Bursar integration: Additional fee statuses in Alma & Allow fee status change with job Import from Bursar
Currently there exist in Alma only the fee statuses “open”, “transferred” and “closed”. Transferred means fee was exported to external Bursar system. When the fee is imported back to Alma, it is automatically Closed. For staff it is not possible to tell if the closed fee was paid, waived, unpaid etc. without consulting the 3rd party Bursar system.
To give the librarians and end users more transparency about the (invoice) status of a fee, we would need more differentiated fee statuses. Also, we need to be able to set this status when importing the fees back to Alma using the job Import from Bursar.
The optimal development would be:
1. Have the possibility to configure ourselves in Alma which fee statuses we want to use and to have the possibility to add additional fee statuses.
2. The Import from Bursar job must be able to set this status based on a field in the import XML file.
If the #1 is not possible, it would be good to have the following additional fee statuses implemented:
invoiced
unpaid
partial payment
paid/closed
storno
write-off
transferred to the debt collection
e-mail not deliverable
Jeanette Isele
shared this idea
Additional 10 closed fee statuses will be mapped in a code table. Libraries will be able to change their description. Fees with any of these statuses will be considered closed for all purposes.
The same types will be used also for transaction types.
When an import from bursar is processed, each fee may optionally include a code of the status to which the fee will change.
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Marlise Daum
commented
Dear Moshe
What is the status of this accepted request? When will it be implemented?
Thank you and kind regards, Marlise -
Jeanette Isele
commented
Dear Moshe
We can confirm that also what you wrote concerning bursar is perfect for us! Thank you again so much!Kind regards
Jeanette -
Jeanette Isele
commented
Dear Moshe
Thank you so much for these good news and accepting this idea!
Your suggestion sounds really good - I will check the last sentence concerning the import from bursar with my colleague.
Maybe this question is a bit too early, but do you already have an idea when this will be released approximately?
Thank you again and kind regards
Jeanette -
Would a solution such as the below work for you ?
Additional 10 closed fee statuses will be mapped in a code table. Libraries will be able to change their description. Fees with any of these statuses will be considered closed for all purposes.
The same types will be used also for transaction types.
When an import from bursar is processed, each fee may optionally include a code of the status to which the fee will change. -
Jeanette Isele
commented
This would be perfect!
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Yes, that is the idea.
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Jeanette Isele
commented
Dear Moshe
Thank you very much for your comment.
Did I understand correctly that the idea would be to have then 10 fee status which are considered as closed but with different "labels"?
This would be great!
Kind regards
Jeanette -
Definitely makes sense ! I think a good approach would be a configurable code table of 10 fee statuses/transaction types that can be activated and customized by the institution. These statuses will be considered closed, but will appear with the description customized by the institution
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Johanna Bucher
commented
Strongly support this idea!
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Jeanette Isele
commented
In the context of the NERS Voting ExLibris suggested an alternative development which covers the same use case and would also be suitable:
Allow the bursar import to supply a comment that will be recorded on the transaction. The comment will be free text, and viewable in the transactions list. It will also be reportable in Analytics. This way the bursar will be able to supply any additional information that is required for the library staff to view. Also - add the fine comment to Primo. An 'Add Comment' option will enable inserting new text to the comment but not editing existing ones. The newly added text will be automatically prefixed by the the date it was generated -
Nadine
commented
additional fee statuses are very needed
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Oliver Abt
commented
More differentiated fee statuses would be very helpful for day-to-day work. This would make things easier for both libraries and end users.
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Ana Pastor
commented
I strongly support this. Transparency is very important!
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Natacha Bossi commented
It's important for librarians to be able to explain this to patrons. It's also about increasing our credibility.
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Flavio Frei commented
In order to present the costs transparently for our customers, it is essential to distinguish between paid, invoiced and amortised fees.
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Simone
commented
I very much support the request to configure additional status. Since this is about money and the status determines how a case or future cases with this user are dealt with, it is essential that it is visible whether a fee has been paid by the user or written off. And this must be visible in Alma for the staff as well as in the user account for the user.
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Andi Traber commented
We would also like to emphasize how important this is! The current situation is confusing for customers and employees and leads to a lot of manual work and errors that ultimately cost the institutions a lot of money.
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Corinne Gysling
commented
We totally agree with Jeanettes and Leandras arguments as we also frequently meet patrons who are confused because of the fine status. With the current conditions even the librarians are not easily able to give appropriate answers.
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Leandra
commented
We strongly encourage Jeanettes comment: Every library has fees that customers do not pay. In order to have a transparent, intuitive debt collection process, additional fee statuses are needed. The current statuses "transferred", "active" and "closed" already cover distinct process elements, whereas there is e.g. no status for fees that were not paid after a defined amout of payment reminders.
We receive regular end user complaints that with being able to display all fees of any fee status in Primo user account, the current situation of having to use e.g. the "closed" status for unpaid fees as well, is very confusing. Therefore, we need the additional fee statuses or an alternative solution displaying intuitively to the end user which fees still need to be paid.