This is much more complicated than it sounds.

First, we must provide photocopying and printing capabilities for both UT affiliated and non-affiliated patrons. This implementation would require two systems with start-up costs in excess of $500,000. In addition, students would not be able to encode their Bevobucks in the library, but would have to process this through the Bursar's Office. This is because deposits for student accounts are done via the Centralized Receivable Module. This might be more of an inconvenience if a student is trying to copy or print in the library after the Bursar's hours of operation.

Second, we support photocopying for University colleges/departments through interdepartmental transfer of funds. There is currently no system available that would allow University customers to add funds to cards through Centralized Receivables. This is an Office of Accounting issue that would have to be resolved.

Third, the current debit system for copying does not require a web link to a database as does systems who use Bevobucks. In other words, Bevobucks is "real time" and the current debit system is not. If the real time system looses connection at several points, then the entire photocopy/printing system would go down which would not allow anyone to the the copiers or printers. This could be a concern with a real time system.

Those are the cons.

The pros are: convenience for students, one system throughout the University, and easier accounting reconcilation procedures.

From a service perspective, we are certainly not against using Bevobucks, but from a business perspective, cost-benefit and break-even analyses shows that it would take 10 years to recover costs in a self-supporting operation.