2022-05-31 Acquisitions Meeting notes

Date

Attendees

  • Alissa Hafele, Ann Crowley, Ann-Marie Breaux, Bill Verner, Dennis Bridges, Dung-Lan Chen, Dwayne Swigert, Emily Robertson, Jackie Magagnosc, Jean Pajerek, Julie Brannon, Julie Stauffer, Kimberly Pamplin, Kristin Martin, Linh Chang, Lisa Smith, Lloyd, Mark Arnold, Mary Moran, Masayo Uchiyama, Michael Phillips, Nancy Finn, Okay Okonkwo, Peter Sbrzesny, Scott Perry, Scott Stangroom, Shannon Burke, Steve Selleck, Suzette Caneda, Tara Barnett, Victoria Anderson, Virginia Martin, Winter White

Agenda

Housekeeping -

  • Reminder – next meeting this Friday, June 3 (9 am Eastern)

Business -

Chat

meeting_saved_chat.txt

Closed Caption

meeting_saved_closed_caption.txt

Discussion items

TimeItemWhoNotes
:00HousekeepingDung-Lan
  • Friday meeting this week, 6/3.
 :05Create invoice automatically from purchase orderDennis
  • Mockups
  • Sequence of invoice lines (which is line 1, 2, etc.)
  • Oftentimes creating invoices based on more than one PO.
  • Start in Ordres app, select several POs and select new invoice which would take you to an invoice form. Select "save & continue" which will take you to a screen where you confirm the sequence of lines. Don't have to change order, but have ability to do so. Upon completion would be taken to invoice summary.
  • From Bill Verner to Everyone 12:08 PM
    How many orders could display at a time? Is there a maximum that could be selected at once to create the invoice?
    • Could possibly create with all of the invoice lines in system, though it might be very slow. Currently there is a limit on the number of invoice lines. That would probably be the limit, 999 lines
  • From Peter Sbrzesny to Everyone 12:16 PM
    Will it be possible to add another order to the invoice in case you have forgotten one in the first place?
    • Yes, this is helping you create the invoice. You can still edit, delete, etc. on the invoice. 
  • From Scott Perry to Everyone 12:16 PM
    For those of us with one pol per po this would be very helpful.
    • From Bill Verner to Everyone 12:17 PM
      +1 Scott
  • From Lisa Smith - Mich State to Everyone 12:21 PM
    I can see it working for both single and multi-line invoices, as long as we are paying the invoice for each line.
  • From Bill Verner to Everyone 12:22 PM
    I can see doing both, depending on the invoice.
  • From Scott Perry to Everyone 12:24 PM
    This is a big improvement and saves many clicks for 1 po/1 pol institutions.
    • From Dung-Lan Chen to Everyone 12:24 PM
      Yes, +1 Scott
  • From Bill Verner to Everyone 12:24 PM
    This seems seriously advantageous to me.
  • From Lisa Smith - Mich State to Everyone 12:24 PM
    Our invoice payer checks the POL before paying the invoice, so it would be helpful for to create from the PO.
  • From Virginia Martin to Everyone 12:25 PM
    for many of us with many vendors, electronic invoicing is not an option, Ann-Marie
  • Simliar number of clicks from the orders side vs. invoice side.
  • From Bill Verner to Everyone 12:26 PM
    But, once again, having a system that makes it easy to work with vendors that can invoice electronically and difficult to work with those that don't is discriminatory on any number of levels.
    • From Ann-Marie Breaux to Everyone 12:27 PM
      I totally get that for your long tail of small vendors, Virginia. Hopefully for your top 10-ish vendors, who maybe fulfill 70-80%-ish of your POLs/Invoice lines, you would be able to get electronic invoices.
    • From Virginia Martin to Everyone 12:28 PM
      Ann-Marie - yes, one hopes. however, when you have a very large volume of orders, even 20-30% of invoices not coming in electronically is a very large number requiring a lot of staff time.
    • From Bill Verner to Everyone 12:29 PM
      Also, the fact that these may not represent the largest percentage of actual billing does not mean that they don't represent an equal volume of actual invoicing work\
    • From Ann-Marie Breaux to Everyone 12:30 PM
      For the record - I'm absolutely not saying that FOLIO should discriminate if you have to key in manual invoices. It's the same situation with cataloging records. Hopefully a high percentage can be handled in a non-manual way, but there is definitely a long tail of work that will have to be done manually, and a library needs as efficient way as possible for staff to do that work.
    • From Bill Verner to Everyone 12:30 PM
      And it is these types of vendors that in many ways are most critical to an ARL seeking to represent the broadest spectrum of voices and cultures in its collection. FOLIO runs the risk of making it too burdensome to deal with this at scale. Which is why even the smallest gain in efficiency is critical.
    • From Ann-Marie Breaux to Everyone 12:32 PM
      I totally agree that the goal is not "either/or" when it comes to automated/manual, but rather "both and" For comparison, in one warehouse where I worked, the 10-15% that had to be manually unboxed, processed, and invoiced required the same level of work/staffing as the 85-90% that was automated. Not because the computer system was inefficient, but the overall small shipment/invoice handling is inherently inefficient. Every supplier that could be flipped from manual to automated workflow represented a significant savings.
  • Discussion of POs with multiple lines, where only one POL is paid on. 
  • From Lisa Smith - Mich State to Everyone 12:42 PM
    MSU uses mainly single-line POs, but we do use multi-line POs for approvals.
  • From Ann Crowley to Everyone 12:42 PM
    Cornell uses multi line PO's also, but does have some single line PO's
:45Process invoice against previous fiscal yearsDennis 
  • Workflow summary
  • Could provide some users ability to choose a fiscal year when paying an invoice. Separate permission rather than separate workflow.
  • Make part of approval process with option to choose last year, but by default the current year would be selected.
  • Another option would be to have a separate menu option to approve on previous fiscal year.
  • Preferences either way?
  • Would only be able to pay on last fiscal year, not any previous years.
  • Would it be best to keep this separate so that when doing day-to-day approval do not accidentally click, etc.? 
    • Dung-Lan: Would prefer to keep separate.
    • From Lisa Smith - Mich State to Everyone 12:55 PM
      I would like this; my preference would be to have the option in the action button.
    • From Peter Sbrzesny to Everyone 12:56 PM
      I would prefer to keep it separate because mostly we will pay against the current fiscal year. Payment against the old year will be an exception.
  • Will still export to accounting based on option selected. 
  • From Lisa Smith - Mich State to Everyone 12:59 PM
    Sometimes our University Purchasing Dept pays a service invoice from our account, but we didn't see/get the June 30th invoice until July 1st.
  • From Scott Perry to Everyone 01:00 PM
    For us this would be used mostly for reconciling transactions (difference between the actual exchange rate used by the bank and the estimated amount entered in FOLIO originally as one example).
  • What requirements are there for paying against a future fiscal year? Is that ever possible or necessary?
    • From Virginia Martin to Everyone 01:02 PM
      encumbering against future fiscal years - that would be nice!
    • From Lisa Smith - Mich State to Everyone 01:02 PM
      Mich State holds invoices for future FYs; I can't imagine paying for future FYs!

Action items

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