[OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] question about credit card payments in the staff client

[Jason Etheridge]

Hi folks,

In the 1.4 series of Evergreen we're making the underlying fields for
credit card information optional.  I don't think anyone actually wants
to record credit card numbers, and in the past leaving that field
blank past led to an ugly error, so I know at least some staff have
been putting bogus information in that field to get by.  My question
is whether it would be okay to get rid of that credit card
information-gathering dialog altogether?  If we did this, that payment
type would be treated merely as a category for reporting, and you'd
still have the option to annotate the payment, if say, you wanted to
record authorization numbers for a credit card transaction.  If anyone
does want it to remain, I could make it optional per library, but if
no one needs those fields, it'd be easier for me to just remove the
dialog altogether.  Also, if it is to remain in some way, which fields
should be optional?  What do you think?

The fields affected are Credit Card Type, Credit Card Number, Expire
Month, Expire Year, and Approval Code.  All payment types are able to
record notes if you have Annotate Payment checked, and this won't
change.

Nor will this have any effect on other credit card related
functionality, such as the work being done for online payments in the
OPAC.

Thanks for your thoughts!

-- 
Jason Etheridge
 | VP, Community Support and Advocacy
 | Equinox Software, Inc. / The Evergreen Experts
 | phone:  1-877-OPEN-ILS (673-6457)
 | email:  jason at esilibrary.com
 | web:  http://www.esilibrary.com