Billing Lost or Unreturned Items
You can bill patrons who lose, damage, or fail to return checked-out items. For more information, see the following:
- Billing Patrons for Unreturned Items
- Billing Patrons for Lost Items
- Billing Patrons for Damaged Items
- How Sierra Calculates the Amount to Bill
Billing Patrons for Unreturned Items
If you have set parameters for billing unreturned items, you can bill patrons who do not return overdue items within a period of time deemed appropriate by your library. To generate bills for unreturned items:
- Prepare and send overdue notices regularly, either manually or via auto notices. You must prepare the highest level of overdue notice specified in the Max Number of Odues element of the loan rule in order to generate replacement bills. When you prepare the highest level of overdue notice, the system:
- Sets the item's STATUS to "n" (BILLED).
- Calculates the amount to bill.
- Adds a bill with charge type Replacement to the patron's record.
- Prepare and send bills, either manually or via auto notices, to notify the patron of the charge.
In Sierra 6.1, you can generate bills on demand from the Fines tab in the patron record.
Billing Patrons for Lost Items
If you want to generate a bill for a patron immediately instead of waiting for the system to produce a replacement bill, you can do so by marking the item lost. You can then do one of the following to produce the bill:
- Prepare and send notices using the Notices function.
- (Sierra 6.1 and later) Generate a bill on demand from the Fines tab.
Additionally, you can collect money for the bill.
Billing Patrons for Damaged Items
Using the Mark Damaged And Add Bill option, you can bill patrons for damaged items. See Marking Items as Damaged for more information.
How Sierra Calculates the Amount to Bill
When you mark an item lost or generate a replacement bill, the system adds a bill to the patron's record. The bill consists of the following elements:
- Item Charge
- The purchase cost of the item. The system obtains this value from the PRICE fixed-length field in the item record or, if that field does not contain data, the Default Item Cost element of the loan rule under which the item was checked out. To change the PRICE before billing (for example, the cost of an item has increased), edit the PRICE field before you print the bills. The bill reflects the updated amount.
- Processing Fee
- The replacement cost to cover the library's expenses in acquiring and cataloging a replacement copy, as specified in the Replace Process Fee element of the loan rule under which the item was checked out. If your library has the General Sales Tax feature enabled, the system calculates the processing fee by multiplying the item replacement charge by the sales tax rate, instead of using the value in the Replace Process Fee element.
- Billing Fee
- The service charge added to the replacement cost and processing fee to cover the library's cost of preparing the replacement bill, as specified in the Replace Bill Service Charge element of the loan rule under which the item was checked out.