Direct Debit is the low-effort way to be paid for regular teaching. Once a family has set one up and switched autopay on, LessonLoop collects their invoices and instalments as they fall due — nobody has to remember to tap Pay, and you don’t have to chase.
The family sets it up, not you
A Direct Debit is the payer’s authority to take money from their bank, so only the family can start it. There is no way — and shouldn’t be — for a studio to create a mandate on a parent’s behalf.
They do it from the parent portal → Invoices, on the Direct Debit card at the top of the page. That card has four states:
| State | What the family sees |
|---|---|
| Empty | No mandate yet — the consent step, which hands off to Stripe to collect the bank details. |
| Active | A live mandate, with the autopay switch. |
| Revoked | The mandate was cancelled, named plainly as cancelled, with the way to set a new one up. |
Your job is to connect card payments first (set up card payments) and then point families at their Invoices page — see pay by Direct Debit, which is written for them.
The legal notices come from Stripe The Direct Debit mandate confirmation and advance notice of each debit are issued by Stripe, our payments provider. LessonLoop never writes copy that impersonates them.
What autopay collects
With a mandate in place and autopay on, a job runs each morning and collects what has fallen due:
- Invoices the family owes.
- Payment plan instalments, one by one as each due date arrives — see set up a payment plan.
Nothing is collected before its due date, and a family on Direct Debit is collected rather than chased — your reminder ladder leaves them alone while a collection is in flight.
”Collecting” is not a failure
While a debit is on its way, the invoice sits in the Collecting state — its own tab on Billing & Finance → Invoices. In the parent’s portal the Pay button gives way to an honest line: “Bank debits take up to 4 working days to confirm.”
That’s the bank’s timetable, not a delay in LessonLoop. Don’t record a manual payment against a Collecting invoice — you’ll double-count when the debit clears.
When a debit fails
Debits do fail: a closed account, insufficient funds, a cancelled mandate. When one does, the instalment is parked rather than quietly dropped, and it’s named on the invoice.
- Open the invoice from Billing & Finance → Invoices.
- Find the Parked collections section.
- Choose Resume collection on the instalment you want to try again.
A parked collection stays parked until you resume it or the family pays another way — LessonLoop will not keep re-presenting a debit to a bank on its own.
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