Using Branding Themes in Xero
It’s a great idea to tell your clients that you will be collecting your money automatically – as often as possible. This avoids complaints and customer frustration, and allows you to say “I told you so” when necessary. Your clients should clearly have signed up for automated collection and explicitly given their permission for you to do this. Harvesting their bank/credit card details and signing them up without their consent is REALLY BAD!
Xero give you a great way to remind a customer that you will be automating the collection – it is called “Branding Themes.” We recommend that you create a branding theme that informs clients not to pay and that you will deduct the amount from their account on the due date AS AGREED. Then, simply set this as the default branding theme for the contact. When a contact signs up for automated payments through the Pay Now screen we can send you an invoice to alert you (so that you can set this branding theme).
Branding Themes are set in the Settings, Invoice Settings section.
Please watch the video below for a tutorial on how to do this.
Special Note: Online Payments feature
Xero have now added an "Online Payments" link to the invoice and repeating invoice page. It appears that this setting on the repeating invoice page OVERRIDES the Payment Services setting. If you DO NOT want your users to have a Pay Now button on their invoices then please ensure that the Online Payments is set to "None" - especially on the repeating invoice master.
If you do not want your customers to be given a Pay Now link then you should leave the online payments option unchecked. If you leave it checked your customers will still be given the option to use the Pay Now screen.