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

Description:
We recently had a patron return a book which had been declared Lost. At the time the book was declared Lost, cost and handling fees were generated in the patron's cash transactions. When the book was returned, Aleph issued a credit on the patron's record.

When we ran the p_cash_05 (Unpaid Transactions) notices the next morning, a notice was generated for the patron which implied that we owed them $188.50 rather than letting them know they owed us $5.50 for the overdue charge on the item. The credit balance included the overdue fine $5.50, a credit for the cost of the book $179.00 and a credit for the processing fee $15.00.

Is there some way that we can configure Aleph to waive, NOT credit, the price and processing fee when a lost book is returned?

We will never have a situation where we would refund money paid for a book. If they have paid us for a lost book and they later find it, they are asked to keep it; we do not issue refunds.

Resolution:
The tab100 LOST-LOAN-CREDIT-METHOD parameter is relevant:

! 1 = when a lost loan is returned (i.e. an item which has
! a Z36 record with status "L"), all associated cash
! transactions except "waived" are credited. This means
! "C"losed, "T"ransferred or "O"pen transactions are credited.
! 2 = when a lost loan is returned, all "T"ransferred or "O"pen
! transactions are credited. Closed transactions are not
! credited automatically!

This parameter is not specified in your abc50 tab100 (--and "1" is the default).

Please try adding this line:

LOST-LOAN-CREDIT-METHOD=2

The pc_server would need to be restarted (util w/3/3) to make this change take effect.