Reputation Overview (Closed Beta)

The Reputation feature helps organizations expand borrowing access for users who build a record of successful returns, while limiting access for users who have repeated issues.

Organizations can use Reputation to:

• Help ensure fairness
• Help limit loss with new users, especially when offering free or donation-based memberships
• Expand access over time as users build trust

Users start at the Member level and can earn promotion to Trusted by returning items on time. In this phase, Reputation is primarily used to control borrowing limits based on the total value of items a user is allowed to have out. We will allow other options to be set based on trust level in the future.

By default, the two levels are Member and Trusted. These labels can be changed using your organization’s language settings, including English-to-English text changes, at:

Settings > Organization > Language

How Reputation works

Reputation is based on positive and negative events.

A positive event is created when a user returns items on time with no issues.

A negative event is created when a transaction is marked as bad. By default, a late return counts as a negative event. Admins can also manually mark a transaction as bad after items are checked in, for example when items are returned damaged.

Users earn reputation through completed return transactions. At this time, users can earn at most one positive event per transaction, even if multiple items are returned together.

Organizations can also control how quickly users earn positive events. For example, they may allow users to earn only one positive event every 7 days. This helps prevent users from gaming the system by checking out and returning several short loans in rapid succession.

How promotion and demotion work

To become Trusted, a Member must build up enough positive events to reach the promotion target set by the organization.

Before a user becomes Trusted, any negative transaction resets their positive progress to zero. They do not lose just one point. They go all the way back to the start and must build their positive history again.

Once a user becomes Trusted, the system works differently. Trusted status acts more like a ratchet:

• Before Trusted, any negative event resets the user to 0
• After Trusted, negative events do not immediately send the user back to the start
• Instead, the user remains Trusted until they reach the configured demotion limit

This means organizations can make Trusted status harder to achieve, while allowing more flexibility once it has been earned.

Edge cases handled automatically

Reputation also handles some important edge cases automatically.

Promotion is blocked if the user has overdue items

A user cannot be promoted to Trusted if they currently have an overdue item.

Pre-demotion for overdue items

If a Trusted user has enough existing negative events that an overdue item will cause demotion once it is returned, the system treats them as effectively demoted right away for limit enforcement.

This prevents users from continuing to reserve items under Trusted limits when they are already certain to lose Trusted status.

How limits are applied

In this phase, Reputation is used with Limit Total Value of Checked Out Items.

Organizations can set different value limits for Members and Trusted users.

For example:

• Members may be limited to lower-value items or fewer items based on total value
• Trusted users may be allowed to check out more valuable inventory

The value used for these limits can be based on:

• Historical Cost
• Replacement Cost
• Custom Value

Custom Value is often useful when you want to use a point-style system instead of actual currency or item value.

Where users and admins see Reputation in action

Reputation affects multiple places in the system.

Users and admins may see borrowing limits displayed in:

• the Reservation Cart
• Build Order
• the admin check-in/out cart

These limits are displayed in a format like:

Max Value (1 / 5)

This means the user is currently at 1 out of a maximum of 5.

Trusted users will also have a Trusted badge next to their name or membership, and in some places a lock icon.

On the admin cart, hovering over the badge shows how many positive and negative events the user has had since their last transition.

Admins can also view a user’s reputation history on the Reputation tab when viewing that user.

After items are checked in, the Transaction Receipt shows whether the transaction generated a positive or negative event. It also displays an alert at the top of the page if the user was promoted or demoted.

Current reservation behavior

For reservations, the system currently checks only the total value of the items in that reservation.

It does not currently also include:

• items the user already has checked out
• value from other overlapping reservations

This is intentional for now, because users may return items when picking up other items. A future update is planned to add warnings when a user will be over their limit unless they return items.