Holds Troubleshooting: The Maxreserves Preference

by Karen Holt on Jul 26, 2017

One topic that has appeared frequently in our support tickets this week has been an issue with setting the number of holds.

For example, a library would like to set a total of 50 holds for a specific patron type, but Koha would only allow them to set up to a maximum of 3 holds. They had checked and double-checked all of the holds options in the Circulation and Fine Rules. Everything looked fine, but it just wouldn’t allow them to set the holds to 50.

Can you guess which system preference was to blame?

That’s right. The culprit was a little preference called maxreserves.

You’ll find this preference via this pathway: Administration module -> Global System Preferences -> Circulation -> Holds Policy.

As you can see in the example above, this preference is set to only allow a maximum of three holds at once. That means that regardless of how many holds you designate in the Circulation and Fines Rules, this system preference overrides all the others and will only allow a patron to have a maximum of 3 holds at once. If you want to allow a patron to place more holds than what is allowed in your current system, you’ll have to change the maxreserves system preference. Then, your issue will be solved!

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