Sweet New Features for Patron Edge

If your organization is running Patron Edge 3.340, patch 2 is now available for download at http://downloads.blackbaud.com. It includes fixes for the following reported issues:

BB575312 - Error: Microsoft OLE DB Provider for ODBC Drivers: [Microsoft][ODBC SQL Server Driver][SQL Server]Cannot open database
BB584847 - Error: Assertion Failed: unhandled control type - need to add to multiselectcontrolhandler BBBox1
BB581378 - Mastercard recorded as AMEX when a sale is made in Kiosk

That's the boring stuff, now for the really awesome features:

Debit cards - Now you can process debit cards through Patron Edge! Accepting debit cards is a great way to increase your ROI and use the money that you're not paying in fees to further your mission. Consider this scenario:

In a week, you perform 250 in-house transactions totalling $30,000. If you run all of those as credit cards at a 3% fee per transaction, you pay $900 in fees. If you run all of those as online debit cards (meaning you're capturing a PIN) at about $0.60 per transaction, you pay $150 in fees. Repeat for three more weeks, and you've saved yourself $3,000. Obviously not all of your in-house sales will switch from credit to debit, and fees vary based on your merchant services provider, but just looking at ballpark figures you can save yourself thousands a year.

Gift Cards - We have added support into Patron Edge for prepaid, reloadable gift cards. You can now sell your own personal-branded gift cards for patrons to give to their friends and family! Our current partner for this is Valutec .

Gift Certificate/Voucher Report - I wrote about this spiffy new report we've added into the Reports Wizard in this post a couple weeks ago, along with a screencast. It's solid, flexible, and can likely solve any of your reporting needs around vouchers without having to write your own custom reports.

All of these features are included standard in Patron Edge, no additional modules to purchase. To add debit and gift cards, you will want to speak with your merchant services provider to find out what information needs to be added into PCCharge.

Make sure you have a patch plan and can handle the downtime it takes to apply a patch, and don't forget to see Knowledgebase solution BB346664 to make sure any products you integrate with are compatible. If you haven't updated to Patron Edge 3.340 yet, call up your account rep and tell them that you're ready to get these new features!