Managing Claims Returned
Koha has a process for managing items that are checked out to a patron that the patron claims to have returned.
Setup
There are a few system preferences related to claims returned:
ClaimReturnedChargeFee : When marking a checkout as "claims returned”:
The options are to Charge a Lost Fee, Don’t Charge or Charge. If set to Charge, Koha will charge the Patron the Replacement Price of the Item when it is set to Claims Returned. If set to Don’t Charge, Koha will not charge the Patron. If set to Ask to Charge, when an item is set to Claims Returned, there is a checkbox to either charge/don’t charge.
Image below is if your library chooses "Ask to Charge"
ClaimReturnedLostValue : Use the LOST authorised value X to represent returns claims. The X will be filled in with the numeric value that was assigned under the LOST authorized Value.
ClaimReturnedWarningThreshold : Warn librarians that a patron has excessive return claims. If the patron has claimed the return of more than Y items. If a library would like to set up a limit to the number of claimed returned that the patron can have, this can be done through this system preference. Once the number of claims has reached this threshold, the running total of claims returned will appear in the Attention portion of the patron's account.
Changes in Display
From the Patron’s Checkouts:
With the introduction of Claims Returned, there is now a new tab on the Patron’s Account and Detail screen. This tab shows the “Claims Returned” and how many outstanding claims have been made.
Also, next to each of the patron’s checkouts, there is a new column allowing staff to mark a checkout as “Claimed”.
Claims Process
When a patron states that they have returned an item, from the patron’s checkouts, staff can choose to “Claim Returned”. This will provide a popu where- notes can be made about this particular claim returned. If a choice to charge the patron is indicated from the system preference, ClaimReturnedChargeFee, then this will also be an option.
The item will remain on the patron’s account until this claims returned status is resolved. In addition to this, under the ATTENTION portion of the Patron’s account, there will be a running tally of the number of claims returned for this particular patron.
The Return of a Claimed Item
If a patron/library later checks in a “Claimed Returned”, there will be alert to the staff and the item will be removed from the patron's checkouts.
Staff can choose which resolution option to choose from a drop-down - and also determine if the status of the item should change from the current status to another lost status.
Resolving a Claim
After an item has been returned, a message will appear that this was a claimed item - there will be a hyperlink to the patron's name that the claim is on (as seen on the image above). To remove this active claim from a patron's account, go the Claim tab under the Patron checkouts. This claim tab will hold all active (unresolved) and resolved claims. On the far right hand since, there is an "Action" button. Under the action options staff can resolve a claim or edit the notes on a claim.
The resolution options by default are "Found in Library" and "Returned by Patron" which are found under the Authorized Values. The category is called " RETURN_CLAIM_RESOLUTION". A library can add more claim resolutions to this dropdown. From the image above, you can see that new value has been added to this dropdown.
For more information about adding a new value to an existing Authorized Value category: see this section in the manual.
Under the same Claim tab, the chosen resolution will appear and be stored. The numbers on the Claim Tab such as (1/0). The first number is the running total of resolved claims, the second number is the number of active claims.
Mark Lost Items as Returned
When a library marked an item claimed on a patron's account, this item remained on their checkout page. Although this may work for some libraries, other libraries wanted the functionality to have the item that is being marked 'claimed' to be taken off the patron's checkouts.
System Preference
A new option has been added to the system preference, MarkLostItemsAsReturned, to accommodate those libraries that would like to remove items that have been claimed off the Patron's checkouts.
Once this has been included in the system preference choices, once an item has been marked claimed, the item will be removed from the patron's checkouts. The item will be marked with a "claim' status and the patron will still have the item in their "Claim" tab on their account. This change just alters how the claimed item is reflected in Koha.
How Do We Add a New Claim Return Resolution Option?
Like most drop-down selection options in Koha, the list of resolutions for claim returns lives in an authorized value, RETURN_CLAIM_RESOLUTION.
The two default values are
- Returned by patron (RET_BY_PATRON)
- Found in library (FOUND_IN_LIB)
Libraries can add more to match their workflows and policies, particularly if they want to resolve old claims for the purposes of catalog cleanup, so this is an example of a site with the authorized value NEVER and a description of "Never found" as a claim return resolution, enabling the library to clear old claims.
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