Billed items (Replacement) and Lost Books (Mark Lost Items)

["Nancy Price" <nprice at cooslibraries dot org>]

Good day,

Because we tend to wait eons for long overdue items to return and delinquent
patrons to fess up, our staffers forget that Lost Books (telnet) / Mark Lost
Items (Millennium) does not work for items in Billed status.

(I am aware of III's FAQ on batch check-in of long overdue items. And its
attendant issues. And so are our staffers. But they forget. And all logic
would suggest that Mark Lost Items is what you do with a lost item.)

So today a staffer at one of our sites, who wished to maintain charges
against several patrons' record but also needed to get the silly things
checked in so they could be deleted or replaced, resorted to using Lost
Books/Mark Lost Items to deal with a dozen or so billed (Replacement) items
checked out to 9 different patrons.

Lo! Only 2 of the 9 patrons now have duplicate charges on their records. 

Which means 7 worked correctly! or, I should say: worked as one might
imagine.

Has anyone else attempted to use Lost Books recently with billed items? Has
the functionality changed? (We are running Mill Silver 1.1)

The Users Manual does not expressly say that Lost Books/Mark Lost Items does
not work with billed items. But then, it NEVER HAS expressly said so, even
though Lost Books/Mark Lost Items has not worked with billed items since
something like Release 9 or 10. The most recent thread I can find about this
issue in the list archives dates back to early 2002 ("Lost/replacement
billing question" 2002-01-04) Between the transactions that worked and those
that did not today, I cannot discern any pattern relating to date of
original checkout, material type, patron type, etc. 

I so wish to believe the behavior of this function has changed. But the FAQ
for "Batch Checkin: Managing Long Billed Items" remains on CSDirect, rather
dashing my hopes. Can any of you advise me?

Thank you
Nancy Price
Database Administrator
Coos County Library Service District
Coos Bay Public Library
525 W Anderson Ave
Coos Bay, OR 97420
nprice at cooslibraries dot org
541-269-1101-224