Knowledge Centre - Case Study

Direct Debit expert™ Reduces Acorns' Annual Direct Debit Costs by 85%

Direct Debit Gives Charity Greater Control

Acorns Children's Hospice Trust offers nursing care and support to over 500 life limited or life-threatened children and their families living in the West Midlands, Worcestershire, Herefordshire and Gloucestershire. It has three children’s hospices that offer short breaks, nursing care, emergency and end-of-life care, and a community team that offers support at home. The majority of Acorns' income comes from donations. In 2003, Acorns offered its donors the option to contribute regularly by Direct Debit. Jo Gwilliam, Head of IT at Acorns, says: "We chose to adopt Direct Debit partly because it was a natural progression from standing orders, but more importantly because it gives us more information about when we will receive donations."

Acorns Brings Direct Debits In House

Acorns initially used a third-party bureau to collect its Direct Debit payments. However, towards the end of 2008, the company started to investigate whether it could save money by processing its Direct Debit payments in house. Gwilliam came across Direct Debit Limited on the Internet and contacted the company to find out about its services. Direct Debit Limited introduced Acorns to Direct Debit expert™ (DDe™), a system that processes and manages Direct Debit collections. "We were looking for a system that would allow us to process Direct Debits and create letters automatically," says Gwilliam. Acorns looked at a couple of other products, but liked the way that DDe™ dealt with reports from Bacs. Gwilliam says: "DDe™ interprets the Bacs information, so a person doesn't have to interpret it, which saves us time."

Reduces Annual Processing Costs by 85%

Acorns primary goal in collecting Direct Debits in house was to reduce costs. Gwilliam says: "The system had to be cost-effective and we didn't want to have to employ someone to operate it." Direct Debit Limited implemented DDe™ for Acorns in the first quarter of 2009. Since then, DDe™ has helped Acorns significantly reduce its annual Direct Debit processing costs by more than 85%. Direct Debit now makes up 80% of the charity's regular-giving collections with 3,000 donors paying by Direct Debit.

Makes it Easy to Comply with Direct Debit Scheme Rules

It doesn't take long for the team at Acorns to comply with the Direct Debit scheme rules because DDe™ does it for them. Gwilliam says: "DDe™ takes the files from Bacs and interprets the codes for each line, so we don't have to go and look it up in the book." In addition, DDe™ produces all the correspondence Acorns needs to send to donors as a requirement of using Direct Debit. Critically, regular updates ensure that Acorns complies with changes to the scheme rules. "We know that if there's a change to the Direct Debit scheme rules, it'll be reflected in the system," says Gwilliam.

Increases Acorns' Efficiency

Acorns staff find it quick and easy to process payments and deal with reports using DDe™. "The system stops us wasting time on things we don't need to do," says Gwilliam. "We don't have to understand everything; we trust that the system understands it." Users just need to right click and follow the instructions in DDe™ to process payments and deal with exceptions, such as amended or cancelled transactions.