[Koha-devel] RFC: Modification to Fines System

[Kyle Hall]

Here is my problem, and my proposed solution.

One of our libraries is requesting a breakdown of payments by day, by
account type. That is, they want a report the gives the total amount
paid for Late Fees, for Damaged Books, and for Lost Books. Apparently,
they have separate money accounts for each.

In Koha as it stands, there is no direct way to connect a payment to a
particular accountline that was paid.

The least invasive idea I have is to add a new column to accountlines
( say, accountno_paid ) for payments. Each payment would then refer to
the fine or charge that it was paid against.

The largest difference, is that instead of one large payment that runs
down the amountoutstanding field for a number of charges, the total
payment would need to be broken down into a series of smaller
payments, one for each accountno paid on.

For example, suppose that a borrower has 3 items with and overdue fine
of $5.00 each, and the borrower is paying in full. The current version
would create a payment line of $15, and then set the amountoutstanding
to $0.00 for each of the 3 accountno's. The revamped system would
still set the  amountoutstanding to $0.00 for each accountno, but
would create three separate payment lines, one for each of the 3
accountno's, and the accountno paid on would be stored in
accountno_paid.

I don't think this would break any existing reports or functionality.

Does this sound like a reasonable solution? Or have I missed something
that may solve my problem without code?

Thanks,
Kyle

http://www.kylehall.info
Information Technology
Crawford County Federated Library System ( http://www.ccfls.org )