Fees/Fines (UXPROD-792)

[UXPROD-3137] Future Fees/Fines: Allow "No fees/fines shall be refunded if a lost item is returned more than" to be determined by a fixed date (i.e. end of fiscal year) Created: 17/Jun/21  Updated: 16/Feb/23

Status: Draft
Project: UX Product
Components: Fees/Fines
Affects versions: None
Fix versions: None
Parent: Fees/Fines

Type: New Feature Priority: P4
Reporter: Erin Nettifee Assignee: Cheryl Malmborg
Resolution: Unresolved Votes: 0
Labels: Unassigned-from-Holly
Remaining Estimate: Not Specified
Time Spent: Not Specified
Original estimate: Not Specified

Issue links:
Relates
relates to UXPROD-3668 Phase 2 of refund fees/fines Draft
Epic Link: Fees/Fines
Development Team: Vega
PO Rank: 0
Rank: Cornell (Full Sum 2021): R5

 Description   

Current situation or problem: In the current implementation of the fee/fine lost notice policy, libraries can choose to decline to refund any charges if a fee/fine is returned after more than a certain period of time. The idea is that a library could decide that if you were charged, and decided to not return a book for six months, they could set that policy to "180 days" and then if the book appeared, not refund the charges.

Some libraries think about the process of refunds more around a fiscal year. For example, if a fiscal year ends on June 30th, libraries may not wish to refund money after that date since the refunded money would come out of the next fiscal year's budget, not the year that the charge was actually incurred.

This feature is meant to encompass the work to add an option to the lost fee/fine policy to refuse refunds after a specific date, rather than a rolling window. The date should include the year.

In scope

  • Modifications to the lost item policy and associated workflows.

Out of scope

Use case(s)
Use Case 1: A library's fiscal year ends June 30th. Undergraduates fixed final book due dates on May 15th before they leave for the summer. The Library decides it wants to give students until the end of the summer to return books, but no longer, so they set the circulation policy for undergraduate patron groups to refuse a return for any lost item fee/fine if the item is returned after September 1st of that calendar year.

Use Case 2: A library has a policy where they can only pay refunds if a fee/fine was charged to a patron in the current fiscal year, and they publicize that policy to patrons. Their fiscal year ends on August 31st, so all of their fee/fine policies are set so that if a fine is incurred prior to that date, and the item is returned after that date, a refund is not given.

Proposed solution/stories

Links to additional info

Questions

  • How is the policy stored so that it can be checked if an item is returned after it ages to lost?
    • For example, imagine Use Case 2 above. Suppose Jane Professor doesn't return an item and it becomes lost on August 1, 2021, and they still don't return the book. On September 1, the library goes in and changes the lost item policy to September 1, 2022 so that new transactions from that point onward have the whole year to return the book. Then Jane Professor returns her book on September 15, 2021. If at that point, FOLIO checks the date on the updated lost policy, then Jane Professor would get a refund, because the date has been moved forward a year.

Generated at Fri Feb 09 00:29:38 UTC 2024 using Jira 1001.0.0-SNAPSHOT#100246-sha1:7a5c50119eb0633d306e14180817ddef5e80c75d.