[SJAAboard] What does running the loaner program entail?

[Rob Hawley]

For those that would like to contribute to simplify the operation of the loaner
program this is the flow of all of the tasks.


http://www.sjaa.net/loaners/loaner-flow.pdf

The status of the scopes is maintained in the same database in which we maintain
the member info. Thus from a bookkeeping standpoint everything is very easy.  

	I have queries that generate the info that I can cut and paste into the
web page and generate the monthly board reports.  Update time for the web page
is under 5 minutes.

	Changing the state of a scope is changing entries on a form.  

	I can run queries to see which scopes are with non-members, upcoming
loans, what is available now, virtually anything I want.  

	The database generates the contracts and receipts.  It is linked to the
member's membership record.

The most time consuming part is negotiating transfers.  That generates a lot of
email as can be seen by the loops in the chart.  It is that volume of email that
concerns Rich. This is why the work is proportional to the exchanges and not the
size of the inventory.

The scary part of the whole enchilada is unsolicited returns.  Fortunately there
have been few of them (in fact only one that I can recall).
Rob Hawley