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Accruing fines

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Configure whether or not fines that are still accruing can be paid from the circ. desk in OLIB.

Fines in an OLIB system are still accruing if the amount has not yet been paid and the fine has not yet got to the end of its Fine Sequence.

You can configure OLIB to determine if fines that are still accruing should be payable or not at the circulation desk when accessing the User Charging screen. (Only payment of terminated fines may be the preference for some organisations). This configuration can be done at system level or Location level.

Configure at system level

  1. Go to System Administration> OLIB Defaults.
  2. Switch to modify and on the User/Circ sheet scroll down to Overdues/Recalls/Fines Parameters
  3. If you want accruing fines to be payable set the Pay Accruing Fines? flag to Yes. If they should not be payable set it to No or NULL.

Configure at location level

Library Locations can be configured differently by setting Pay Accruing Fines? flag at Location level. To do this, the attribute must first be added to the Locations layout (Circ. Details sheet) using Layout Manager:

  • Pay Accruing Fines? (lo_pay_accruing_fines)

If this is set to Yes in the location record, accruing fines will be paid when users who are registered at that location click the Register Payment/Waiver button on the User Charging screen.

If it is set to No or NULL, accruing fines will not be paid when that location’s users click the Register Payment/Waiver button.

If the field is not set in the Location record, the OLIB Defaults setting will be used to determine whether accruing fines are paid when that location’s users click the Payment/Waiver button.

The Pay Accruing Fines? flag will work when other methods of paying fines are used as well. For example, if a user pays his/her fines using a cash machine linked to a self-service circulation device (such as 3M’s unit), the cash transaction is recorded in OLIB via the SIP2 protocol. This process will also only pay off accruing fines if the user’s location’s Pay Accruing Fines? flag is set to Yes or, if it is not set, if the OLIB Defaults flag is set to Yes or is null.

User charging domain

Two additional attributes are available for the User Charging domain to be configured with Layout Manager:

  • Accruing System Charges (payment not allowed)
  • Accruing Short Loan Fines (payment not allowed)

These attributes are identical to the standard Accruing Fines attributes, except that they DO NOT offer the Pay/Waive Selected Items actions/methods available in the standard layout. Instead, library staff can only see the user’s accruing fines, but cannot pay them off, for example:

Accruing Fines:

Audit No Step Amount O/S Amount Date
150   0.00 0.00 26-MAR-2018 04:53:22
151 4 48.00 46.70 26-MAR-2018 04:53:26

Accruing Short Loan Fines:

Audit No Step Amount O/S Amount Date