Automatic Renewals

If you allow patrons to renew items on loan, you can enable automatic renewals.  You will need to check the following Circ and Fines Rules, and some System Preferences. 

Circulation Rules

• Renewals allowed (count): enter the number of times the item can be renewed

• Renewal period: enter how long the renewal loan period will be (in the units you have chosen)

• No renewal before: if your library wants to add a limit to when the auto-renewal happens, a numeric value can be added here. If a value of 2 is added in this column, then the auto-renewal will occur 2 days/hours before the due date. A blank value will indicate that the auto-renewal will occur on the day it is due. (Prior to version 20.11 of Koha, it was mandatory to add a value in the no renewal before column, or your items would auto-renew every day until the patron hit the max number of renewals).  

• To control this value on a more granular level please set the NoRenewalBeforePrecision preference.

• Automatic renewal: this needs to be set to yes (turns on the automatic renewal functionality when cron starts).  This will renew automatically following your circulation rules unless there is a hold on the item.

• Important

• You will need to ask Interleaf to enable the automatic renewal cron job for this to work.

• No automatic renewal after: this will block/allow auto-renewals after a given delay. For instance, if the issue date is 10 days before today, and no_auto_renewal_after is set to 10, tomorrow the issue won’t be auto-renewed, Koha will generate a auto_too_late error.

• No_auto_renewal_after_hard_limit: to block/allow auto-renewals after a given date. This will stop renewals on a given date. For example, a library will have time to send overdue notices and get the items back before the students go on holiday.

System Preference

• OpacRenewalAllowed: This allows patrons to renew their own books on the OPAC. If you change it to don’t allow that will turn the option off for patrons. Keep in mind, if you have some item types that do NOT automatically renew, you will want to leave this feature turned on.

• Renewal Log: you will want to set this to Log so you can keep track of when items are renewed.

• OPACFineNoRenewalsBlockAutoRenew: this allows you to control if a patron owes more than the value of the system preference OPACFineNoRenewals, to allow or not allow their item to auto-renew.

• RestrictionBlockRenewing: if a patron is restricted, allow or do not allow renewing of items.

• AllowPatronToControlAutorenewal: you can either allow only staff or allow patrons to allow/disallow auto-renewal for an account. If allowed a patron will be able to update their own account to allow/disallow auto-renewals. If your library has a value in the “no renewal before column” and your patron has opted out of the automatic renewals, they will not be able to renew until after that date has passed.

• NoRenewalBeforePrecision: this allows you to control how the “No renewal before” option in the Circulation and fines rules works.  If you use the default value of date, then just the date is used for the calculation regardless of the time that the cronjob runs.  Day loans have a due time of 23:59.  Generally the cronjob will be set to run at 6:25 am, so if you set a value of 1 for No renewal before, and a value of date for NoRenewalBeforePrecision, the item will be renewed the day before the due date.  If you set NoRenewalBeforePrecision to the other value of exact time, then a 24 hour period is used for the calculation.  In this case if the cronjob runs at 6:25 am, with a value of 1 for No renewal before, the item will be renewed on the due date. 

•     Note: Only relevant for loans calculated in days, hourly loans are not affected.

CronJobs

You will need to enable the cronjob misc/cronjobs/automatic_renewals.pl.  Just submit a ticket and Interleaf can turn the cronjob on for you. This will automatically renew items if you’re allowing automatic renewal with your circulation and fine rules.  

When you change the Circ and Fines Rules to allow automatic renewals, the new rules only apply to items checked out after the new rule is set. If you want to change items that are currently checked out, please submit a ticket.  Please let us know if you will be using the automatic renewal notice (listed below).

Notices and Slips

In notices and slips, you will see AUTO_RENEWALS – notification on auto-renewing.

When an issue is auto-renewed, a notice will be sent to the patron. The notice will alert the patron if the item was renewed or if it wasn’t renewed because the item had a hold on it.

Automatic Renewal Option for 1 time circulation

If you do not want to turn on the automatic renewal through your circulation and fine rules for a specific patron category/item type, you can do it as a one-time circulation.  You will notice a box under the checkout settings on circulation.pl when checking an item out to a patron.  This will automatically renew the item once if and only if there are no holds on the item.

Things to Consider

By default, patrons and staff do not have the ability to renew if automatic renewals are turned on. The system preference, AllowPatronToControlAutorenewal, will either allow only staff or allow patrons to control auto-renewal for an account.  If allowed a patron will be able to update their own account to control auto-renewals.  If your library has a value in the “no renewal before column” and your patron has opted out of the automatic renewals, they will not be able to renew until after that date has passed.

OPAC - Patrons View