Reporting Delinquent Patrons to a Collection Agency

If your library has acquired the Collection Agency Report product, you can create and send electronic reports on delinquent patrons directly to a collection agency. A letter or phone call from a collection agency can create enough urgency that delinquent patrons respond by paying fines and returning materials. Use of this product can reduce costly internal procedures and allow library staff to focus on patron services.

Collection Agency Reports include two basic types:

• New Submissions Report—Lists patrons for which the collection agency should create accounts. When this report is sent, the system automatically modifies all of the patron records included in the report so that the patrons cannot check out any more items.
• Updated Patrons Report—Lists patrons whose circumstances have changed since they were last submitted to the collection agency (for example, patrons who paid their fines or returned overdue books).

You can:

• Set up Collection Agency Reports.
• Configure the report parameters.
• Generate the reports.
• Send the reports to your collection agency.
• Configure the system to automatically generate and send the reports.
• Exclude or include individual patron records from the reports.
• Remove individual patron records from the reports.

For more information about the elements that appear in the New Submissions and Updated Patrons reports, see Collection Agency Reports.