2022-07-05 Acquisitions Meeting notes

Owned by Heather McMillan
Jul 05, 2022

Date

Attendees

  • Ann Crowley, Bethany Blankemeyer, Bill Verner, Dennis Bridges, Duchen, Dwayne Swigert, Emily Robertson, Heather McMillan, Jackie Magagnosc, Jean Pajerek, Julie Stauffer, Kimberly Wiljanen,  Kristin Martin, Linh Chang, Lisa Smith, Lloyd Chittenden, Martina Schildt, Mary Moran, Nancy Pelis, Okay Okonkwo, Peter Sbrzesny, Smangrum, Steve Selleck, Sven Thomsen, Victoria Anderson, Winter White 


Agenda -

  • Discuss creating invoice lines from POLs with certain payment statuses
  • Discuss the relationship between POL and invoice line fund distributions


Discussion items

TimeItemWhoNotes

Housekeeping
From duchen to Everyone 12:01 PM
I’m staffing Ref Desk on Tuesdays in July from 1 pm – 4 pm, so I’m joining in our meeting with headphones in listening mode only.  I can’t talk but can post in chat if I can hear.  Heather will convene the meeting.
 
:02
  • Discuss the relationship between POL and invoice line fund distributions
Dennis
  • Dennis: Question: On an Invoice, Is it common for one pol to be fully paid or canceled? Should we filter out pol's with a status of 'fully paid' or canceled'?  Or allow a user to filter out?
    • From Julie Stauffer to Everyone 12:05 PM
      The invoice could be a credit to a paid/closed order
    • From Lisa Smith - Mich State to Everyone 12:06 PM
      I'd like to see all, even if fully paid or cancelled.
    • From Bethany Blankemeyer to Everyone 12:07 PM
      Those are pretty frequent for us (re Julie's comment)
    • From Lisa Smith - Mich State to Everyone 12:08 PM
      Sometimes we pay an additional postage fee on fully paid or cancelled orders.  And credits.
    • From Bethany Blankemeyer to Everyone 12:08 PM
      Rate adjustments as well
 :10 Discuss creating invoice lines from POLs with certain payment statuses
  • Order encumbrances and payments, 
  • Dennis: What are some use cases where you may encumber money against certain funds, but pay out of different funds? 
  • Julie - That does happen. Place order with one fund but when the order comes in, no longer have money in that fund and need to change the fund. 
  • May load records against a general fund, but then the record gets reviewed and assigned to a different fund. I'd say it is a common occurrence.  Example at law library. Approvals loaded on one fund, but when the item gets reviewed, it may get moved to an endowed fund that has restricted use. The selector may decide to put the item on a specialized fund with restricted use. 
  • From Lisa Smith - Mich State to Everyone 12:13 PM
    Mich State would expect money to be encumbered and paid and disencumbered against the fund(s) listed in the POL only.  Mich State wouldn't do this.
  • From Bill Verner to Everyone 12:14 PM
    We would only switch a fund at this point if the original fund was overspent
    But that happens frequently
  • From Ann Crowley to Everyone 12:15 PM
    We adjust for over expenditure also
  • From Lisa Smith - Mich State to Everyone 12:15 PM
    We would update the funds in the orders if needed, usually because a wrong fund was used at the point of POL creation.
  •  From Ann Crowley to Everyone 12:18 PM
    That could happen if you were ordering multiple copies and only one is going against special funding
  • From Lisa Smith - Mich State to Everyone 12:19 PM
    +1 Ann
  • From Bill Verner to Everyone 12:20 PM
    In our current system (at Duke) we would adjust the order
  • From Peter Sbrzesny to Everyone 12:21 PM
    So would we.
  • Dennis: looking at how to track what has been expended against a certain order. Trying to capture more detail about how you intend to use the system to inform how we manage that. Folio is very specific, We have a pol, and that pol has a fund distribution. We make the encumbrance against that. You then have an invoice,  The invoice also has a fund distribution and we make payments or credits against that. Challenge is when the pol looks different than the invoice line. How much of the encumbrance to release? 
  • From Lisa Smith - Mich State to Everyone 12:21 PM
    We would try to keep the funds used in the PO the same as the funds used in the invoice.
  • Dennis:  Easiest way, have to have same fund on po as invoice. 
  • From Lisa Smith - Mich State to Everyone 12:29 PM
    If we ordered 2 copies of a title with 2 different funds, and only 1 title came in, we would want 1 fund to disencumber, and the other to remain the same.  Not prorate it across the 2 funds.,
  • From Ann Crowley to Everyone 12:31 PM
    In the beginning, we had trouble approving invoices where the fund wasn't the same as the order
  • Dennis: Need to reevaluate how we are keeping track of how much has been paid. 
    • Figure out best way to track what has been encumbered and where, and what has been been paid, and where, 
  • From Lisa Smith - Mich State to Everyone 12:43 PM
    Correct, we would want to release some of the encumbrance
    In Sierra, it would have disencumbered based on the percentage used.
  • From duchen to Everyone 12:43 PM
    We try to make sure POL and invoice line fund is in sync, too, like Lisa mentioned.
  • Dennis:  Lets talk more about the pol and invoice line not being in sync. Is that a product of the systems you are using?
  • From duchen to Everyone
    • In our previous ILS, one-time order encumbrance is automatically release when the POL is invoiced (regardless whether it's the same fund or not).  Perhaps the orders and finance apps should integrate more than they currently do.  And the logic (for one-time orders) should perhaps be something like the encumbrances should be automatically released what was ordered regardless which fund was used when ordering and when paying.    If a fund was changed when invoicing, the original fund in POL should be automatically released back to Finance and an expenditure/payment should be created with the fund use in invoice line.
  • Dennis: In the two examples discussed so far, in the first one, towards the end of the year you are adjusting how the order will be paid. 2nd, may be encumbered against one fund butt you later find a different fund is better - in either situation - is it important to have the order reflect a different distribution of money than the invoice? Is there historical information in the po you would want to keep?
    • Julie - no that is not important historical information. Right now we are changing it in both the po and the invoice. 
  • Dennis will be creating a feature: Based on support tickets we have seen, trying to figure how best to stabilize these actions.. opening orders, approving invoices.. majority of tickets relate to the management of fund distributions like the creation of encumbrances, This seems like a good place to make improvements. 
  • Implementers topics will be covered in the next Friday meeting. 

Action items

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