[OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] Processing Item Deposits

[Jason Etheridge]

On Wed, Oct 7, 2009 at 2:54 PM, Laura Sponhour
<lsponhour at statelibrary.sc.gov> wrote:
> We can set up the deposit amount in the copy record, and it’s billed
> automatically to the patron’s account when the item is checked out.

I believe the behavior goes like this:

Case 1) If Deposit is set to No, and Deposit Amount is greater than
$0, then upon checkout, you will get an Override Checkout Failure
dialog, for this event:

ITEM_RENTAL_FREE_REQUIRED  A billing for an Item Rental Fee will be
added to the patron's account if this action is overrided.

The fee equals the Deposit Amount, and has a Billing Type of System: Rental.

It may make sense to collect the fee at this point.  The billing
interface does not yet update seamlessly, so if it has already been
invoked for this patron, you may need to Refresh.

When the item is checked in, nothing special happens, but if the fee
has not yet been paid, you do get a small indicator in red that the
transaction is billable for whatever the amount is (plus any late
fees, etc.).

Case 2) If Deposit is set to Yes, and Deposit Amount is greater than
$0, then upon checkout, you will get an Override Checkout Failure
dialog, for this event:

ITEM_DEPOSIT_REQUIRED  A billing for an Item Deposit will be added to
the patron's account if this action is overrided.

The fee equals the Deposit Amount, and has a Billing Type of System: Deposit.

The assumption is that you collect the fee at this point (or after all
items have been checked out).  The billing interface does not yet
update seamlessly, so if it has already been invoked for this patron,
you may need to Refresh.

If the item is checked in and the deposit was paid, you will get an
Override Checkin Failure dialog, for this event:

ITEM_DEPOSIT_PAID  A paid deposit will be owed to this patron if this
action is overrided.

If you say Yes, no magic bill munging appears to happen at this point.
 One option is to pull up the patron, go to Bill History, select the
transaction, select Full Details, then void the Deposit billing.  The
transaction will be revived and show up in the main billing interface,
indicating that the patron is owed some money.  A Refund button should
appear on the transaction.

I don't particularly like this, and not just for the extra steps
involved, but for the void, which to me should mean that something
happened by mistake.  It also has the side effect of making the
transaction disappear altogether from the Bill History (though you
could still find it through Reporting), because the way that interface
is retrieving transactions, it is filtering out any where the Total
Owed (which is independent of payments, and is the sum of all
non-voided line-item billings) is equal to zero.  This hypothetical
transaction had one billing, which is now voided.

Corrections and suggestions welcome. :-)

Bill is right out about Patron Credit.  It's hard-coded off by
default, and the underlying logic is effectively global, so if you
want to enable it, you may want to give some thought/policy as to what
it means when a patron is floating between libraries and wants to use
that credit.

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