Bills

To print replacement and repeated bills, you must be assigned permission 361 (Bills). To print adjustment bills, you must be assigned permission 362 (Adjustments). See Permissions Used by Sierra for more information.

Sierra can generate the following types of bills:

Replacement Bills
The system generates a replacement bill when you mark an item lost or when a patron fails to return a checked-out item. For more information, see Billing Lost or Unreturned Items.
Adjustment Bills
The system generates an adjustment bill (a "corrected" bill) when an item is returned after a replacement bill has been issued. For more information, see Adjusting Charges for Returned Billed Items.
Repeated Bills
The system can generate a follow-up bill (referred to as a "repeated bill") if the patron has not paid it within a library-defined time period. For more information, see Sending Repeated Bills.

Sierra sends bills when you prepare and send the following notice types:

For more information, see the following:

Setup and Functionality Information

Positioning Item Information on the Bill
The setting of the Fines/Bills: Where to print Bill Info circulation option determines the positioning of the item information on a bill.
Printing Single or Multiple Items per Bill
The setting of the Fines/Bills: Number of Items per Bill circulation option determines whether Sierra prints a single item or multiple items per bill. Note that Sierra groups items together on the same notice only when the items have the same value in the LOCATION fixed-length field.
Customizing the Text of Bill Notices
The following settings control which entry from the Text of Circulation Notices table prints on each type of bill:

Type of BillHow Text is Configured
Replacement bills for unreturned items   Msg Bill loan rule element
Replacement bills for lost itemsCirculation option Fines/Bills: Text # for bill for lost book
Adjustment billsMsg Adjustment loan rule element
If you have not defined a notice text for a particular bill type, the system does not generate that type of bill.
Setting a Minimum Bill Amount for Printing
The setting of the Fines/Bills: Minimum charge for fines notice to print circulation option specifies the minimum charge required for the system to print a bill. The system does not print bills for amounts lower than this value.
Billing and the Collection Agency Report
If your library has acquired the Collection Agency Report product and the product is configured to prevent the system from generating bills and overdue notices for patrons placed in a Collection Agency Report, the system does not print bills nor does it print overdue notices for patrons currently in collections.

Customizing Bills

Your library can customize bills as follows:

Sending Repeated Bills

The Repeated Bills feature is available in Sierra 6.1 and later.

You can send repeated bills to patrons who haven't paid the original bill within a library-specified time period. Sierra can send repeated bills for lost or unreturned items; adjustment bills are not supported.

To enable repeated bills:

  1. Configure the Notices: Repeated bills circulation option.
  2. If your library uses Print Templates, enable a template for the Repeated Bills output type. By default, Sierra uses a template from the Bills output type.

You can use different templates for repeated bills than for the original bill. Templates for repeated bills use the Bills Notice Data Library.

  1. Create a notices job using the Repeated Bills notice type. See Creating Circulation Notices for more information.

Sierra sends repeated bills when the following conditions are met:

Default Bill

All bills contain the following fields in the bill's header or footer:

Library Information
The library's mailing address. The system obtains this information from the Address element of an entry in the Branch Addresses table. The system selects the entry that corresponds to the first item on the bill.
Date
The date on which the bill is printed.
Patron Information
Patron information includes the patron name and mailing address.
Notice Text
Text from the Text of Circulation Notices table. For information about how Sierra determines which text to print on a notice, see Customizing the Text of Bill Notices.
NOTE
The total amount owed from outstanding fines and bills for the patron.
Text of Circulation Notices Number
The number of the Notice Text in the Text of Circulation Notices table.

Each bill also contains information about the billed item(s). Depending on the setting of the Fines/Bills: Number of Items per Bill circulation option, the system can print a single item or multiple items per bill. The information that prints about each item differs depending on the number of items per bill.

Single Item per Bill

If there is a single item present on the bill, it has the following default elements:

Borrowed At
The statistics group number associated with the user who checked the item out. The system obtains this information from the OUT LOC fixed-length field. This optional element must be enabled by Innovative.
Inv #
The invoice number.
AUTHOR
The author of the unreturned item.
TITLE
The title of the unreturned item.
LOCATION
The branch to which the unreturned item belongs.
CALL NO
The call number of the unreturned item or, if the item record is deleted before the bill is printed, the item record number.
BARCODE
The unreturned item's barcode.
CHECKED OUT
The date on which the unreturned item was checked out to the patron.
DUE
The due date of the unreturned item.
RETURNED
The date on which the item was returned. This field contains data only if this is an adjustment bill.
ITEM CHARGE
The item replacement charge. See Calculating the Replacement Bill for further information.
PROCESSING FEE
The replacement cost to cover the library's expenses in acquiring and cataloging a replacement copy. See Calculating the Replacement Bill for further information.
BILLING FEE
The service charge added to the replacement cost and processing fee to cover the library's cost of preparing the replacement bill. See Calculating the Replacement Bill for further information.

Multiple Items per Bill

If there is more than one item per bill, each item listing is composed of two lines containing the following elements:

ITEM
Information about the unreturned item, including the title, author, barcode, reason for charge (that is, either "REPLACEMENT" or "ADJUSTMENT"), and the name of the branch to which the item belongs.
AMOUNT
The amount being charged for the unreturned item. See Calculating the Replacement Bill for further information.

Example Default Bill

Below are examples of bills when printed as a single item per bill and when more than one item is printed per bill.

Single Item per Bill

Main Library                                     Fri April 27 1989
2344 Sixth Street
Berkeley, CA 94710


Smith, John
1734 Spruce St. #6
Berkeley, CA 94709

The following charge is now due and payable.
Please make payment to the cashier's office.


Inv #1304  BILLING FEE FOR

AUTHOR:   Espey, John Jenkins 1913-
TITLE:    Tales out of school
LOCATION: Main Library Biography
CALL NO: PS3509.S535 T3  BARCODE: 3 5002 00007 3069
CHECKED OUT: Thu Mar  2 1989
DUE:         Thu Apr  6 1989
RETURNED:    Fri Apr 20 1989
ITEM CHARGE     $ 0.00

PROCESSING FEE  $ 0.00

BILLING FEE     $15.00

NOTE: Total outstanding fines and bills  $ 40.85
                                
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Multiple Items per Bill

Main Library                                     Fri April 27 1989
2344 Sixth Street
Berkeley, CA 94710

Smith, John
1734 Spruce St. #6
Berkeley, CA 94709

The following charge is now due and payable.
Please make payment to the cashier's office.

ITEM              AMOUNT
The hunt for red October / Tom Clancy
REPLACEMENT Main Adult Fiction  3 5002 000007 3069 . ..$17.95
Valhalla Rising / Clive Cussler
LOST Main Adult Fiction  3 3002 000005 2222 . . . . . .$17.95

NOTE: Total outstanding fines and bills  $35.90

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See also:
Using Circulation Notices
Text of Circulation Notices Table