Payments that are a cut above

Planity is a beauty appointment booking platform that gives business owners and their staff more time to focus on what they do best: taking care of their clients.

“Our solution has two parts,” said Margaut Dalbergue, Lead Revenue Operations, Planity. “There’s a B2C aspect that allows anyone to book an appointment online, while the business part offers online booking and payments, inventory, and shift management.”

Since 2016, Planity has been using GoCardless to charge customers for their monthly platform subscription.

€4,000 of monthly savings

Planity used to collect monthly payments using its bank’s platform, but this was a bit of a grind. Switching to GoCardless and integrating it directly with their invoicing and accounting tools instantly saved them tonnes of time.

“Using our banks’ gateway meant we had to export and upload an XML file every month to initiate payments, and then manually reconcile them in our invoicing tool once collected,” said Thibault Chaufour, VP Finance, Planity.

Getting paid is much easier today because GoCardless schedules collections as soon as an invoice is raised. Payments are then automatically reconciled in the company accounts — all without any intervention from the Planity team.

“We process more than 60,000 payments a month with GoCardless, which is more than 98% of our total collections,” said Thibault. “The automation saves a considerable amount of time, the equivalent to one full-time member of staff, so roughly €4,000 a month.”

95% payment success rate

GoCardless payments are also super reliable. Unlike credit cards, bank accounts don’t expire and customers rarely change them, and the resulting low failure rates mean better cashflow for Planity.

“We have a 95% payment success rate with GoCardless,” said Thibault. “As a CFO it is very important for me not to have to worry about cash collections. It’s great to know every month that all invoices will be collected and the money will arrive in our bank account.”

Simple and convenient payments also make for a great experience for Planity’s customers.

Once a customer has signed up to Direct Debit, they never have to enter their payment details again and we know that their payment will be collected every month without any problems.

Set-up for success

Issues with payments are rare but Planity’s GoCardless Customer Success Manager means it always has back up if needed.

We’re really happy with the relationship we have with GoCardless. We get extremely fast responses, which allows us to move forward very quickly with our projects.

Their Customer Success Manager also regularly provides insights that help Planity to keep payment performance consistently high.

“We have quarterly discussions to help us fully understand the issues and statistics from the previous quarter,” said Thibault. “So we can see where we’re improving on our conversion and chargeback rates.”

More time for growth

Knowing that payments are all taken care of means the Planity team has more headspace to focus on the company’s future. And right now that means international expansion.

The time GoCardless saves us on payments admin gives us more time to concentrate on company strategy, like driving growth in France and developing our presence throughout Europe.

“And thanks to the scalability and efficiency we get from GoCardless, whether we have one, fifty or a hundred thousand customers, there’ll always be very little work on our end.”