Wes Osborn

Collection Agency Overview

• Since May 2014, only the cost of lost material and processing fees are used in calculating the submission threshold for submitting patrons to the collection agency.
• Once a patron reaches the threshold, all account balance information, including fine balances for the patron, are submitted to the Collection Agency.
• Patrons are referred to collections after the library-set criteria has been met.
  • The settings of the patron’s registered library are always used to determine collection agency submission criteria. Even if participating in shared patron, the patron’s registered library is still used for collection agency criteria.

Settings and Options

• There is no report to show your libraries current criteria for Collection Agency. You can request your current settings from CLC in a HelpDesk ticket.
• Here is a screenshot of the Collection Agency setting dialog box in Polaris System Administration (definitions below):
  
  

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• Cut-off date: Any patrons whose criteria were met before the cut-off date won’t be sent to collections.
• Fine age (days) : the number of days that the Min Balance has been reached before the patron is sent to collections. The fine age should be GREATER than the notice interval for Bills to make sure the patron receives the bill notice before they are sent to collections.
• Min. Balance: item fees (lost item costs, processing fees) the patron must reach before they are sent to collections
• Patron codes to exclude: You can choose to exclude certain patron codes that should not be sent to collections.
  • Note: Excluded patron codes are omitted from all communiation with Unique. If a patron with an excluded patron code happens to have a collection agency block (the patron was blocked and then the patron code is changed, etc) then the block will never be removed via an update to Unique. If this happens, please enter a HelpDesk ticket and CLC will work with III to remove the block permenantly.
  • Individual patrons can be excluded from Collection Agency submission using the Exclude from collection agency setting on the patron registration workform.
• Patrons to include: If a patron doesn’t meet the criteria to be sent to collections (have an excluded patron code, fees incurred before the cut-off date), they can be manually added to this list to be sent to collections. The CLC has not tested this functionality and no CLC libraries currently use it.

When are patron accounts submitted to the Collection Agency?

• Weekly any new patrons that meet the libraries criteria are submitted to the Collection Agency.
• Daily the system runs an update process to update the current account balance information with the Collection Agency.
• Periodically Unique Management will also request an account synchronization. CLC runs this process as requested by Unique. It ensure that all the accounts on file with Unique have the proper account balances.
• All account information is submitted to Unique using a secure protocol.

When are patron accounts removed from the collection agency process?

• A patron’s account is out of collection when the patron no longer owes money, including fines incurred after the reporting, to any reporting libraries. If the patron’s account is paid down to $0.00, but the patron incurs a new fine before the collection agency Update report is run, the patron’s account is still in collection.
• If you’d like to manually remove a collection agency block from a patron account, follow the steps in this article.
  • If you need to permanently remove a collection agency block from a record set of patrons, follow the steps in this article.

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More information

• Use this report to get a list of patrons submitted to the collection agency, this report includes more details on the patron accounts that have been submitted.
• Occasionally staff may see notices from Unique Managament concerning the holidays, for more information on these notices, see this article.
• It is recommended that you use fine notices to make sure that patrons get notified via Polaris before their accounts are submitted to the Collection Agency.