New Functionality with Lost Statuses in Koha

by Kelly McElligott on Aug 5, 2018

With the new version of Koha, 17.11.06, which our partners are getting upgraded to in June, came a new system preference : marklostitemsasreturned. The bug that is related to this change is Bug 12363.

This system preference was created to allow for libraries the control on being able to mark items returned within the various places in Koha. With this change, the system preference would only allow for the choice of Marking Return or Not Marking Return. Prior to the addition of this system preference, libraries were able to Mark Return from the moredetail.pl (Items Tab) and the Batch Item Modification Tool but not from the Edit Item or the Long Overdue Cron.

For example, marking an item as lost from additem.pl would not return the item, but doing so from moredetail.pl, would. This would charge the patron the replacement cost, change the status to Lost and take the item off the patron’s account. Librarians had at least some control over having and item returned when lost. This update to additem.pl now causes all ways to mark an item as lost from the staff intranet. The default setting for this system preference is “Don’t Mark” Items Returned when Lost.

A revision is made to the system preference : marklostitemasreturned in Koha version 17.11.07. This change has come from bug 19974 and will now allow libraries to choose how/when they items would be returned. The choices are:

• Select ALL
• When Cataloging an Item
• Items Tab in Catalog Module
• Long Overdue Cron
• Batch Item Modification

Now the library can determine which areas that the System Preference would control when it is returning the item and removing it from the patron’s account. The library can choose All, or up to 3 choices.

The default setting for the newer version (17.11.07) of this system preference will be “From the Items Tab on the Catalog Module”. If your library uses or would like to use different settings, please be sure to check this system preference.

One last change with this bug fix is consistency with charging for lost items in Koha. Prior to this fix, only a specific functions would Koha charge the patron for an item when it was changed to lost. There is a system preference called : whenlostchargereplacementfee . Prior to this Koha version, even with this system preference, this was not always happening within Koha. Now, regardless of what function is being done (changing the item to lost) , from the Items Tab, Editing Item, etc- if an item is changed to a Lost status, the patron will be charged the replacement fee.

Below is YouTube video created for this new system preference: