Direct Debit Notifications or Print Direct Debit Letters as above.
Checking it worked
Every Direct Debit email records an activity against the member, so their Activities tab shows what was sent and when. Printed letters appear there too, recorded as Print PDF Letter.
That is it. For the messages that should go out without anyone remembering to send them, see Setting up Direct Debit notifications.
Related articles
Setting up Direct Debit notifications — preparing the templates and automating the sends.
How to run your Direct Debit batches — the collections these messages give notice of.
How to put a member on Direct Debit — where the sign-up being confirmed comes from.
Membership Communications — other ways of writing to members.
Introduction to Manual Direct Debit in CiviPlus — how the whole process fits together.