Bill Reason Wizard

In SirsiDynix Symphony, users may be billed by the library staff member at a workstation or automatically (for instance, when an overdue item is discharged, a bill is automatically created). Each time a user is billed, a Bill Reason is recorded with the bill. This Bill Reason indicates the purpose of the bill. Recording the reason for a bill can prove useful to both the library staff member and the SirsiDynix Symphony administrator. The staff member can tell a patron why the patron incurred the bill. The SirsiDynix Symphony administrator can use bill reports to analyze certain activities, especially the various sources of circulation revenue.

Certain Bill Reasons must be defined for SirsiDynix Symphony’s automatic fining features. The Bill Reason OVERDUE is used by SirsiDynix Symphony when billing for an overdue item. If users must pay a fee when charging an item, collecting a hold, or receiving a circulation privilege, then CHARGE, HOLD, and PRIVILEGE must be defined as Bill Reasons. A Bill Reason for a lost book, such as LOSTITEM, might be appropriate. Any number of Bill Reasons may be defined.

From the List Policies window, you can create, display, modify, copy, or remove the Bill Reason policies. Click Close to exit the wizard.

Attributes

The Bill Reason wizard displays the following attributes.

Name

This attribute uniquely identifies a specific Bill Reason policy. This name is ten characters or less, and may not include spaces or punctuation, except for dash (-), underscore (_), and dollar sign ($). Additionally, the pipe character (|) may not be used.

Description

This attribute provides more information about the policy and its use by the library. The description may be up to 60 characters in length. Although the Description attribute may contain spaces and punctuation, the pipe character (|) cannot be used.

Associated with Item

Select the Associated with Item check box if this bill reason pertains to an item. The Bill Reason OVERDUE would indicate that an item was involved with the bill, whereas the Bill Reason PRIVILEGE would indicate no item was involved. If a library staff member, in billing a user, types in a Bill Reason which indicates an item is associated with that bill, the staff member is required to supply the item number. Similarly, when the system automatically bills a user, for a Bill Reason with an associated item, it records the item number with the bill (for example, when discharging an overdue item).

Tax

This attribute identifies a valid Circulation Tax policy for the selected bill reason. The Circulation Tax policy is used to calculate the tax on bill amounts. This field can remain blank or be set to NOTAX for bill reasons used with no-tax transactions. Select a Circulation Tax policy from the list. Use the Circulation Tax Wizard helper to create new Circulation Tax policies or modify existing Circulation Tax policies, if needed.

Related topics 

Circulation Configuration Wizards

Policy Operations

Delivered Bill Reason Policies

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