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    Fines not being applied to overdue items

    • Article Type: General
    • Product: Aleph
    • Product Version: 16.02

    Description:
    Cash transactions are not being applied to overdue items.

    Things check in properly with the right dates, but no cash transactions are being created for overdues.

    They were being created last week, but are not now.

    Resolution:
    This problem has to do with the changes made to the abc50 tab17. The tab16 has "2" (Open days) as the Fine Method, so the date_interval_fine program is taking the due-date and looking for the first day the library was open following that date in tab17.

    If you have lines like this in the table (with ######## in column 2):

    ABC17 ######## 00 O 1200 2500
    ABC17 ######## 01 O 0800 2500
    ABC17 ######## 02 O 0800 2500
    ABC17 ######## 03 O 0800 2500
    ABC17 ######## 04 O 0800 2500
    ABC17 ######## 05 O 0800 2200
    ABC17 ######## 06 O 1100 2200

    the program will use one of those values when it comes to a day not listed specifically in the table. But all of these "########" sections are commented out. The first open day which the program finds in the table is 20080505. Since this falls within the nine-day grace period specified in tab16, there is no fine.

    To correct this, you need to uncomment either the "Regular Semester ########" lines or the "Summer session ########" lines. The former would be better for these overdue calculations and the latter would be better for determining due dates which extend beyond the last uncommented date listed explicitly (20080514), but the differences are minor (open on Saturday vs. not open), so using the "Summer session" should be fine.

    In any case you *must* have "########" lines in tab17 (following the explicit dates).


    • Article last edited: 10/8/2013