CiviCRM Community Forums (archive)

Hi,

We have a requirement to maintain a cash balance for contacts, visible on contact summary. Initial balances will be imported from a legacy system; these may be positive (in credit) or negative (owing money). When a contact e.g. creates a membership worth £50 with a pay later contribution, their cash balance will be reduced by £50, showing that they owe money. When this contribution is completed, their cash balance will be increased by £50, restoring their balance to what it was initially. Staff should be able to see why the balance is as it is.
They would also like 3 mailing tokens for the cash balance now, on a fixed date last year & on a fixed date the previous year.

One approach:
(A) A custom field & hook. Import the initial balances, then have the hook add/subtract subsequent contribution amounts.

Another approach:
(B) Import the initial balances as pending contributions and implement the balance as the sum of a contact's pending contributions.

Approach (B) is maybe better for the "see why the balance is as it is" requirement, in cases where there was a non-zero imported balance and there have been subsequent contributions: the initial balance is there in the list of a contact's contributions, along with subsequent ones.

Questions...
- In approach (B), how to represent a positive imported balance, i.e. the contact being in credit? In theory a pending contribution with a negative amount might work, if that doesn't throw Civi into a spin, but that seems an odd creature. Or perhaps a completed contribution of a special type that we reserve for this purpose, say "Credit", and which we include in the balance calculation?
- Is there a better approach making use of the CiviAccount work?

Any other thoughts welcome.

Cheers,

Dave J

What system are you importing from? What is the data structure for credit balances in the old system? 

This may impact your choice, as you mentioned a requirement of being able to explain how the system calculated the balance.

Thanks for the response. It's a custom Access db. It has 3 fields for the cash balance now, on a fixed date last year & on a fixed date the previous year.

These fields are set by an annual update which:
- migrates balance now -> last year -> previous year;
- adjusts balance now to reflect the new year's subscriptions.

Cheers,

Dave