Payment Card Processing Newsletter
November, 2016 issue
University of Nebraska—Lincoln
PCI Compliance Team
The PCI Compliance Team is a collaboration between Information Technology Services (ITS) and the Office of the Bursar. It is a cross-functional team responsible for administering the University of Nebraska-Lincoln payment card policies and procedures, monitoring payment card activity, and educating merchants.
Contact Information
Information Technology Services (ITS)
Office of the Bursar
Download the printable PDF version of this newsletter here.
Newsletter Contents
Introducing... pci.unl.edu
The UNL PCI Team has created a new web site devoted to payment card processing at UNL. Please visit our site and save it for future reference:
PCI.UNL.EDU
We are still populating the information on the site, but much of it is already in place. This is where you will find the most current information on payment card processing and PCI. Among the many items you will find are:
- How to report a breach
- Policies and procedures
- How to become a merchant
- Contact information
- Compliance information
- Resources
- Newsletter library
The UNL PCI Team has been working diligently with the other campuses to update our policies. We are working toward a University-wide policy. This is a large undertaking, but we have come quite a ways in the process and hope to have updated policies available on our site soon.
Terminals –Programming and Information
We’ve had much difficulty over the past year with the programming of the stand-alone swipe terminals at many retail stores. We sincerely apologize for all of the efforts that have been necessary. Please continue to let us know if you have any issues at all with your terminals. We will persist and insist on a resolution with Elavon. Some items to note regarding terminals are found below.
Batch Settlement
Auto-Settle Time—All University terminals are set to auto-settle at a specific time each day. The terminal must be connected in order for this to happen. For merchants with multiple terminals, all terminals should be set to auto-settle at the same time unless there is a business purpose to settle them at varying times. This prevents splits in the settlement activity and prevents confusion when reconciling. If you are having difficulty or seeing odd breaks within daily activity, please reach out to the Bursar’s Office for assistance in troubleshooting what is happening.
Time of Batch Settlement—There are a couple of ways you can find the settlement time of a batch. The settlement time for your terminals is in MerchantConnect. It is in EST there. To find it, drilldown to an individual transaction and look at the Batch No. field. The Batch No. field displays as:
MerchantConnect Ex. 03010062042 030 1006 2042
Batch Date Time
You can also find the settlement time on your Settlement Report that prints out of your terminal. There it is in CST and can be found at the top of your report. So for the same batch as shown above, your settlement report from your terminal will show:
Settlement Report Ex. 10/06/16 19:42 Batch #: 030
Update vs Download
An update and a download accomplish the same thing. The difference— an UPDATE is an automated process to update the programming and software a terminal runs on. An update is automatically pushed out by Elavon and occurs on a monthly basis. A DOWNLOAD occurs when the merchant calls Elavon and asks for an update outside of the ordinary update schedule.
Terminal Programming
Two types of programming are present on a terminal – Regular Daily Processing and Updates. The correct setup must be in place for both of these. If a merchant reprograms an option on their terminal, it is not a permanent fix because the item is not changed in Elavon’s setup file. So it will revert back to the old programming once another update happens. When calling in to Elavon and a download is necessary, be sure to ask for BOTH the Daily and the Update setup to be consistent with one another.
A few other useful tidbits:
- Merchants should consistently use the same method of connection for Regular Daily Processing and Updates i.e. phone line (majority of UNL merchants) vs ethernet
- 9PABX Programming is setting in which the terminal will dial a ‘9’ when dialing out. The default setting for Elavon’s programming is no ‘9’.
- Dial Connection is use when the terminal is set to use a phone line for connection rather than Ethernet. The default setting for Elavon’s programming is Ethernet.
We did it!
UNL is finally live with Elavon for all of our merchant accounts. It took a year of frequent phone calls, endless emails, and the efforts of all of the departments, but we did it!!
Thank you all for your patience, understanding, and support throughout. We will now step into a new phase of cleaning up records, fine tuning processes, troubleshooting issues, and catching up on those tasks that have had to wait while we were engrossed in the conversion.
Unfortunately, you all know what that means… PCI.