Koha Question of the Week: Does Marking an Item Lost Automatically Block a Patron?

by Hebah Amin-Headley on Sep 20, 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 an Item Lost Automatically Block a Patron?

Answer:

Whether a lost item automatically blocks a patron's account depends on several factors in a library's setup.

If a library is using overdue notice/status triggers and automatically marking long overdue items as lost via DefaultLongOverdueLostValue and DefaultLongOverdueDays settings, they may select the option to restrict the patron's account at some point in the overdue notification sequence (often, but not always, with the third billing notification).

Some libraries rely on the noissuescharge system preference to provide the restriction (as well as corresponding preferences NoIssuesChargeGuarantees and NoIssuesChargeGuarantorsWithGuarantees if they are using guarantee/guarantor patron relationships). If a library has the noissuescharge system preference set to block patrons from checking out items when their outstanding balance exceeds the threshold, marking an item lost manually might also be enough to immediately block the account.

However, it wholly depends on the value of the lost item and how high the fine threshold is for the library. For example, a library might block accounts owing more than $20.00; this means one overdue book costing $10.00 plus a $5.00 processing fee would not by itself block the account, but a second billed item or other outstanding fines might bring the account over the limit.

If a library always wants to block accounts at some point in their automated overdue timing, restricting via overdue notice/status triggers is the way to go, especially with the new option in the AutoRemoveOverduesRestrictions preference as of 23.11, which allows libraries to decide whether a restriction should be lifted when all late items are returned or when the item causing the debarment is returned. This means, however, that manually marking an item lost to bill the patron may not innately restrict the account if the amount is below the noissuescharge limit.

If a library's policies are to block accounts at certain dollar amounts, then they may not opt to block with overdue notices and instead rely on outstanding fees to kick in with noissuescharge. In this case, they do not have different blocking behaviors based on how the items were marked lost or overdue - manual or automatic, as soon as the bill is applied, the system preference will sort out whether they should be blocked.

Additional Resources

https://bywatersolutions.com/education/koha-question-week-overdue-timing
https://bywatersolutions.com/education/monday-minutes-patron-restrictions