Flexible payments drive growth

Woman Who inspires and motivates women in business to achieve their dreams through annual awards, community building, and a series of online and in-person training courses.

Its driving force is founder Sandra Garlick MBE. Sandra’s journey from successful solicitor to receiving an MBE for her contribution to the empowerment of women has taught her plenty about being in business — particularly the pain of getting paid late.

“Late payments were a constant challenge in my solicitor days,” said Sandra. “That continued when I launched the Woman Who awards. Invoicing clients and waiting for them to pay manually meant I was always chasing late payers, and keeping track of everything was a nightmare.”

Covid sparked a cashflow crisis when cancelled events meant Sandra had to refund thousands to guests and sponsors. But it also forced her to think of different ways to reach clients — and new approaches to payments.

“I developed online training modules, bootcamps and membership communities where people paid monthly,” she said. “But I was going to be handling more payments, more regularly, and there was no way I wanted the hassle of invoicing people and chasing payments. I needed to automate payments and that’s why I use GoCardless.”

Click, click, paid. On time, every time

GoCardless allows Sandra to schedule automatic monthly collections in a few clicks, whether it’s a few hundred pounds for a training course or several thousand for event sponsorship.

“GoCardless is so simple and seamless — that’s what attracted me to it,” she said. “I just send someone a link to an online Direct Debit mandate and I get notified when it’s completed. Every invoice raised is then automatically scheduled for collection because it’s integrated with my FreeAgent accounting software.”

Allowing clients to split payments across as many months as they need has lowered the barriers to purchasing and provided a steady flow of cash.

I never have to think about monthly payments because once clients have signed up using GoCardless I know they’ll be collected. That strong line of monthly recurring revenue helps me finance events and develop new services.

Cashflow is further strengthened because payments are almost never late, sparing Sandra the awkward task of chasing customers.

“I rarely get failed payments — I might have had one last month,” said Sandra. “And they’re much less hassle to deal with anyway. Instead of only finding out once I’ve checked the bank statements at the end of the month, I get a notification and so does the client. I then just click to reprocess the payment through GoCardless once I’ve confirmed with them what the issue is.”

Less work, more business

The double win of automation plus rock-solid reliability has helped Sandra achieve the dream for many small businesses: she works less, but does more business.

“I hate doing my accounts and it used to be so cumbersome doing reconciliations and counting up payments to check everyone was up to date,” she said.

GoCardless payments are automatically pulled into my bank account feeds, so now payments admin takes just a few minutes every day. That’s compared to spending a whole weekend at the end of every month chasing payments and reconciling accounts. It’s already helped me drop working Fridays, and Mondays are next.

Clients love it

Sandra says her clients love GoCardless as much as she does, and that she even recommends they use it for their own businesses.

“When you mention paying by Direct Debit they don’t bat an eyelid because everyone knows how it works,” she said. “I don’t hesitate to recommend it to clients for their own businesses, as an easy way to create a steady flow of recurring revenue and reduce late payments.”

Sandra is also an active member of the Federation of Small Businesses (FSB), a not-for-profit organisation that supports small businesses and the self-employed through education, community and lobbying. GoCardless has championed the FSB’s work over the years through activities such as sponsoring their Late Payments Hub and launching a late payments trend survey with them. Sandra urges business owners to take full advantage of the federation’s resources.

I wouldn’t advocate for something I haven’t used myself. Like GoCardless, the FSB has helped me on my journey and provides some phenomenal resources. I highly recommend it to other businesses.

Key to future growth

Woman Who’s services continue to grow and Sandra expects to lean even further into flexible payment plans enabled by GoCardless.

“I’m launching new memberships, new live events and writing a book,” she said. “GoCardless means I can keep my services affordable with automated payment plans. I’m not sure what the business would be like without it — but I do know there’d be a lot more admin.”