Siebel Loyalty Administration Guide > Host Organization's Use of Siebel Loyalty >

Lending Points to Loyalty Members

If a member has almost enough points to qualify for a desired redemption, some companies will lend the member enough points to qualify. The member will back the loan with future accruals.

Loyalty does not allow a member to have a negative point balance. Instead, loans are used.

NOTE:  Loans can only give non-qualifying points.

To decide whether to lend a member points, you can perform these tasks:

• Viewing Loyalty Members' Point Balances
• Entering and Viewing Loyalty Members' Value Scores

Setting the Maximum Loan that a Member Can Receive

Before you can approve the loan to a member, you must set the value of the maximum loan that the member can receive, and this value must be approved by an employee who is authorized to approve loans of that value.

For information on how to specify the maximum loan that an employee can approve, see Adding Employees as Loyalty Users.

Member > More Info view: Max Point Loan and Max Point Loan Status)

To set the maximum loan that a member can receive

1. Navigate to the Loyalty Members screen.
2. In the Loyalty Members list, click the Member # of the desired member.
3. In the More Info form, in the Max Point Loan field, enter the maximum number of points that can be loaned to this member.
4. If you are authorized to approve loans of this amount, in the Max Point Loan Status field, select Approved.
5. If you are not authorized to approve loans of this amount, in the Submitted field, select the manager who must approve the loan.

Lending Points to a Member

After the member's maximum loan limit has been approved, the member service representative uses the Loans view to create the loan.

To lend points to a member

1. Navigate to the Loyalty Members screen.
2. In the Members list, select the member and click its Member # hyperlink.
3. Click the Loans view tab.
4. Add a new record to the Loans list, and complete the necessary fields. Some fields are described in the following table.

   Field	Comments
   Type	Select Accrual (automatically populated).
   Sub Type	Select Loan (automatically populated).
   Product/Service	Select the product that was created to represent the loan. This should be a product with the name Loan or a similar name.
   Points	Enter the number of points that will be loaned.
   Point Type	Select the point type.
   Submit To	Select the manager who must approve this request. By default, this field contains the name of the member service representative's manager. The member service representative may change this value, if, for example, the manager is on vacation.
   Status	Select Submitted to submit the loan for approval.

5. The manager changes the loan transaction's status to Acceptable and clicks the Process button

   The member's available points balance is increased by the loan amount

Repaying the Loan

When a member earns points in the future, those points will be used to pay back the loan.

To set up automatic repayment of loans, Setting Up Points Loan Repayment.

For manual repayment of the loan, follow this procedure.

To manually repay a loan

1. With the record for the loan selected in the Loans list, scroll down to see the Repayments list.
2. Add a new record to the repayments list, and complete the necessary fields. Some fields are described in the following table.

   Field	Comments
   Product/Service	Select a product.
   Points	Enter the number of points that will be repaid.
   Point Type	Select the point type. This should be the same type used in the lone.
   Submit To	Select the manager who must approve this request.
   Status	Displays In Progress.

3. Click the repayment's Transaction ID field.
4. Change the transaction's status to Submitted to submit the transaction for approval.
5. The manager approves the transaction by changing its status to Acceptable
6. Click Process to process the transaction

Redeeming the Loan

The loaned points remain available to the member until the member uses these points as part of a redemption. When the member redeems the loan by making a purchase, the points are debited from the member's account.