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Alma Acquisitions Resource Guide

This guide covers all aspects of the Acquisitions process, which includes setting up funds, ordering, receiving physical items, activating e-resources, and invoicing. This guide also covers Serials patterns and arrival/check-in.

Fiscal Year Rollover

Fiscal Year Rollover

The following jobs must be run to close the current fiscal year and roll over to the next fiscal year:

  1. Rollover Ledger– Copies the ledgers from the closing fiscal period to the next fiscal period
    • Ledgers are not required to be rolled over on the day they expire if the current ledger has extended the:
      • Fiscal period end encumbrance grace periods
      • Fiscal period end expenditure grace periods
         
  2. Rollover PO Lines– Copies PO lines encumbrances from the closing fiscal period to the next fiscal period
    • The following order types are rolled over during fiscal period closure if they have active encumbrances associated with them:
      • Continuous/Subscription orders
      • Standing orders
      • One-Time PO Lines that are not “fully invoiced”
    • “Active” encumbrances are what drives which POLs will rollover:
      • POL or PO status does not impact rollover 
      • The “Receive” or “Activation” status does not impact POL rollover


Considerations when rolling over the fiscal year:

  • Technical, Gift, or Depository Acquisition Methods that are not associated with funds and they will not roll over 
    • These Acquisition Methods do not need to have an invoice statuses of “Fully Invoiced” because they do not rollover
  • Alma will always associate credits and invoices with the fiscal year in which the purchase occurred
  • Do not make changes to holdings records while the fiscal year is being rolled over:
    • It may prevent POLs from being rolled over or
    • Changes may not be saved
       

Roles

The following role is required to roll over the fiscal year in Alma:

  • Fiscal Period Manager


One of the following roles is required to mark One-Time POLs as fully invoiced for institutions NOT creating invoices in Alma:

  • Acquisitions Administrator
  • Catalog Administrator
  • Catalog Manager
  • Digital Inventory Manager
  • Digital Inventory Operator Extended
  • Fulfillment Administrator
  • General System Administrator
  • Physical Inventory Operator
  • Purchasing Manager
  • Purchasing Operator
  • Repository Administrator
  • Repository Manager
  • Requests Operator
  • User Administrator
  • User Manager

 

One of the following role is required to change the ledger's fiscal period/year display and to close the previous fiscal year:

  • Acquisitions administrator
  • General System Administrator

Steps Involved

Steps to roll over the fiscal year in Alma: 

  1. Adjust the ledger’s grace periods (optional)
  2. Rollover Ledgers 
    • Draft Mode (optional, if running prior to end of fiscal year)
    • Change Ledger to Active (if Rollover Ledgers was run in Draft Mode; must be changed to Active prior to running Rollover PO Lines)
    • Change the ledger’s fiscal year display (Need Acquisitions Administrator role; otherwise email help@flvc.org)
  3. Rollover PO Lines (POLs)
    • Report Mode 
    • Active Mode
  4. Close the previous fiscal year (may leave active if there are unpaid invoices on previous FY funds)

Rollover Ledgers

  1. Go to Acquisitions>Advanced Tools>Rollover Ledgers
  2. Click Add Job 
  3. The Add Jobs screen appears:
    1. Create Allocation From:
      • None – no allocations created
      • Allocation Balance – allocated funds copied
      • Cash Balance – cash balance populates the allocated balance
      • Both – allocation and cash balances combined populate the allocated balance
    2. Ledger:
      • All – will rollover all ledgers
      • Select Ledger from the drop-down list 
    3. Action:
      • Copy – creates a new fiscal period (f it does not already exist) and copies the selected ledger(s) to the new fiscal year 
      • Delete – deletes the ledger from the new fiscal period if there are no encumbrances/expenditures 
    4. FPC% Factor - is the % of increase or decrease applied to the allocated balances
      • Only appears if Allocation Balance or Both are selected for "Create Allocation from:"
      • Default increase is 0% if no value is input
    5. Create Status – Status is top down, and funds will inherit the status chosen here:
      • Active
      • Draft
    6. From Year:
      • Choose the most recent fiscal year, which is the year that is currently ending
    7. Copy Notes:
      • Check the box to copy all notes to the new fiscal year
    8. Copy Attachments:
      • Check the box to copy the contents of the attachment tab to the new fiscal year
  4. Click Add and Close
  5. Review the job rolled over the ledger(s) without error.

Changing a Ledger from Draft to Active

To change a ledger from draft to active:

  1. Go to Acquisitions>Acquisitions Infrastructure>Funds and Ledgers
  2. Click Clear All next to the filters
  3. Click Draft from the Status facet 
  4. Click Ledger from the Type Facet
  5. Click Activate from the ellipses of the Ledger(s) to be activated.

 

Changing the Ledger's Fiscal Year Display

One of the following role is required to close the previous fiscal year:

  • Acquisitions Administrator
  • General System Administrator

To close a previous fiscal year:

  1. Go to Configuration>Acquisitions>General>Fund and Ledger Fiscal Period
  2. Edit the "Description" field
    Edit the Fiscal Year Description Field
  3. Click Save

 

Rollover PO Lines (POLs):

  • One-time POLs rollover on the encumbrance 
  • Continuous POLs are rolled over on either the:
    • Encumbrance (anticipated amount when ordered)
    • Expenditure (actual amount paid)
  • Rolling over continuous POLs using the expenditure reflects a more accurate cost for continuous resources
    • Alma will use the encumbrance if no invoice/expenditure exists at the time of rollover
  • One-time POLs must have an invoice status of “Fully Invoiced" or else they will roll-over
    • Institutions using POLs with Funds and not using invoices in Alma will need to change one-time POLs to "fully invoiced" using a job 
    • This step MUST be done prior to rolling over One-Time POLs
  • FPC Factor (%) is only applied to Continuous POLs 

Marking One-time POLs "fully invoiced" for institutions not using invoices in Alma (Skip if using Full Acquisitions):

  • One-time POLs that have been received will need to be marked as “Fully invoiced” for institutions that:
    • Create POLs with associated funds
    • Do not create invoices in Alma
  • Marking One-time POLs as “Fully invoiced” must be done prior to Rolling over One-time POLs


To mark One-Time POLs as "Fully Invoiced":

  1. Perform an advanced repository search for each type of One –Time POL that needs to be marked as fully invoiced: PO Line: Workflow>Equals>Sent AND PO Line Type>Equals>[One-Time POL Type] 
  2. Click Save Query to create a set
  3. The Set Details screen opens:
    • Name: [Name the set]
    • Description: [Optional]
    • Private: [Default is ‘YES’]
    • Status: [Active}
    • Click Save
  4. Run the “Update PO Line Information” job on each One-time POL set:
    1. Go to Admin>Manage jobs and Sets>Run a Job
    2. Search for the “Update PO Lines Information” job
    3. Click on the radio button for the “Update PO Lines Information” job
    4. Click Next
    5. Click on the radio button next to the set of One-Time POLS
    6. Click Next
    7. Task parameters screen opens:
      1. Check the box next to Invoice Status
      2. Select “Fully Invoiced”
      3. Select "Unconditionally"
    8. Click Next
    9. Review the job
    10. Click Submit
    11. Click Confirm

To Rollover PO Lines:

  1. Go to Acquisitions>Advanced Tools>Rollover PO Lines
  2. Click Add Job
  3. The Add Job screen opens:
    • New Encumbrance Calculation (only impacts continuous POLs, One-Time Pols always rollover using the encumbrance):
      • Encumbrance
      • Expenditure
    • PFC Factor (%):
      • The % of increase/decrease applied to continuous POLs
      • Default increase is 0% is no value is input
    • From Years:
      • Usually choose current fiscal year that is coming to a close
    • Libraries:
      • Leave blank to select ALL libraries
      • Can select individual libraries if the library has its own ledger and it is not handled by a centralized technical/acquisitions services department
      • Do Not select the Resource Sharing Library
    • PO Line:
      • Leave blank to rollover ALL PO Lines
      • Individual POLS can be selected to be rolled over
    • Check Over Encumbrance:
      • Check this box to apply over-encumbrance rules during the rollover process
      • Keep the box unchecked if:
        • The ledger rollover was run without allocations
        • The institution does not want to apply over-encumbrance rules, which can prevent POLs from failing to rollover if there are not enough funds
    • Report Mode:
      • Recommended to check this box the first time to rollover POLs in “test” mode to see they rollover 
      • A report will be generated that helps identify errors that need to be resolved
    • Continuous Orders Only, Standing Orders Only, and One-Time Orders only:
      • Check all or leave all unchecked to roll-over All encumbrances types 
      • Check selected PO Line Types encumbrances to be rolled over individually
      • It is recommended to rollover order types individually for review/troubleshooting
    • Click Add and Close
      • Add is used if you are rolling over POLs individually as it keeps the box open
  4. The job will automatically run
  5. Review the Report
    1. Click View from the ellipses of the job
    2. Click on the errors under Job Events 
  6. Correct the errors
  7. Run the Rollover PO Lines job again in “Report Mode”, with “Report Mode” checked to make sure the errors have been fixed
  8. Run the Rollover PO Lines job again, but without “Report Mode” unchecked
     

Close the previous fiscal year (FY) once the previous fiscal year has ended:

  • Do not close a fiscal year until the grace period has ended if invoices are still being paid for that fiscal year


To close a previous fiscal year:

  1. Go to Configuration>General>Fund and Ledger Fiscal Period
  2. Select Closed from Status the drop-down menu 
  3. Click Save

Ledgers can be deleted after they have been rolled over it they did not rollover as expected

  • Ledger can be deleted IF they do not have any:
    • Encumbrances
    • Expenditures
  • Ledgers should be deleted before PO Lines (POLs) are 


To delete a rolled over ledger:

  1. Go to Acquisitions>Advanced Tools>Rollover Ledgers
  2. Click Add Job
  3. Select “Delete” from the Action drop-down menu
  4. Select the Ledger(s)
  5. Select the rolled over fiscal year period from the From Year drop-down
  6. Review the selected parameters are correct
  7. Click Add and Close
  8. Review the job deleted the ledger(s) successfully