[OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] Lost and paid

[Jason Etheridge]

On Tue, Jun 9, 2009 at 11:49 AM, <scrlheadlib at mts.net> wrote:
> I’m looking for suggestions on how to handle “lost and paid” materials.
>
>  i.e.  Patron comes in and says they’ve lost the item and want to pay for
> it.  We have in the past had a status that says “lost and paid” and that
> status remains for 2 months, because, as we all know, occasionally, the item
> is found.  After the 2 months if it is not found the item is deleted from
> the catalogue.  I can’t find a “lost paid” status in Evergreen.  How do
> others deal with this?  Thanks.

Hi Mary,

There are two pertinent concepts modeled in Evergreen: items and
transactions.  Items are obvious.  Transactions can include
circulations (but can also be standalone "grocery" bills).

Outside of migrations, an item can only be marked Lost if it is
involved in an active circulation transaction.  Someone will have to
correct me if I'm wrong with the details, but I believe when you mark
an item Lost, several things happen:

1) the item status changes to Lost
2) the circulation transaction gets a Stop Fines Reason of LOST, which
prevents any new overdue fines from accruing on that transaction.  A
corresponding Stop Fines Time is set.
3) existing overdue fines on the transaction are optionally voided
based on a library setting
4) a billing is added to the transaction for the Price of the item, or
if unset, for the Default Item Price based on a per library setting
5) an optional billing for a Lost Processing Fee is added to the
transaction based on a per library setting

A Lost item is still circulating to the patron, so it's going to show
up in the bottom half of the patron's Item Out screen whether it has
been paid or not.  If the item has been returned, but money is still
owed on the transaction (bills, overdue fines, etc), then the
transaction will remain open and show up in the Bills section, as well
as the bottom half of the Items Out section (this latter condition is
likely a confusing arrangement, but circulations currently stick in
Items Out if any bills are owed on the transactions, even if the items
are no longer "out").

If the item has been returned and the bills have been paid, then the
transaction can be found in the Bill History interface.

In 1.2 and 1.4, staff are likely checking these lost items in, Forcing
an override when prompted, and then retrieving the last patron who
circulated each item.  Then they're finding the transaction (perhaps
in Bill History) and adding and voiding bills as their policies
dictate.

In 1.6/trunk, more of this behavior has been automated.

There's a per library setting for:

1) Restoring overdue fines on return of a Lost item
2) Voiding the lost item bill on return of a Lost item
3) Voiding the lost item processing fee on return of a Lost item
4) A time interval after which 1,2, and 3 are ignored when a Lost item
is returned
5) Allowing Lost items to be handled (Lost status removed, bills
auto-voided, etc.) at a "foreign" library rather than force a transit
to the item's circ lib

I hope this helps!

-- 
Jason Etheridge
 | VP, Community Support and Advocacy
 | Equinox Software, Inc. / The Evergreen Experts
 | phone:  1-877-OPEN-ILS (673-6457)
 | email:  jason at esilibrary.com
 | web:  http://www.esilibrary.com