At a glance
The count of confirmed GoCardless bank-debit payments in the period. Highly periodic (monthly billing-day clusters for SaaS subscriptions). Each/paymentsrow withstatus = confirmedis one transaction, regardless of value.
| What it counts | COUNT(/payments WHERE status = confirmed). One row per payment, across all schemes. |
| API endpoint | GET /payments. |
| Currency | Currency-neutral (count). |
| Refunds | NOT subtracted from the count. |
| Indemnity claims | A subsequent indemnity / chargeback removes the payment from confirmed and moves to charged_back; this changes the historical count retroactively. |
| Failed payments | Excluded. Lifecycle: pending_submission, submitted, confirmed, failed, cancelled, charged_back, paid_out. |
| Time window | 30D vsP. |
| Alert trigger | drop >15% vsP, paired with revenue_trend. |
| Roles | owner, finance, operations |
Calculation
Calculated automatically from your GoCardless data. See the At a glance summary above for what the metric tracks and the worked example below for a typical reading.Worked example
30 days for Northstar Analytics (UK B2B SaaS), 03 Apr 26 to 02 May 26:| Scheme | Confirmed payments | Avg per payment |
|---|---|---|
| BACS Direct Debit | 308 | GBP 254.55 |
| SEPA Core | 55 | EUR 258.18 |
| SEPA B2B | 12 | EUR 800.00 |
| - | - | - |
| Total confirmed | 375 | - |
- Heavy concentration on BACS billing days. SaaS subscriptions typically bill on the 1st and 15th; the 308 BACS payments are clustered on those two days plus a few smaller mid-month dates.
- SEPA B2B count of 12 is small but high-value. Annual prepayments for enterprise customers; once-a-year cycle.
- Mandate-active vs payments-confirmed gap of 380 - 375 = 5 customers. Either failed (4 BACS
INSUFFICIENT_FUNDS) or still in flight (1 SEPA mandate dispute).
Sibling cards merchants should reference together
| Card | Why pair |
|---|---|
goc_total_volume | Volume / count = average. |
goc_avg_transaction | The per-payment view. |
goc_volume_trend | Daily count is the cleanest seasonality signal for monthly billing. |
goc_success_rate | Successful / attempted ratio. |
Stripe stripe_transaction_count | Cross-PSP comparison. |
Reconciling against the vendor’s own dashboard
Where to look in the GoCardless Dashboard:Payments → All payments (filter “Confirmed”). Count visible at the top.Why ours may differ:
| Reason | Direction |
|---|---|
| Time zone | Boundary days |
| Confirmation lag | Today’s submissions confirm in 2, 5 days |
| Indemnity flip | A claimed payment removed from confirmed retroactively |
Known limitations / merchant FAQs
“Why is the count clustered on certain days?” SaaS subscriptions bill on fixed days (1st, 15th, anniversary date). DD volume is highly periodic vs card volume which is more uniform across the month. “My count dropped 20%, churn?” Possible. Open the underlying mandate count: if active mandates dropped, customers churned. If active mandates held but confirmed payments dropped, mandates are failing (insufficient funds / closed accounts). “Failed payments, do they count here?” No. Onlyconfirmed. Failed are tracked in goc_decline_rate.
“Indemnity claim retroactively removes count?”
Yes. A BACS indemnity claim flips the original payment to charged_back; the historical count for that period decreases by 1.
“Multi-scheme, single count?”
Yes; count is currency-neutral.
“Mandate count vs payment count, difference?”
Mandate count = active subscribers; payment count = transactions in period. A monthly biller with 300 active mandates produces ~300 payments per month. Drop in payment count without drop in mandate count = collection failures.
“Multi-month annual contracts, count once or recurrently?”
Annual SaaS billed annually = one payment per year per customer. Counts in the month of the annual charge.