Koha How-To
Koha Question of the Week: Does Marking a Lost Item as Claims Returned Refund the Lost Charges?
by Hebah Amin-Headley on Oct 11, 2024
Each Friday, we will bring you a new Koha Question of the Week. We will select real questions that we receive and share the answers with you!
Does Marking a Lost Item as Claims Returned Refund the Lost Charges?
Answer:
Currently, if an item was already lost when it is marked as a claims return, the lost charges remain on a patron's account. This is surprising to libraries that have MarkLostItemsAsReturned set to return an item when it is marked as claims returned with a default refund policy to refund lost charges when the item is returned. The "return" initiated by the act of marking an item as claims returned isn't a full return that triggers all the expected behaviors.There is a bug making its way closer to inclusion in a future Koha release, Bug 33292: Claim Return doesn't refund lost item charge when MarkLostItemsAsReturned includes "When marking an item as a return claim" and "Refund lost item fee" is on.
Until that makes its way into a Koha release, one workaround for libraries is, before marking a lost item as claims returned, returning the item to trigger the expected refunds, and then check the item back out to the patron and add any pertinent information about initial checkout dates in the claim returned notes. Other libraries make it a policy that claims returns must be initiated before an item goes lost to avoid this situation.
Additional Links
https://bywatersolutions.com/education/koha-24-05-release-notes (New claim return options in 24.05)
https://bywatersolutions.com/education/monday-minutes-resolving-returned-claims
https://bywatersolutions.com/education/koha-question-week-new-claim-return-resolution
Read more by Hebah Amin-Headley