Payments Between Libraries Report

About

The Payments between Libraries report is a scheduled report that runs monthly.

It can be used by libraries to create and process invoices for lost and damaged items that are paid for at a library other than the owning library. According to OWWL Policy, these payments should be forwarded to the owning library. See the OWWL Policy page for more details on the policy (including the recent change disallowing payments to be sent via OWWL Delivery).

What's included

The report includes all payments that meet the following criteria:

1. Any actual payments (cash, check, credit, debit) made on any circ transaction that was ever billed for being marked lost if the collecting library is different than the item's owner.
2. Any work payments made on any circ transaction that was ever billed for being marked lost.
3. Any actual payments (cash, check, credit, debit) made on any circ transaction where the billing type was "Manual Damaged Item" or "Manual Damaged Item Processing Fee" if the collecting library is different than the item's owner.
4. Any actual payments (cash, check, credit, debit) made on any manually added bills where the billing type was "Manual Damaged Item" or "Manual Damaged Item Processing Fee" if the collecting library is different than the library who created the bill.
5. Any work payments made on any circ transaction that was ever billed for being marked damaged.

Caveats

There will be cases where payments that show up on this report don't necessarily have to be invoiced for or forwarded to the owning library. For example, if a circulation that accrues overdue fines is marked lost, the item is subsequently returned, and the overdue fine is paid for, the transaction will show up on the report. Certain fields are included in the report to aid you in determining whether the payment needs to be invoiced for or forwarded to the owning library. For example, if a lost item's current status is marked as "Available" and not "Lost and Paid," that's a sign that the payment collected was for overdue fines, not for the replacement cost, and shouldn't be invoiced for or forwarded to the owning library. The patron's barcode is included to aid in further investigation in Evergreen.

You may also occasionally see some rows for the same circulation transaction. For example, if multiple staff members collect payments on a transaction, each row will the amount collected by the staff member. Or, payments may be made on multiple dates. Those will be displayed on different rows. The transaction ID and item barcode are included to help you determine whether the payments displayed are for the same transaction.

Fields

• ID: The transaction ID. You'll see this in Evergreen when looking at bill details.
• Payment Date: Date on which payment was collected.
• Payment Library: Library at which payment was collected.
• Owning/billing Library: Library which owns the item (or who created the bill, in cases of manually added bills not tied to a circulation).
• Item URL: A direct link to the item. Useful for cases where you can't retrieve the item by barcode because the owning library has already deleted the item.
• Item Barcode: This is mostly always included, but not included in the case of those manually added bills. The same will be true for other item info below.
• Item Current Status: The report doesn't filter out cases where an item was marked lost, returned, and then had overdue fees paid for. This field can help when reviewing the report: If an item is currently marked as Available, Checked Out, etc. but the item had been marked Lost, it's possible that the payment was collected just for overdue fees.
• Item Price: This is the item's current price in Evergreen. This was also included to help in reviewing items: If an item is priced at $20 but only $5 was collected, the payment collected may have been for overdue fines.
• Patron Barcode: The patron's barcode. Use this to view the full bill on the account.
• Circulation Stop Fines Reason: This is just another helper. If an item was marked lost, that's the value that will show up here (even if it was subsequently returned). "Checkin" will show up for the damaged items.
• Max Fine: This will show the max fine for the circulation (if applicable). This is another helper field when evaluating the payments collected.
• Bill Type: If the payment met the criteria for 1 or 2 in the "What's included" section above, then "Lost." If the payment met the criteria for 3, 4, or 5, then "Damaged"
• Collector: The username of the staff member who collected the payment.
• Cash payments / check payments / credit card payments / debit card payments / work payments : These just the sum of payments by payment. You'll see cases where a patron may have paid a bill using multiple payment types.