My interpretation was that the "Replacement Cost" is what the patron gets charged, and that is free to be punitively large (like the retail price of the book, plus a handling fee) or forgivingly small (e.g. a low flat fee for children's books that the library may not intend to replace anyway), relative to the actual cost. 

Of course I have no idea whether I have achieved enlightenment on this issue or just made up a nice story about it.
--joe

On Thu, Jul 10, 2008 at 9:11 AM, Nicole Engard <nicole.engard@liblime.com> wrote:
RE: http://bugs.koha.org/cgi-bin/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=2109

I am wondering what the point of the Actual Cost field is? I had this
discussion with Josh:

Josh - "Well, based on a test I just did, it doesn't ignore actual
cost, but uses it as the actual cost of a single item when receiving
the shipment (not the Total, but the per item cost). Does that make
sense?"

Nicole - "Okay - I see what you mean - but what does Actual Cost
actually mean? The cost it would have been if I didn't get a discount?
The cost I actually paid (cause if that's it then the budgeting is
wrong)?  I see that it's there in the record after I receive an order
... just not sure why I need it at all when I have a replacement cost
and a budgeted cost."

Since we can't seem to figure this out among ourselves, I wanted to
ask the community.  Does anyone know what the Actual Cost field is
supposed to be used for?  I've had librarians ask me this and I
haven't been able to update the documentation to explain it because
I'm confused :)

Any help you can provide would be appreciated.
---
Nicole C. Engard