Koha Tutorial Videos

Monday Minutes: Customizing the Description in Overdue Fines

by Kelly McElligott on Apr 3, 2023

In this week's Monday Minutes, Kelly and Jessie show off a really great way for libraries to customize the description in Overdue Fines. This feature is coming in 22.11 and uses Notices to allow libraries to make changes.

Description in Accountlines

Prior to this enhancement, Koha would reflect some key details of the item that was charged with the Title of the Item and the Due Date. This description has not changed in the enhancement, it remains the same. What does change is the ability to add more details to the item when it is charged.

New Notice

A new notice has been created to control what is included in this description. I believe this is the first time in Koha, that a notice is being used this way!

The notice is called " Overdue Fine Description" with the Letter Code: OVERDUE_FINE_DESC

By default, this notice will have the same contents, title, and due date. This new notice allows libraries to add more.

To include more detail - edit the PRINT notice, Overdue Fine Description. This notice is using Template Toolkit, and the syntax is a little different here. In our example, we included the barcode of the item.

[% item.barcode %]

This will be helpful if the item does get deleted because the barcode would be removed from the charge.

Note

Any changes to the notice, Overdue Fine Description, will only be reflected on new charges. This change will not effect old charges on patron's accounts currently.