Tip for: 01.30.17

Last week we looked at the different kinds of charges in Alexandria. Now I’ll take you step-by-step through what happens when a patron is charged a fine….

First, we set the scenario. Mark has had Hunger Games overdue 5 days, and he is finally returning it. Your fine rate is 10¢ a day for items in the Fiction policy. You have a 3-day Grace Period, so if he’d returned the book within 3 days he wouldn’t have been charged anything, but at 5 days his fine has accumulated to 50¢.

Bookdrop the book in Circulation. If you (the operator) have the right Security permissions, you will see the Overdue Fine dialog window.

Overdue Fine

Mark has $5.00 in credit that he could use, but he’s brought some money with him and wants to save his credit for later. So you’ll enter .50 in the Cash field (v7) or in Payment Amount (v6).

In version 7, you can choose to Email the receipt to Mark or his parents (as long as your Email is configured), or you can Print the receipt. Press Process to submit the payment.

If this book was in the bookdrop, and Mark wasn’t there, you would Process this dialog without entering any payment information, and later when he wanted to make a payment you would go to the Charges tab, Charges subtab, select the charge for the overdue item, and Make Payment.

Make Payment 123

It’s done! ...But what if...: 
...You want to refund the charge? → Go to the History subtab (v7) or the Payments subtab (v6), find the charge, and click Refund.