As you save credit card information either to a customer, contact, or an order, the system creates Payment Account Secure Storage (PASS) accounts, also known as payment accounts, with Element Payment Services. Your contract terms with Element indicate the charges you pay for the number of payment accounts you maintain.
To reduce your costs for storing credit card information, we recommend that you review your payment accounts once a month and delete the accounts you no longer need. For example, consider deleting payment accounts for cards that have expired, for customers or contacts who have credit card information on file but have not done business with you in six months (or less), and for credit card transactions for orders that were placed using a miscellaneous cash customer record, such as for walk-ins to your counter.
Using the PASS Account Utility, you can schedule to delete payment accounts that meet a certain set of criteria, or you can view and delete payment accounts manually. When you delete an account, the system deletes the information from Element and from Eclipse. For example, if you delete a payment account for credit card information stored at the customer-level, the system deletes the payment account from Element and removes the saved credit card from the customer record.
As you are processing transactions or entering credit card information for a customer or contact and the power goes out, the internet goes down, or for some other reason the payment account for the information you entered is not created, there is credit card information in Eclipse that does not have a matching payment account in Element, rendering it useless. In these circumstances, an overnight routine removes the credit card information from Eclipse. However, if the system finds a payment account in Element that does not have matching information in Eclipse, the system creates the information in Eclipse using the saved data in Element.
See also:
Viewing and Deleting Element Payment Accounts