Provide way to fetch patron's credits using Polaris API
We have Polaris integrated with Teller to process patron payments. Within Teller, we would like to use Polaris patron credits as a form of payment. We have been talking to Teller about this, and we believe this can be achieved by getting patron credit information via the API. At present, the API only returns charges owed by a patron, not any credits a patron may have.
Melissa De Guzman
shared this idea
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Melissa De Guzman
commented
In response to Lynn:
Thank you for your comment! The way I am understanding this is that this is actually completely doable now. Is this correct? If we proceed, Teller would be doing this work for us. Who from Polaris can we contact if we have more technical questions regarding this?
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Lynn Reynish
commented
You can fairly easily fetch the credit information via the API in PatronBasicDataGet and PatronAccountGet. What's more exciting is using it to pay for charges. It isn't as simple as using credits for charges. You would need to use PatronAccountRefundCredit to clear the credits and then "store" that amount somewhere. Then use PatronAccountPay to apply that amount to any charges.
This is much more trouble that it used to be on our old Horizon system.
We fetch and display credits for customers but have not bothered with developing a method to apply those credits to charges - largely because we've gone fines free so it isn't worth the effort. Customers have to speak to staff to deal with any credits that appear.