9.1 Overview to Claims and Late Warnings

These functions enables the library staff to investigate and process claims and late warnings.

A claim is placed on an item when a serial issue arrives out of sequence. For example, if issue number 3 is expected to be checked in, but issue number 4 arrives first, the software creates a claim for issue number 3 when issue number 4 is checked in.

Claims can be placed on up to five issues for a given title during one Issue Check In transaction. For example, if issue number 3 is expected to be checked in but issue number 10 arrives and is checked in, claims will be created for issues 3,4,5,6, and 7, but not for issues 8 and 9.

When a claimed issue arrives and is checked in, the claim is automatically cleared.

If two consecutive issues are claimed and then arrive as a combined issue, because the two claims cannot be automatically cleared when an attempt is made to Check In the combined issue, a message will be displayed informing you to delete the claims before the combined issue can be checked in. For example, if issues 3 and 4 are claimed, and an attempt is made to Check In issue 3-4, the message will appear.

A Late Warning is placed on a title if no issues have arrived for the title after an expected number of days following the last Check In, based on the title's frequency. (Late warning days is a parameter that is entered into the Journal Frequency File. See Claims function Frequency Late Values, for a list of the default frequencies. These frequencies can be adjusted for your library.) This includes Copies that have been created but never have the initial issue arrive. For example, using the claims example above, if neither issue 3,4, or any other issue arrives for longer than a set number of days, the title will be flagged as late when function [Process Late Warnings] runs.

Letters and Work Lists for both claims and late warnings can be printed for the appropriate vendors or publishers. To include information about vendors and publishers for your library, use main Serial function [Vendor Maintenance].