[Koha] Forgiving all overdue fines

[Raymund Delahunty]

Hello Charles-

We do not have any write access to the tables and any database updates are done by our support company. I understand they have a script they run to do the business.

I think what PTFS were offering was a simple report for us to run to provide that ‘report for posterity’, but I had already obtained those details when I asked senior management for approval to have the fines removed. They may also have wanted to see how big the job would be for their script.

I doubt very much if the report processor would accept UPDATE clauses, even if I was logged in as a user that had write access to the tables. I know I have to be very careful not to include words like UPDATE or DELETE when writing reports (say, in tips to users running a report where they have to enter something like a date range).  Use of these bad words causes an error in the SQL.

Ray Delahunty
University of the Arts London

From: Charles Kelley <cmkelleymls at gmail.com>
Sent: 24 March 2022 02:17
To: Discussion Group Koha <koha at lists.katipo.co.nz>; Raymund Delahunty <r.delahunty at arts.ac.uk>
Subject: Re: Forgiving all overdue fines

Hello, Raymund!

    In a recent exchange, on 24 Mch. 2022 at 08:00 [JST], I read the following from you through the Koha Discussion Group.

We did exactly the same thing. We decided to wipe all fines (not cocts of replacements) accrued since 14th December 2019. We had PTFS Europe (our support company) do this. They ran this little SQL:

SELECT accountlines_id, date, accounttype, payment_type, amountoutstanding FROM accountlines
WHERE date > '2019-12-14'
AND accounttype IN ('F','FU')
AND amountoutstanding > 0

The support analyst said: "This finds 5129 bills. If you are happy for these to be deleted, let me know".

I did, and they were gone in an instant.


    I'm curious: You didn't have to make a SQL statement like this:

UPDATE accountlines
    SET amountoutstanding = 0
    WHERE date > '2019-12-14' AND accounttype IN ('F', 'FU') AND amountoutstanding > 0;

    Does the Koha report processor accept UPDATE clauses or do you know?

    Of course, if you want for posterity a report of forgiven fines before they are forgiven, you probably would want run the SELECT SQL statement above.

--

    よろしくお願いします。

    -- Charles.

    Charles Kelley, MLS
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