Globally Purging Charges
You can remove outstanding patron fines and manual charges based on certain criteria. For example, your library might want to delete all charges under $1.00, all charges for patrons of a certain type, or charges incurred before or after a specific date. See Selecting Purge Settings below for a list of settings you can use with this feature.
- Select Globally Purge Charges from the Function list.
- In the Limit By section, select your purge settings.
- Click View Charge Summary. Sierra displays the Summary of Charges containing information on the charges that will be purged based on your selections.
- Review the Summary of Charges. If necessary, make additional changes to the purge criteria, and click View Charge Summary again.
- To purge the charges, click Purge Charges. To clear your criteria without purging charges, click Close on the toolbar.
Sierra searches for and purges charges that match your purge criteria. When charges are purged, Sierra adjusts the MONEY OWED fixed-length field in each patron record accordingly.
When the global purge is complete, Sierra displays a summary of changes that were made to the patron file.
Total Amount of Charges Removed
If you chose to transfer removed charges to the Fines Paid file, you may notice a difference between the "Total Amount of Charges Removed" and the "Waived" amount in the Fines Paid file.
Whereas partial payments are included in the "Total Amount of Charges Removed," they are not included in the report on "Waived" fines in the Fines Paid file.
Selecting the Purge Settings
When purging charges, you can use the following settings to limit the charges that will be purged from the system. You can specify any combination of settings.
- Charges Incurred Before / Charges Incurred After
- Finds charges that were incurred before or after the specified date. These two settings can be used individually or together. If you use both settings, Sierra limits fines incurred between the two dates. If the Before date is earlier than the After date, Sierra does not return any results when you view the charge summary.
- Charge Amount Less Than
- Finds charges that are less than the specified amount. For information on purging negative charges, see Globally Purging Negative Fines.
- Charge Type
- Finds charges of a specific type (for example, replacement, overdue, or manual charges).
- Item Location
- Finds charges associated with the specified item location.
- Patron Home Library
- Finds charges for patrons with the specified home library code (HOME LIBR).
- Patron Type
- Purges charges for patrons with the specified patron type (PTYPE).
- Range / Review
- Specifies whether Sierra uses a range of records or a review file to search for eligible charges. If you select Review, specify the review file you want to use. The review file must contain patron records; charges cannot be removed from any other record type.
- Write to fines paid
- Specifies whether Sierra writes purged charges to the Fines Paid database. When selected, the system writes purged charges to the Fines Paid database using a paid amount of $0.00 and a payment status of "REMOVED".
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If your site has acquired the Collection Agency Reports product, purging the charges without writing them to the Fines Paid database could remove patron records from the collection process. If your site has this product and you clear the Write to fines paid check box, the system warns you that the purge might affect the Collection Agency reports, and asks you to confirm your choice.
Globally Purging Negative Fines
Under certain circumstances, Sierra credits patron records for partial payments made on a billed item and displays a negative number in the MONEY OWED field of the patron record, indicating that it is the library who owes the patron money. These are referred to as negative fines.
To remove all negative fines in the database:
- Use the Globally Purge Charges function, as described above.
- In the Charge Amount Less Than setting, remove all charges less than the smallest unit of your currency. For instance, if your library uses the dollar, enter one cent ($0.01).
To remove a negative fine from an individual patron record, see Removing Fines from Patron Records.