[Koha] Work-around for fees?

[Joelle Hannert]

Hello!

I've been surprised to find that Koha's settings for lost item fees are not
as flexible as I'd have hoped. I'd like to be able to apply them based on
Patron Category, and also based on item type, but I'm finding that it's an
all-or-nothing setting with no granular options. Has anyone found a
work-around for this? And, if not, would it be something worth considering
as an enhancement? I'm a fairly new Koha user and haven't been involved in
the enhancement process yet.

Here are a couple examples specific to our library, in case it helps to
have some context:

Patron Categories and lost item fees:
We are a college library, and we don't charge fines to faculty/staff. We
also have an ILL profile type that we don't charge fines to. We do want to
charge students the replacement fees for long-overdue items.

Item types and lost item fees:
There are some items that we charge $1/day overdue up to the cost of
replacement. For higher-priced items, they hit the long-overdue threshold
(28 days) long before the full cost of replacement overdue charge is up
(example: $300 for laptops). In our system, at 28 days overdue the lost
item replacement charge is put on their account and the daily overdue fine
stops accruing. If the item was an overdue laptop that isn't returned
until, say, 200 days overdue, the person wouldn't be charged a $200 overdue
fine as intended, but a $28 overdue fine, and the $300 replacement fee
would be refunded. This is why we'd like granular control, to exclude these
item types that accrue overdues up to the cost of replacement from the long
overdue process.

Thanks for any insight you can provide!

-- 
Joelle Hannert
Library Technical Services Coordinator
Northwestern Michigan College
(231) 995-1684
Work days: M, W, Th evening, F