RecChat: Credit Balance Dashboard - 09/01/2022
Table of Contents
Episode Summary
In this episode our host Bret Alarcon is joined by EDU Manager, Zach Malloch, and Senior Support Specialist, Keriann O'Leary, to discuss the new Credit Balance Dashboard. Keriann highlights how you can access the new dashboard, what features are available in this program, and when you might want to use it during daily processing.
Recording
Transcript
Bret Alarcon 0:08
All right. Welcome to RecChat. I'm your host Bret Alarcon. So today Keriann is here to talk about the Credit Balance dashboard and bulk refunds. So she's gonna be talking about the recently revised bulk refund finance program, which is now called the Credit Balance dashboard. So before we start, I want to tell you, if you have any questions, please Click that. Click that little q&a Button down at the bottom. I see we're already have one question saying hello, Keriann, my hero.
Keriann O'Leary 0:37
Hi, Kim!
Bret Alarcon 0:38
Great question. All right, and so ask your questions there. And whilst the answers for you. And if you have any comments to make during the presentation, as well, there's that little chat Button where you can make a comment with us today. We have a full crew, we have Julia, we have Dan, and we have Zach. Join them, they're gonna be helping with questions. Oh, and one for Zack looks like chat is disabled, so we can get that enabled quickly. So Thanks, Frank. So with that, I'm gonna hand it over to Keri, and she can take it away.
Keriann O'Leary 1:15
Okay, let me share my Screen. Then a minute, though, here we go. And I will get you my RecTrac. All right, can everyone confirm that we're seeing my RecTrac
Bret Alarcon 1:37
we can confirm!
Keriann O'Leary 1:38
Awesome, okay, so the Credit Balance dashboard is the new route bulk refund finance, it was revised in three 110 11 00. So if you are on a Build prior to that, you will not see it and you will still have the bulk refund finance. So that is directly a menu item. Credit Balance dashboard. So I guess the first pieces that you do need to have and this is in the same pathway as the bulk refund finance under management, system management financial. And then within that grouping is the Credit Balance dashboard. So your menu must have that option available in order for it to be here. So if you're not finding it and you're on that Build or greater, I would recommend that you look at your menu which sidenote, you do have to sign out and then back in in order for that to take effect if you do make that change. So we'll just go ahead and open that. And now here we go. We can use one side or the other to search so I don't have a huge amount of credits in my mock database. Here, I have my little thing, I have 12 in total. So I don't know if anybody can notice here, but these are individual credits. So I have Mikey two times here, he's got two entries, even though it's the same household, so individual credits have been added. So you can look through this DataGrid in and of itself four credits, if you know your household number, you can go ahead and pop that in. I guess my household doesn't have any. Or you can go ahead and use your search filters here. So a lot of customers with longtime customers of ours may have a lot more credits. If you've migrated, you know the recalibration of fees and household balances that can also cause more credits to take place.
So if you do have a large number, you can start to identify them by using range here, I'm just gonna go and throw Mikey two times, enter the value or hit your Pick list as always. And then if I filter results, Mikey two times is here two times. But then I will just filter and show everything again. So a few new options with this. We can see any fully used credits. So if I turn that on, I will get my household will probably show up in there when I hit filter. Oh yeah, we've got more showing. But I'll just turn that back off and just show the ones that are here. So if you select one patron, you will see a couple of buttons along the side. These buttons are also a part of the data grid. They're not permissions based. They are specific to the Screen design and they react accordingly. So if I have one household selected, I'll get four buttons. I can view the history of that. One was it assigned where it came from the receipt that came from any usages and remaining credit balances so I can see I've used 10 It was originally 150 I Have 40 left and then very conveniently, we can print that receipt. So you don't have to go out and back into receipt reprint, which is a very convenient option. I'm just gonna go ahead and hit X on this Screen so that I can go back. As you can see, there is no back Button, this just cancels the pop up itself. And I have the whole listing here. One thing to know about this refund finance Button, this is dependent upon your payment Profile. If you do not have I believe it's the course settings to allow to refund the options, we have those four generic types, refund now refund, apply refund finance, and the very least used refund void. If you do not have refund finance listed under that core to settings under allowed refund options, your refund finance Button will not appear for you. So it's not the Screen design. It's not a menu. It's not permissions, it's just the payment Profile. So the dashboard is again, it's a menu item. It's under management, system management, the financial grouping. So if I go here, it would be management, system management. Oh, I'm sorry, it's not the financial household. As soon as I saw that there, I apologize. I led you all astray. It's household management, and then the Credit Balance dashboard
Bret Alarcon 6:37
happens to the best of us.
Keriann O'Leary 6:39
Sorry! It's new.
Bret Alarcon 6:42
But another question too, while you're being in that question. Now, if you don't enter the household number, then you should be seeing all the credit balances in your database.
Keriann O'Leary 6:53
That's correct. So if I just close this Screen and reopen it again. We've got the full listing up here. And then if they have been used, that's what this Button is for. So my household notoriously in my database, I do carry a balance or two debits and credits. But you can see here I don't show any. But as soon as I Click on the include fully used, I can filter for that household uniquely. And I can see that I'm the biggest abuser of debits and credits and in my database, which is a result of testing for you find folks out there. But again, if I turn that off, and then filter, I currently have no credits in my household, which will then just show us those that are not fully used.
Bret Alarcon 7:45
Looks like Neris is having a problem with her is not populating for me. And I know we definitely have credits not fully used. You could try maybe the options, maybe you have some default filter in there, or something like that. What else can you think of Keri,
Keriann O'Leary 8:02
I would think that we can investigate it with the ticket, maybe you have permissions blocking specific credits from being seen, or the item that it came from might be restricted. I don't know if you entered anything on the left hand side here, if you enable the VSI Screen design possibly does that which if we close the Credit Balance dashboard, support VSI Screen design and then come back in here. I don't know maybe if that will uncover something. But we can certainly take a deeper look for you if you're not seeing credits and you definitely know that you have some
Bret Alarcon 8:42
sounds good. Thank you, Keri Oh, another question for you
Keriann O'Leary 8:47
We are getting to that Deb.
Bret Alarcon 8:50
Oh, ok
Keriann O'Leary 8:53
this is found in Build 3.1.10.11.00 So if you are a Build prior to that the Screen will not exist for you
and we don't see it where to look, I would look in your menu design. So I would go through Profile assignments, checking that hierarchy of linked profiles to locate your menu design and then if you're using simple menu permissions, it's likely a system function. So I would make sure that is on and if a part of the management node and if you're not using simple permissions then I would go directly to menu management and view the the menu specifically that you're a part of and again, once you do enable that menu design requires after you chain make a change that you sign out and then back in order to see that change. Okay, so if we do select one patron, we have the refund finance. But if we select two patrons We have two buttons, restrictions and refund finance. I can go ahead and Click bulk refund finance here. And I get a listing of all the patrons per usual I get the de jour user in order to alter the settings of that refund receipt. And we do have the option to email those patrons. One really cool thing about this is that the pencil edit icon allows you to alter the amount being refunded. So right here I have two households showing two credits for a total of 200. I did not plan that it's just the way it worked.
If I hit my pencil edit icon here, I can actually alter this. So I can tell it 70 and then 30. And I can refund half of that. Or I can alternatively if I've selected Miss Elba here on accident, I can turn it off it to zero, and I would exclusively be refunding George Jones here his $70. If you're a paranoid Polly like I am, you can also just close the Screen, turn off Miss Alba, and then hit the refund finance or if you meant to select Randy. And then you can again go back to that Screen. The drawer user can be altered as needed. But typically, it's the person who's processing it. And then again, the same thing. You can also let me go back here for a second, let me select all rows, and then use the refund finance option. So in lieu of going through one by one, for some of those advanced users out there, we already know about this, and then some that don't, we can enable not only just the row for an edit, but the entire column. So if we go to Options, and then the settings which control what's available within the DataGrid. You can see here the Edit Column is available for refund amount. And I could just go through and do whatever I needed to do accordingly. And refund those credits. So alter it to 70, I'll do the full 555 4520. And we'll just do 530, etc. And then each time the overall refund amount will change options, Show Settings, and then turn that back off. So that solidifies that value. Okay. Other than refund finance, unfortunately, not due to the nature of the credits in and of themselves. This is a similar situation, if you cancel a program. People may have paid cash, they may have paid check, they could have used a credit cards due to the various amount of payment methods that patrons use. There's no one way to bulk refund and another form of tender it this Screen is exclusive to refund finance.
Zach Malloch 12:59
I do I do kind of like Debs use case there, though. And I could see this being expanded to that potentially the at least enough to put an enhancement request. Maybe Dan, would you mind putting that in there? We'll just see what dev says.
Daniel Rotondi 13:15
Yeah, absolutely.
Zach Malloch 13:16
Thank you so much. Thank you, Keri. Sorry. Yeah, no,
Keriann O'Leary 13:20
no, of course, I was just kind of side glance in here to look at the other questions.
Bret Alarcon 13:25
Yeah I can read that off for you. Are there any plans to update the refund cash drawer for those of us that have drawer numbers that are more than four digits? And are there any plans out a Field to write up an email note to sign with the email receipt?
Keriann O'Leary 13:42
I do not think so I would have to get into the development system to view that. I did request though, as it has been requested of me on support the option to RecConnect these patrons and communicate with them that way stating that you have these credits, please come use it so we can have your money recognized and not be a liability. But I am not aware. And of course it does require a double check development doesn't weigh in on everything they do to verify whether or not there are any additional handsome enhancements to that regard. Now refund Fiats drawer number. And that would also have to be updated there as well, to see if that's possible. But I think that's a little bit above and beyond refund Castro that'd be cashiers in general.
Bret Alarcon 14:38
I think it was just four digits. So it looks like we're able to get four digits at once.
Keriann O'Leary 14:44
The question was more than four digits. So five I do believe
Bret Alarcon 14:49
I misread. Thank you for catching that for me.
Keriann O'Leary 14:52
Yeah, yeah, of course.
Bret Alarcon 14:54
All right, once more questions.
Keriann O'Leary 14:56
Yeah, hit me.
Bret Alarcon 14:57
All right. Will there be a debit balance dashboard. We've created some of our own but being report based they're not filterable, like this credit balance dashboard is I
Keriann O'Leary 15:09
think that would be more of a finance question. I'm sorry, a development question. I'm not aware of anything like that. But we can certainly check and see if there's any plans to include anything like that, for future releases,
Zach Malloch 15:22
that should already be an enhancement. And when we first did a RecChat about the Credit Balance dashboard, I remember that coming in as request. So I'm pretty sure that we, we wrote that up and already talked to our product managers stopped that and so hopefully, we'll be getting them. I believe that what they said was, this is the first of many things like this, they're hoping to do so fingers crossed.
Keriann O'Leary 15:46
Awesome. Thank you, Zack,
Bret Alarcon 15:47
and Deb has a little bit more of a tack on to that email question, I should say, if not an email message, perhaps a comment that can be added to the receipt. So we'll have to add that into the enhancement request as well. All right. Rochelle wants to know, if it shows in my master full access that I have a credit, refund, credit refund finance, but when I tried to search for I can't find it. Interesting, that might have to be a ticket as well, if you're not able to see the the credit balance on the Screen, I'm not sure.
Keriann O'Leary 16:28
I have credit refund finance. So I'm not aware of that being a menu item. This is the direct menu item for this dashboard. And then in the payment notes. Silly me and actually, it's my top one here, I go top down to my user, I do believe has a payment Profile. And let me just update that to show you. Core settings two, allowed refund options. So if I actually just remove refund finance from here, and I save this and go back, I think it instantly actually reflects that. But we'll see here in a moment clear selected, I will need to close the Screen and reopen it.
No Bhutan it's not there. So did that cover? That is what I meant. Okay, one of those two things covered your question.
Bret Alarcon 17:36
Cool. I think you should take over my job, as a family do much better than I
Keriann O'Leary 17:42
cover a lot of chats with combined terms in there. So we'll just turn that Button back on, close the Screen and reopen that puppy. Now, it is important that we do go through the link profiles in order to determine this payment Profile. A lot of customers a lot of databases out there have a variety of payment profiles for various reasons. You know, frontline staff not being able to refund for specific reasons this, that and the other. So going top down via your user settings is extremely important when determining your specific Profile settings so that it will be step one user user group and then find the first payment Profile and update that accordingly. Your credit balance dashboard shows up in my master full access Profile. So in your menu design,
Bret Alarcon 18:45
that's what I would guess.
Keriann O'Leary 18:46
So we can the menu Profile works in two ways. The ZZZ user does cannot have a custom menu. So let me just open one of these over here. This is a combined approach. So if you have simple menu permissions enabled, and your menu design down here, hat process, it's a management menu over here and you have that functionality included. It is still possible and in this one I'm using super that the menu design code in menu management itself has had that option removed. So it is possible that the menu design Profile itself is not the only place that adjustments need to be made. You may need to go to the custom menu and of itself and see that a quick way to double check and see if that is the specific issue would be to go to menu design. Find the Profile for non and link it directly to your Username when you do that and sign out and signed I can if it appears, it's undoubtedly the menu design in and of itself.
Bret Alarcon 20:04
Cool. That looks like it worked for her.
Keriann O'Leary 20:07
Great!
Bret Alarcon 20:08
all right. And Zach also commented that you Screen design to bump up the drawer number to five digits, and it seemed to work. Okay. So that is possibly affects.
Keriann O'Leary 20:21
I remember there being issues in the past with altering those values, they don't come across in some areas. So it may work. But um, it may cause issues in other areas.
Zach Malloch 20:39
My thought is, if they are using larger drawer numbers already, then it probably is completely fine to bump it up here. Yeah, and I would assume that you're using those larger drawer numbers, I can't remember exactly who was asking the question in order to do ask that question. So I think it should be okay, if we can accept that Field into the tables, and it should carry over to everything else.
Keriann O'Leary 21:04
Deb, to answer your question, not directly through this credit balance dashboard, this is only going to show households with a credit it's not doing net balances. So given that need to trail trial, given the need to just refund those that exclusively have a credit balance, I would use the trial balance report, run the net balance report and then determine those that exclusively have credits accordingly and refund them as needed. I hope that is helpful.
Any other question? Anything anybody would like to see? Just again?
Zach Malloch 21:59
We can think of anything?
Bret Alarcon 22:04
Yeah, we can hold on for a couple more minutes. See if we can any questions.
Keriann O'Leary 22:11
Okay, so because these buttons are a part of the DataGrid. And you have the users out there that have customized or WebTrac screens or other areas, you cannot drag and remove those buttons, you will have to just hide them potentially to make them not be in the grid. And yes, 3.1.10.11.00. And the current Build is 3.1.10.12.01. For anybody who's curious about that as well,
Bret Alarcon 22:55
a lot of numbers,
Keriann O'Leary 22:56
a lot of numbers. Another cool thing you can do in here and going to the settings, we can group these. So like we can see here, Mikey two times has two credits. But we don't necessarily see that it's organized by date and time. So for those of you who do have a large number of credits, you may not be able to identify that immediately. Within our options again, in the settings, we can group by household number. So if I turn on household number here, and Click the group and then close my Screen, consolidates by those numbers so you can see the overall credit that the household has. And in the instance of Mikey two times here, I can see that he has two credits, and the options I can then open all groups and then I have a bird's eye view of those patrons that do have more than one credit, the date of the original credit and then should I need to I can see any of that usage history refund that exclusively. I dont think my event timer is working and potential and potentially review said receipt.
So that is a nifty little trick that you can use there to identify some of those. But then see the overall values, I'm just going to close all groups, which will consolidate them again. So sometimes people need to, you know, refund out those larger ones, you can do that and refund out these unique credits so I can take Han Solo here was a large value, and then I could refund him exclusively. You could do the same thing with any of these settings in here. You can use the date value any of these will help group and consolidate in that way.
Bret Alarcon 24:53
Angelas just adding the receipt reprint is very helpful. So thank you.
Keriann O'Leary 24:57
You're very welcome. You may have also take this credit balance dashboard and export it and get an Excel. So if auditors want to see any of that specific detail, you can provide them this full listing. And then any of the unique details about that, for example, they can say, well, I need to see any credits older than a certain date. And we can use our filters or these ranges over here to show those or if the credit predates I think some patrons out there need to refund credits that are older than three years or something like that. So you can see any credits that pre exist the pandemic on our before, and then select all of those rows and refund those accordingly.
Which would be a good portion of my credit.
Bret Alarcon 25:58
Michelle was wondering if you can repeat the answer the question that was asked about the Pay Code other than refund finance
Keriann O'Leary 26:04
at this time, it is not possible. We can only do refund finance due to the various ways that credits or payments are added to account. Most often, if cash is paid finance wants cash to be refunded. If a credit card is paid in, then a credit card should be refunded. So the only one way to do this in bulk is via refund finance to have finance distribute individual checks to the patrons.
Bret Alarcon 26:35
Thank you. Oh, another question from Frank. After you perform the refund finance, do you then run a report for finance?
Keriann O'Leary 26:45
If finance requires that I think that would be more of a procedural question you some people might need to reprint all of those receipts in which you could do the bulk refund. I'm sorry, the bulk print, I think you know, a receipt listing for that is a little bit more convenient. Actually my output listing I told you guys, it's my favorite thing. It's definitely right there after Profile assignments. So these refund reports here are very convenient, because they will provide the address the name and the all of that detail for finance. So if they require a report like this, then absolutely I would go ahead and produce that for them so that they can refund those checks if a full refund was issued. So over here, if a credit is refunded on accident, and it should not have been, if you do a transaction update to reverse a refund finance, it will refund apply so that in this instance over here for any of these patrons was to take Luke Skywalker, that $5 credit would then go back onto account. So that is also viable, and then make a note for finance that that one doesn't need to be refunded dashboard, it's a menu item. So first and foremost, you need to have you need to be on Build 3.1.10.11.00. And then it's a menu item under you can Type it in, of course directly right here, management, system management, household credit balance. And then if it's not here, your menu design either the menu itself via the simple permissions or the actual menu design management would need to be updated to allow for that function. In a pinch, you can potentially just link the Profile for menu equals none. So that you can get that there without having to alter the Menus and just get you what you need very quickly. And that should remove any custom Menus, which can be dangerous. And again, after you alter a menu RecTrac requires sign out of the database. Do not keep your session sign out fully. And then sign back in.
Bret Alarcon 29:14
Awesome, I think we're starting to run out of questions. And we're just about at the 230 mark. So we
Zach Malloch 29:20
did have a real quick update, Bret!
Bret Alarcon 29:22
Yes.
Zach Malloch 29:23
So I did go into Screen design. First thing about this is you might want to know that it's part of RecTrac processing Screen design and it's actually called the bulk credit balance refund Screen if you're looking to increase the drawer number of Field. So by default, when you find the drawer number Field it will say it's four characters. If you bump it up to five I've seen no problem anywhere that I've tested that I've generated or received. I've used it in the refund finance process and everyone ideal distribution report and I've seen that number now Carrie's point is a very good one. I think the main thing that You'd be potentially running into, especially if you made it like a seven or eight digit number is potentially a cash journal, or a gl distribution report, it could extend off of that column. And it might overlap with another column or something like that. But But five should be okay. In those cases,
Keriann O'Leary 30:18
that I see it here as credit balance dashboard. And my
Zach Malloch 30:22
its credit balance dashboard is the actual dashboard itself. But when you're doing the refund finance where you're entering the cash drawer number, that's the Credit Balance refund. It's kind of the pop up Screen that comes up as a result of the Credit Balance dashboard.
Keriann O'Leary 30:36
Awesome, thank you.
Zach Malloch 30:38
Yeah, and that's exactly why I shared it because it caught me by surprise to the first time I did it. I did the bulk credit balance dashboard and like, where is that Field? But it's actually that pop up
Keriann O'Leary 30:49
Sly devil. Awesome.
Bret Alarcon 30:54
Thanks, Zach. All right. Well, if there's no other questions, I think it's safe to wrap it up. Any closing thoughts, Keri or anyone else?
Keriann O'Leary 31:05
Thank you, for everybody who attended all my super fans and non fans out there. I hope this was very helpful for you. And if you have any issues or need some assistance with either getting the menu to appear or using the board or seeing those credits, please make a case and we'll be happy to reach out and help you with any of those needs.
Awesome. Thank you very much, everyone.
Zach Malloch 31:28
All right. Take care.
Daniel Rotondi 31:30
Take care.
Keriann O'Leary 31:30
Thanks.