[Koha] [Koha-devel] RFC: Modification to Fines System

[Martin Longo]

En su momento, tajoli escribió:
> Dear Kyle Hall,
>
> On Thu, 1 Oct 2009 08:47:52 -0400, Kyle Hall <kyle.m.hall at gmail.com> wrote:
>   
>> I just thought of a reasonably easy way to track both the payment made
>> by a borrower, and the payment as applied to charges on a borrowers
>> account. 
>>     
> [...]
>   
>> The real question is: is this necessary? Do any libraries using Koha
>> need to track total payments against individual fine payments?
>>     
>
> I don't know if libraries needs to track payments in this way.
> In Italy, as standard, we don't use fines.
> We put days of embargo on user or we ask to pay 
> the value of book if heavily damaged or lost.
>
> But if you do the work, read the MySql documentation here:
> http://wiki.koha.org/doku.php?id=en:development:dbschema
> http://www.koha.it/local--files/working/koha303_schema.zip
>
> I'm sure that there are errors, and to have a prefect idea on how the
> system work,
> read the code of the API. A one person previous said, there are lacks on
> constraints, unique keys, indexes.
>
> And please write here any error you find in the docs, I will update them.
> And also any update on the tables.
>
> Bye
> Zeno Tajoli
>
>   

Hi there !...

I want to jump into this thread because, as the italian libraries,
argentinian libraries don't use monetary fines but a suspension period
(an amount of days depending the itemtype or the borrowertype, etc.)

Since we began using Koha, back in version 2.2, we had to 'do something'
to use Koha and change 'fines' to 'suspensions' and reflect that in the
system. I'm sure each Koha implementation here at Argentina has it's own
way to implement this (via new local tables, scripts,etc)

I was able to implement this feature by "missusing" the accountlines
table, adding a local variable, changing a bit mancredit, maninvoice
templates and adding some code to fines.pl and some C4 modules....

This "Frankenstein" has been working very well over this years... but
the thing is that it would be a lot better if something like this could
be included into Koha... so a library could select the type of system to
use (monetary fines or suspension days) in System Preferences.

So .. If some changes are to be made to the Fines System, I wanted to
add my 2 cents so maybe this changes can made it to the system too

Best regards

-- 
Ing. J. Martin Longo
Depto. Gestion Informatica
SID - UNCuyo
http://sid.uncu.edu.ar