Koha Question of the Week: How Do I End Checkouts to Clean Up Old Lost Items?

by Hebah Amin-Headley on Jul 7, 2023

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!

Question: How Do I End Checkouts to Clean Up Old Lost Items?

Answer: Often, libraries want a way to delete items that may still be checked out to patrons, but the items are years overdue and aren't likely to come back. The items cannot be deleted while they're still checked out, but returns might trigger refunds depending on circulation policies, or otherwise mark the item as found, so libraries need a way to be able to end the checkout without triggering a full return.

The End Checkouts plugin provided this functionality prior to Koha 22.11, when the ability to end checkouts via batch item modification made it into Koha natively. The plugin will accept a list of barcodes and end the associated checkouts without triggering full return functionality, leaving any statuses and fees behind while still ending the checkout.

The change is also logged in the circulation log, clearly demonstrating that the checkout was ended via plugin.

This plugin was developed for libraries to fill a gap in default refund behaviors, the need for which has been somewhat mitigated with new 22.11 features, but this is still a valuable tool for libraries to have in their collection maintenance toolbox, empowering staff to clean up old checkouts from the staff client.