Statements of Charges

To print statements of charges and statements of organization charges, you must be assigned permission 395 (Statements of Charges) and 396 (Organization Charges). See Permissions Used by Sierra for more information.

Sierra enables you to generate the following types of statements of charges:

Statement of Charges: Summary of all outstanding money owed by patron(s).
Statement of Organization Charges: Summary of all outstanding money owed by organization record(s). You can generate these statements only if your library has acquired the Organization Record product.

Sierra sends statements of charges when you prepare and send the relevant notice type using the Notices function.

For more information, see the following:

Setup and Functionality Information
Customizing Statements of Charges
Default Statement of Charges
Example Statement of Charges

Setup and Functionality Information

Generating Statements of Charges—Timing

Libraries typically generate statements of charges less frequently than other notices (for example, at the end of a semester or quarterly).

Generating Statements of Charges—Processing

Depending on the criteria you specify, it can take the system a long time to generate these statements. While Sierra prepares statements, it displays a progress dialog. To stop this process, choose Cancel.

Fines Listed

Statements of charges list unpaid fines only. Generating these statements does not affect the database.

Limiting Statements by Location

If you choose to generate statements for a single branch location or Locations Served, the statement includes fines associated with those location(s) only. The system uses different criteria for different charge types to determine whether the notice belongs to the selected location:

For manual fines, the location must match the location selected by staff when adding the fine to the patron's record.
For all other charge types, the LOCATION fixed-length field in the fined item must match the selected location.

Positioning Item Information on the Statement

The setting of the Fines/Bills: Where to print Bill Info circulation option determines the positioning of the item information on a statement of charges and on a statement of organization charges. The height element of this circulation option controls the number of items printed on each statement. This setting applies to both default statements and statements customized using print templates.

Customizing Statements of Charges

Your library can customize statements of charges as follows:

Default Notice—The default statement of charges is described below. If you choose to use the default notice, you can customize the statement of charges notice text and the return address. To configure the notice form used for all default notices, see Formatting Options for Default Notices.
Print Templates—If your library has enabled the Print Templates feature, you can use the third-party Jaspersoft Studio application to create or modify the following print templates:
- Statement of Charges
- Statement of Organization Charges

Default Statement of Charges

The default statement of charges has the following elements:

Return Address: A value determined by the setting of the Statements: Library address determined by circulation option.
Date: The date on which the statement is generated.
Patron Name: The PATRN NAME variable-length field in the patron record.
Patron Address: The ADDRESS or ADDRESS2 variable-length field in the patron record.
Notice Text: Up to fifteen lines of text as defined in the Text of Circulation Notices table. The entry used is determined by the Statements: Text # circulation option.
Inv #: The number of the invoice related to the charge.
Description: A brief description of the charge, including a status indicator for the item to which the charge relates (for example, "LOST") and the item's title.
Amount: The charge amount.
TOTAL: The total amount of charges.
Print Sequence Number: Indicates sequential position of the notice in the print job. Each print job begins with sequence number 1.

Example Statement of Charges

  Main Library                                Fri April 18 2003
  2344 Sixth Street
  Berkeley, CA 94710

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


  The following charges remain outstanding.
  Please make payment to the cashier's office.



  Inv #          Description              Amount

   1135 LOST  Apostolic faith in America $ 65.00
   1208 OVERDUE  The diversity of histor  $ 2.85
   1219 OVERDUEX  Tales out of school... $ 15.00

                             TOTAL       $ 82.85
                 5

See also:: Using Circulation Notices; Text of Circulation Notices Table