Skip to Main Content

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.

Canceling vs. Closing Orders

Cancelling vs. Closing Orders

There is a critical difference between Cancelling and Closing a PO Line/order:

  • Cancel means you’re cancelling the order and don’t expect to receive any inventory or pay an invoice
  • Close means you’ve received the inventory and the order is complete

Which one you choose has an impact on both what happens next to the order and – sometimes – what happens to the inventory records that were created when the order was.

In Alma, if you cancel a POL that is the only order on that purchase order (including all migrated orders), Alma will delete the PO line’s inventory – both the holdings and the items – unless that inventory has been received or activated. If the POL has a bib and holdings record, but no items yet, cancelling the POL will delete the holdings record.

In contrast, when you close a POL, the holdings and items remain untouched.

This is most important for unreceived and predicted items, such as serials issues, because you will have to go back and re-create those predicted items if you cancel the order and then they come in. For these materials, always close an order rather than cancel it.