Other Information
Other Information
There are several scenarios that may result in a patron account showing a negative balance or credit. PINES policy states that patrons are not allowed to carry a credit balance on their account, so accounts that show negative balances should be reviewed regularly and balanced. In some cases, the patron is due a refund, and in other cases they are not.
Open the Evergreen Staff Client and go to: Administration > Local Administration > Patrons with Negative Balances
This screen may take some time to load. It will default to the library location that your workstation is registered to. After it loads, you may select a different library location.
Double-click on any resulting patron to open that patron's record.
If you see that charges were voided under the Bills section, but also paid or forgiven under the Payments section, then that would explain how the bill number ended up with a credit that should not be there. In this scenario, the patron is not due a refund. To correct this, add a bill to that bill number for the amount of the incorrect credit:
See Also:
PINES policy states that if a lost item is paid for in full, but then found and returned by the patron within six months (180 days) of payment, then the owning library should refund the payment minus any overdue fees that had been automatically voided when the item was marked lost, and minus any processing fees which had been applied.
1) Verify that the refund is due.
2) Confirm the amount of the refund.
3) Process the refund.
Currently there is a bug in the refund process. If there is more than one billing line that has a negative amount due, each billing line must be processed as a separate refund. The system will not process them together.
Also, if a patron owes money and has a refund, the refund must be sorted to the top of the bills to be processed. Once the refund is processed, the fines due can be paid with the refund amount. The patron will then receive a check for the difference in the fines owed and the refund if there is any negative amount still due the patron. Multiple receipts for the fines paid would need to be printed to account for the difference in the amount of the refund receipt and the actual refund amount.
There are a few options you might encounter in the Evergreen Staff Client that do not work the way you might expect them to for PINES, so we recommend that you do not use them.
If you are unable to identify the cause of the negative balance or unable to correct it, please submit a detailed Help Desk ticket.