Managing Customers and Wallets Like a Pro

Your customers' wallets are where the money sits, so how you manage them decides how smoothly your business runs. This guide covers the customer tools in your VTU admin: finding a customer, working out why a balance changed, adjusting a wallet, banning and deleting accounts, blocking phone numbers, and giving agents and admins the right access. It also says plainly what the admin can and cannot show you today.

The Customers list

Open VTU Admin, then Customers & Payments, then Customers. The table shows each customer's name and email, phone, wallet balance, number of transactions, status (Active or Banned, plus an Admin badge where relevant) and the date they joined. The search box finds people by email, phone, username or name. On each row, the icons let you:

• Fund wallet: add or deduct money (see below).
• Edit: change their name, email or phone.
• Make admin or Revoke admin.
• Ban or Unban.
• Delete, which is permanent (see below).

Working out why a balance changed

Every change to a wallet is recorded in a ledger with a source: funding, purchase, refund, reversal, manual (adjustments you make) or referral. The customer can see their own ledger in their wallet tab. At the moment, though, the admin does not have a screen that shows one customer's full ledger, so when someone disputes a balance, you piece the story together from these places:

• Insights, then Transactions. Search by the customer's name or phone number. Every purchase shows the balance before and after, so you can follow the balance step by step and see which purchase failed and was refunded.
• Funding Requests for manual deposits, which shows what was approved or rejected.
• The customer's own wallet screen. Ask them for a screenshot of their wallet history. It lists each funding, purchase, refund, bonus and adjustment with its reason.
• Your gateway's dashboard for card or transfer payments, to confirm what was actually paid.

Our guide on failed transactions and wallet refunds walks through the usual disputes.

Adjusting a wallet

Click the wallet icon on a customer, choose Add money or Deduct, enter the amount and, ideally, a note, then click Apply. Both are recorded as manual entries in the customer's ledger, so there is always a trail. A few things to know:

• The amount must be more than zero.
• A deduction fails with "Insufficient wallet balance" if the customer does not have that much.
• The note is optional, but if you leave it blank the entry is simply labelled "Admin adjustment", which will not help you or the customer later. Always write a clear reason, for example "Bank transfer received 12 May, receipt confirmed."

Use adjustments for real corrections, such as crediting a payment you confirmed by hand. Before you add money to fix a failed purchase, check that the customer was not already refunded automatically.

Banning a customer

The Ban icon disables the account, and the row then shows Banned. A banned customer who tries to sign in sees "Account is disabled." A ban takes effect straight away: someone who was already signed in is also cut off, and any API key they hold stops working. Unbanning restores access. Use a ban for fraud or abuse, and keep a note of your reason so you can explain it later.

Deleting a customer, and why to ban instead

Delete asks you to confirm, because it cannot be undone. It removes the customer's wallet history, funding records, dedicated account numbers and API keys. Their purchase records stay in Transactions, but they are no longer linked to a customer. That means you lose the evidence you would need in a dispute or an audit. Unless you have a legal reason to erase someone, ban them instead and keep the record.

Blocking phone numbers

If you use the Zenith admin portal, you also get a Banned Numbers section. You add a phone number and an optional reason. The platform matches on the last ten digits, so 0803..., 234803... and +234803... all count as the same number. A banned number cannot register and cannot be used as the recipient of a purchase. This is useful when the same abuse comes from different accounts. The Banned Numbers screen is currently part of the Zenith admin portal.

Tiers, agents and admins

• Tiers. A tier is a customer group with its own prices on plans, such as a reseller tier. Manage them under Pricing Tiers in your site's admin portal. If you mark one tier as the default, every new customer is placed on it automatically when they register. Existing customers are never moved, and you can change anyone's tier in Admins & Roles, or with the Upgrade tier icon on the customer table in the Zenith portal. Our pricing guide explains tier prices.
• Admins. A customer can be made an admin from the Customers list or in Admins & Roles. They then sign in at your site's /admin page. Access is all or nothing, so only promote people you trust fully. There are no partial permissions. Revoke it the moment someone no longer needs it.

Funding requests

If you accept manual bank transfers, new requests wait in Funding Requests until you approve or reject them. See accepting manual bank transfers for the checks to do first.

A weekly routine

• Search Transactions for recent failures and held purchases, and clear any that need a decision.
• Confirm every manual adjustment you made has a note you could explain to the customer.
• Look at your largest wallets and your most active customers, because they matter most.
• Clear any funding requests waiting for approval.
• Compare your provider's statement with your Transactions list.
• Review who has admin access, and remove anyone who no longer needs it.

Where to go next

Read securing your VTU business for the protections that surround all this, and the referral guide for how customer codes work.