2022-05-24 Acquisitions Meeting notes

Owned by Heather McMillan
May 24, 2022

Date

Attendees

  • Alissa Hafele, Ann Crowley, Bethany Blankemeyer, Bill Verner, Dennis Bridges, Dung-Lan Chen, Dwayne Swigert, Emily Robertson, Heather McMillan, Jean Pajerek, Julie Brannon, Kathleen Norton, Kimberly Pamplin, Kimberly Wiljanen, Kristin Martin, Linh Chang, Lisa Smith, Lucinda Williams, Mark Arnold, Martina Schildt, Mary Moran, Michael Phillips, Nancy Finn, Nancy Pelis, Okay Okonkwo, Sara Colglazier, Scott Perry, Scott Stangroom, Steve Selleck, Tara Barnett, Toni, Victoria Anderson, Virginia Martin, Winter White


Agenda

  • Housekeeping -

    • Reminder - Let Dennis know the approximate number of pieces (for expected pieces not received or for pieces received) that your library may export from Receiving at one time (post in ACQ SIG slack channel will do)
    • Reminder - Post any Acquisitions related topics you might have for discussion (if it's not already on) to the Implementers Topics list

    Business -

Discussion items

TimeItemWhoNotes
:00HousekeepingDung-Lan
  • Implementers list is for everyone to add too, please feel free to add anything to it you would like to discuss. 
  • Let Dennis know the approximate number of pieces (for expected pieces not received or for pieces received) that your library may export from Receiving at one time (post in ACQ SIG slack channel will do)
 :03
Dennis:  
  • Lets have a general discussion on creating invoices from the purchase order. 
  • Problem trying to solve: the point at which you create an invoice, and making it faster. Improving the user experience of creating invoices.   
  • One time purchases, invoice is paid when the issue is received. Ongoing orders, payment is separate from receiving. 
  • Kristin: At the moment paying in advanced of receipt because they are backlogged.  There is also a separation of responsibilities (receiving and paying) as a checks and balance.  EDI invoicing does make things easier. 
  • From Bill Verner to Everyone 12:07 PM
    Yes, for monograph receipts it's generally part of the overall receipts process. Though for shipments such as approval shipments that need to be created manually rather than via batch load, creating orders and processing receipts are part of the same overall process.
  • From Dung-Lan Chen to Everyone 12:08 PM +1 Bill
  • From Sara Colglazier  to Everyone 12:11 PM Yes, to multi line invoices
  • From Virginia Martin to Everyone 12:11 PM we have single POLs on a single PO
  • From Bill Verner to Everyone 12:11 PM We would rarely have single item invoices!
  • From Virginia Martin to Everyone 12:11 PM and we have massive invoices
  • From Lisa Smith - Mich State to Everyone 12:12 PM We usually have multiple line invoices.
  • From Bill Verner to Everyone 12:12 PM It's honestly surprising that this is a question
  • From Heather to Everyone 12:14 PM To pay an invoice, our workflow starts in the po to make sure it's actually an order and to verify all the information.
  • From Kristin Martin to Everyone 12:14 PM Yep
  • From Scott Perry (he/him) to Everyone 12:14 PM Mostly multi-line invoices 
  • From Bill Verner to Everyone 12:14 PM Almost all of them are long, multi line invoices.
  • From Virginia Martin to Everyone 12:15 PM  yes, we get the majority of our invoices electronically
  • From Scott Perry (he/him) to Everyone 12:15 PM Not all are edi.
  • From Virginia Martin to Everyone 12:15 PM but we do a significant volume of manual invoice creation as well
  • From Scott Perry (he/him) to Everyone 12:15 PM We haven't implemented Edifact with the serials invoices.
  • From Toni to Everyone 12:15 PM Not all of them. We do have with Ebsco EDI, but many invoices are not EDI. 
  • From Mary Moran to Everyone 12:15 PM Ours come in with shipments or are emailed to us
  • From Dung-Lan Chen to Everyone 12:15 PM mostly electronically … you can print off from vendor's invoice portal online
  • From Bill Verner to Everyone 12:16 PM We get a very high number of invoices that are not loaded electronically.
  • From Heather to Everyone 12:16 PM Any invoice not paid to the subscription agent
  • From Kimberly Wiljanen to Everyone 12:17 PM A lot of our vendors provide it in marc records at Mich State 
  • From Scott Perry (he/him) to Everyone 12:19 PM
    We have many large invoices--especially from Chinese vendors in our case where the invoices can be 600+ lines. That are entered manually.
  • Kimberly:  EDI invoices from the vendor are seasonally and clustered together. The rest of the year it's invoices that are not paid to the subscription agent. For these invoices, we are checking payment history and for any notes related to the subscription in the po.  The filter would help know what has already been selected to add. It also needs to add the invoice lines in the order the pol's are selected. 
  • From Virginia Martin to Everyone 12:22 PM Kimberley's description is similar to how things are at Duke. And like Chicago/Scott, we do sometimes have big manual invoices from East Asian vendors, though we try to get EDI set up for those when we can
  • From Bill Verner to Everyone 12:22 PM
    But to be clear, we might regularly get manual invoices that have between 20-50 lines as well.
  • :23 Dennis walked through current way of creating an invoice in the invoice app. 
    • From Kimberly Pamplin to Everyone 12:24 PM Could there be a filter that shows all selected?
  • Dennis: Is it less than ideal to start in invoices because it's difficult to search and find the correct pol?
  • From Lisa Smith - Mich State to Everyone 12:27 PM  It's tedious to add the POLs to the invoice lines.  I find quite often there are extraneous POLs listed in the search results.  If the results were more refined, we could easily select all, and de-select as needed.
  • From Scott Perry (he/him) to Everyone 12:27 PM Yes—there are a couple of issues we're encountering.  One is the slowness of retrieving the pol sometimes.
  • From Sara Colglazier  to Everyone 12:28 PM That is really important: has to be in the order added
  • From Julie Brannon (she/her) to Everyone 12:28 PM +1 to Kim - it's clunky to select multiple lines 
  • From Scott Perry (he/him) to Everyone 12:28 PM Yes, the order is very important—especially with very long invoices.
  • From Lisa Smith - Mich State to Everyone 12:28 PM +1 Kim
  • From Scott Perry (he/him) to Everyone 12:28 PM +1 Kim
  • From Kimberly Wiljanen to Everyone 12:30 PM What's nice about the Edifact invoices is that the items are in the same order as the invoice regardless of the POL
  • Sara C:  Discussed adding lines in an invoice one by one. Can there be a model where instead of selecting all the ones you want, it has add one, but not close just select the next one. 
  • Sara C: Cornell creates po's first, before going to Amazon, that way when they place the order they can add the po to the amazon order and the invoice comes in with the po number on it. 
  • From Michael Phillips to Everyone 12:41 PM It appears on the last page of the Amazon order.
  • From Lucinda Williams (she/her) to Everyone 12:41 PM I couldn't see that in Amazon either
  • From Lisa Smith - Mich State to Everyone 12:41 PM Mich State has order numbers on Amazon orders, too.
  • From Sara Colglazier  to Everyone 12:41 PM Where do you put it for Amazon when you order?
  • From Lisa Maybury to Everyone 12:42 PM Masayo Uchiyama (mu44@cornell.edu) would have the Amazon information. Unfortunately, she is not on the call today. 
  • Dennis: It saves clicks. When you create the invoice from the po it adds information automatically. 
  • From Michael Phillips to Everyone 12:43 PM On the last page of the Amazon order, where you can select the shipping address and the payment method, it allows you to input a purchase order number.
  • From Lisa Smith - Mich State to Everyone 12:45 PM
    Mich State has an Amazon business account set up, and we can enter the PO immediately after selecting an item, or near the last step, when choosing the payment method.
  • Dennis: In current workflows, when creating invoice, from point of receipt, would receiving and creating the invoice happen in a short span of time? Or are there multiple people involved? 
    • Martina: For them there is only one person involved and it would happen within the day. 
    • From Virginia Martin to Everyone 12:47 PM
      here at DUL, we often have payment happen pretty far out from processing an invoice for payment and receipt because another person in acquisitions accounting actually finalizes and approves payment on the invoice
    • Okay: For audit reasons, the person that creates the invoice cannot approve it, someone else has to approve. But it is still done within a day or two. 
    • From Lisa Smith - Mich State to Everyone 12:47 PM Typically, we don't mark invoices as 'paid' until the University Accounting Dept issues payment, so there would be a lag of a day up to a few days.
    • From Scott Perry (he/him) to Everyone 12:48 PM
      We have separation of duties and the people receiving are different from those creating invoices and the approval step is yet another person.
    • From Virginia Martin to Everyone 12:49 PM wires can take a really long time as well
    • Dung-Lan - Do not process invoice for order paid with credit card until it shows up on the statement. 
    • From Ann Crowley to Everyone 12:53 PM
      That wouldn't meet the separation of duties we are required to have by our Audit office - if we create and approve
    • From Scott Perry (he/him) to Everyone 12:54 PM
      For our direct feed invoices, we receive a file back with the disbursement number, etc. and load that into the voucher and also mark the invoice as paid at that point.  For those processed outside of the direct feed, they can stay approved for several weeks until the foreign currency wire information comes back from the bank. We are like cornell with a strict separation of duties. 
    • From Ann Crowley to Everyone 12:55 PM
      At Cornell we approve & pay in one step - we don't receive a file back from the University.
    • From Sara Colglazier  to Everyone 01:00 PM I have never received one (credit) via EDI.
    • From Scott Perry (he/him) to Everyone 01:00 PM All of our credits are manual
    • From Lisa Smith - Mich State to Everyone 01:00 PM 
      I like the idea of tying credits to a POL.  We want the fund and expense class of the POL to be credited properly.  And we process credits manually.

Action items

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