[Wactclc-alma] Lost items returned by expired patrons

[Stephanie Levesen]

Thanks for sharing Kristi!  

We noticed something similar in the Summer and updated the TOUs to have just the Lost Item replacement fee amount set and the refund ratio set at 100% with no lost item fine amount set.  Everyone kept getting $10.00 fines because that's the field where we thought we had put the processing cost of the item and then the two fields would be totaled for a total cost.  Ooops!  We just added that amount to the amount in the replacement fee field and haven't had an issue.  

Not sure if this information will help other libraries, but that's what we discovered in the summer roll out!

Stephanie

Stephanie Levesen
Periodicals/ILLs/Circulation
Norwood Cole Library
Skagit Valley College
2405 E College Way
Mount Vernon, WA  98273

360-416-7659

-----Original Message-----
From: Wactclc-alma [mailto:wactclc-alma-bounces at lists.ctc.edu] On Behalf Of Thomas, Kirsti
Sent: Monday, December 11, 2017 12:09 PM
To: WACTCLC Alma Discussion <wactclc-alma at lists.ctc.edu>
Subject: [Wactclc-alma] Lost items returned by expired patrons

One of the circ staff at Central recently discovered that when patrons with expired accounts returned lost items, Alma failed to refund Lost Item Replacement Fees to the patron account.  This problem seems to have been fixed in the Alma December release.  

We haven't turned on loan anonymization yet because we're still working on getting Fulfillment working the way we want.  As a result, we were able to identify 48 patrons who had returned lost items in the past 6 months since go-live, who hadn't had the lost item replacement fees credited back to their accounts in Alma.  

I wanted to mention this problem in case other libraries hadn't noticed it yet.  I can share the Alma Analytics reports we're using to clean things up, but the reports won't help on loans that have already been anonymized. :(


It will be ok!

Kirsti S. Thomas
Library Technical Services Manager
Seattle Colleges
kirsti.thomas at seattlecolleges.edu