User Not Visible in Payment System Subject List

Summary

I have multiple users and entitlements in YSoft SafeQ. When I access the Payment System Administration and go to Subjects, I can see some of the users while the other users are not visible.

Explanation

The described behavior is usually correct although it may look confusing. Let us explain how the system works.

The money account (subject) in the payment system can be created for example as follows:

  1. Create CashDesk 26 in YSoft SafeQ.

  2. Import user via CSV, the user is part of cost centre 26:

    • 100;add;"testuser,testuser@test.local";"John";"Doe";"do_not_convert@@1211";26;"testuser@test.local";

  3. Create Entitlement in the Payment System:

    • Summary: SampleEnt

    • Shared entitlement: disabled

    • Cost centre numbers: 26

    • Usernames: <field left empty>

    • Type: Prepaid account

    • Initial balance: 15.00

  4. Do any of the following:

    1. Authenticate on the YSoft SafeQ Embedded Terminal as user testuser

    2. Authenticate on the YSoft SafeQ End User Interface as user testuser

    3. Edit Entitlement SampleEnt and press "Refresh" button

  5. The result is:

    1. testuser has a money account (subject) created automatically, he is listed in Subjects at Administrative web interface of Payment System . If you look at his details, you can see he is assigned to entitlement SampleEnt.

    2. testuser is not specifically listed in SampleEnt at Administrative web interface of Payment System → Entitlements. There you can only see that cost centre 26 is assigned to this Entitlement. No direct link to user is visible here simply because the user himself was never linked to this entitlement, he inherits the entitlement based on his cost centre membership.

When the user belongs to the Entitlement with "Unlimited access", money account (subject) is not going to be created at point 4 as there is no technical need for it to exist. User is going to use the system free of charge. The only exception where you could see such a user in the Subjects is that user previously belonged to some entitlement with a "Prepaid account" and was later moved to the new Entitlement with Unlimited access. Such money accounts (subjects) do not get deleted as they can already have some credit assigned from the past.

The Refresh button is only available / functional at the non-default Entitlements with disabled sharing. Thus even if you see the button in your current YSoft SafeQ version at "Default entitlement", clicking it will have no effect.

Using Refresh button is generally not needed even after Editing the entitlement. Subjects are going to be mapped to a correct entitlement as soon as they interact with the system (e.g. when they Authenticate on the MFD). By clicking the Refresh button you are only enforcing the system to make a change immediately so that result can be observed on the Payment System administrative interface. The main benefit of clicking the button is when making major changes, such as linking a new Periodical Recharge to the entitlement.

The Periodic Recharges apply only to the existing subjects. That means the newly created/replicated user may miss the recharge period (user would have to authenticate on the Embedded Terminal or End User Interface before the Periodic Recharge trigger time).

  • To increase the virtual balance even for the newly created subjects the solution is to set up the entitlement's initial balance. Initial balance in combination with Periodical Recharge of type "Recharge to amount" is typically the best approach for schools that wish to grant specific amount of free credit to students every year. Initial balance will guarantee the students will get the virtual credit no matter of the date of the first interaction (may it be the beginning of the year or the middle). Periodical Recharge will guarantee that existing subjects in the Payment System will also get the virtual credit at the trigger time, type "Recharge to amount" prevents subjects from getting the double in case they get the virtual credit by the Initial balance shortly before the Periodical Recharge trigger time.

  • Alternatively the administrator may opt to press the Refresh button in the entitlement before the Periodic Recharge is triggered, but doing it every year or more often is usually not feasible.

For more information refer to documentation YSoft Payment System Administration web interface.

Using YSoft SafeQ 6 build 45 or newer is recommended. It contains an improvement (SBT-1107) resolving a situation where subject is not created again in case it was previously deleted by "Remove prepaid accounts" button and the user may use the system free of charge - the probability of the issue to occur is quite low though.