Lost Item Not Removed From Record When Marked Damaged, Bills Persisting

[Brett French]

Evergreen 3.7.3 on Chrome

We recently encountered this issue with an item that was marked "Damaged" while still "Lost" and on a patron's record. We have it set so that Damaged items should be checked in when marked damaged as we use the "Lost" status to encompass damaged-by-patron scenarios. The expected behavior is this:

1. Item is Checked Out
2. Marked Damaged (Item Is Checked In, Removed From the Patron's Record)

But when the item is "Lost", marking it "Damaged" does not check it in off the record, Then, when it's checked in later, the Lost Materials billing will remain on the account, even when the item is off the record.

To replicate:
1. Item Checked Out and Lost
2. Mark Item Damaged (Item is retained on the patron's record along with the lost charged.)
4. Check the item in manually (Lost charge persists on the record, even though the item was returned.)

[John Amundson (jamundson)]

Noting that this is not a wishlist item. This is definitely a bug.

In our system, marking an item Damaged should check it in from the patron's record, but that is not working when the item is in lost status. Lost items are still checked out to the patron's record and should be checked in when marked damaged.

[Terran McCanna (tmccanna)]

I view it as a wish list because Lost status and Damaged status and the actions and triggers involved are not directly related to each other.

Yes, it would be a very nice improvement to be able to switch seamlessly from one status to the other, but if your actions match the actual at-desk workflow (first check the Lost item in when you receive it and then mark it Damaged), it works as expected.

The wish list would be to combine the two separate functions of checking in a lost item and marking an item damaged into one function, but also take things like transit into account. The checkin would need to determine whether or not the Lost bill and processing fee should be reverted or not (depending on how long it's been lost, if any payments are made, and what the policies are on processing fees), whether or not to revert any payments that have been made towards it, and whether or not it needs to go into transit after the process is complete. (If I remember correctly, it can't be marked damaged from the interface if it's in transit. And, if you cancel the transit and then mark it damaged, it won't put it into transit. It would be nice if this process could figure out that it needs to go back to its owning library afterwards.) It should also be considered if the Stop Fines Reason in this case should still be LOST (because technically, that is when the fines stopped accruing, even if it was marked damaged after that).

[John Amundson (jamundson)]

Thanks for the explanation, Terran.

I still consider this a bug because it should already be doing these things. The action to mark an item damaged or missing was added to the Items Out interface in 3.5 - bug #1845706

Neither marking an item damaged or missing from this interface checks the item in when the item is in lost or claims returned status.

If the actions are in the Items Out interface, they should be doing the expected work, otherwise we wind up with weird situations where an item can be both missing and checked out at the same time.

[Terran McCanna (tmccanna)]

One thing that contributes to this confusion is having the items show on the Other tab as long as the bills are open. Once those bills are paid, they disappear off of the interface. Our staff have always found that confusing. IMO, having them show up on the Bills tab should be sufficient.

Also, I forgot to include in comment 2 that currently if you switch directly from Lost to Damaged without checking in the lost item first, it can potentially double-bill the patron.

[Michele Morgan (mmorgan)]

I would agree with John, I see this as a bug rather than a wishlist item.

Marking a Checked out item Damaged performs a checkin, the row in action.circulation is updated accordingly and the entry is removed from Items out.

Marking a Lost (or Long Overdue) item Damaged does not update the action.circulation row in any way.

A lot of the perception on how this should work may depend on library settings.

'Void lost item billing when returned' set to TRUE will remove a lost billing when an item is checked in.

'Charge item price when marked damaged' set to TRUE will bill the patron when the item is marked Damaged.

With both of options set as above, it makes sense that when marking a Lost item Damaged, the Lost billing should be removed in favor of the Damaged billing, which is what would happen if the Mark Damaged process performed the checkin on the Lost item.

I also think it's reasonable for staff to expect the same 'Mark Damaged' behavior when there is an open circulation transaction on the item, whether it be checked out, long overdue, or lost. They should not be required to process the damaged item differently depending on the state of the open circulation transaction.