On Tue, Jun 9, 2009 at 11:49 AM, <scrlhead...@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: ja...@esilibrary.com | web: http://www.esilibrary.com