Study Group Session 76: Alma Acquisitions Fiscal Year Rollover Knowledge Share
- Diana Borges
Session Notes
Diana Borges, OCLS:
decided to host this knowledge share session in response to some questions that came up about fiscal roll overs during the Page 1+ Study Group sessions recently
the session is intended for folks to share their questions and experiences with fiscal year roll overs
we are joined by an Ex Libris expert on fiscal year roll overs, Katie Cheever, a Technical Support Analyst in the NA Tier 2 team
Jenn Horwath, Mohawk:
first time rolling over a fiscal year
is there anything we need to do at certain times (e.g. in between the rollover or before or after)? Can we do the roll over job in draft and make changes to our funds?
want to rollover our current ledgers and then make some changes to funds - make a summary fund and allocated funds under it, delete a couple of funds; we don’t want to bring over any money from this year, have a new budget we want to add
Katie Cheever, Ex Libris:
all the options you’re asking about are available when you roll over
options in Add Job screen:
Create Allocation From: None, which will roll over no money / all funds and ledgers will be rolled over with $0
Create status: Draft allows you to edit your fund names, fund codes before activating them
then you can activate it and add money later on
Jenn:
so once they roll over, we turn them to active?
Katie:
with funds, you can deactivate them and then you can activate them by the ledgers
if you deactivate a ledger, it will deactivate all of the funds associated with it
if they’re in draft mode, they’ll be in draft status, then you go into the ledger and click activate - then you’ll be able to see the transaction tab on your funds and allocate money to those funds
Jenn:
so it doesn’t matter when we do it - if our fiscal ends March 31st and we do this on April 1st and then add funds once we have are aware of what they are a couple of weeks later?
Katie:
doesn’t matter when you add the funds, as long as you don’t start ordering until everything is situated
with the rollover, need to roll over your funds and ledgers - make sure they’re all active
then roll over your PO lines
even if you don’t have money in your funds, that’s totally fine - when you do the roll over PO lines job, you can uncheck rollover encumbrance, which will allow you to roll over PO lines into funds that don’t have money in then, and then can add money to the funds once you get your budget
Jenn:
And if we don’t have continuous or standing orders, we don’t need to roll over PO lines?
Katie:
if don’t have any PO lines to roll over, you don’t need to run PO lines roll over job
Stacey Boileau, OCLS:
question Brenda Desjardins from St Lawrence: when to use draft and not to use draft when rolling over ledgers?
Katie:
rolling over into drafts is really important if want to change the name or the code on the ledgers or funds or do any readjusting of your ledger structure, because after they’re activated, can’t put them back into draft mode and can’t change the name or code
a lot of people would roll over into draft just to make sure that everything looks good before they activate everything
Stacey:
question from Brenda Desjardins: when rolling over ledgers, want to be able to add new budget amounts to the new fiscal period, does selecting None allow us to do this?
Katie:
Yes - for the Create Allocation
there is an option for an fpc factor percent if there is a certain percentage increase on all the funds in a ledger
if there’s just a different amount, you can just do it None and then add it later on
depends on what you want to do - if you get an increase, decrease, have a percentage you want to put in there
Stacey:
How to deal with encumbrances?
Katie:
PO line encumbrances? The ones from previous fiscal year?
in the PO line roll over job, have an option to do the New Encumbrance Calculation: have a continuous PO line that is $5000 in fiscal 2024 and in the next fiscal year it’s still going to be that amount, when you roll it over, can roll it over as just the Encumbrance amount of the previous year or if it’s $5000 but you paid $7000 in the invoice, then you can change it to the Expenditure, so then the New Encumbrance Calculation on the PO line for the new fiscal year will then be the expenditure
once you roll over PO lines, Alma will run a massive disencumbrance calculation on your previous fiscal year, so once you roll over your PO lines, your previous fiscal year funds will be completely unencumbered / won’t have any encumbrance balances on your previous fiscal year funds
Documentation: Fiscal Period Closure
For those who are rolling over PO lines for the first time, always to it in report mode the first time you do it - this simulates the PO line roll over job and generates a report that identifies problems with PO lines, so you can fix them and then run the job without report mode checked
Stacey:
Could you do this every time you do the PO lines roll over?
Katie:
Yes, always suggest doing this to make sure there is nothing wrong and then doing it without this checked, because you can’t undo the PO lines roll over
Stacey:
Have others done fiscal year roll over? How did it go?
Amy Simpson, Algonquin:
Did one last year, went well
didn’t have any one time purchases rolling over but we did run that report for the PO lines and we found a few things that just didn’t quite close properly, so it gave us a change to go back and clean everything up and then roll it over
Katie:
PO lines rollover job is a little bit more complicated because it will roll over any active continuous PO lines and active one time PO lines that still have an encumbrance
the one times will especially need to get closed out or get an invoice or won’t get rolled over
Linda McKillop, Centennial:
rolled a fiscal year, ledgers, and some PO lines last year and it worked out pretty well
Erin Williams, Fanshawe:
last year did a rollover but did not have Rialto implemented
not the acquisitions person but asked to roll over funds and ledgers this year - what questions should I ask the acquisitions person before doing this?
Katie:
ask them about what they want from the fund rollover (e.g. do they want allocations to come from certain balances)
with the PO lines, do you have everything closed out that you want to, what do you want to happen with continuous PO lines, one time PO lines that you want to roll over
Erin:
How much of this can I see on my own or do I need to ask them?
Katie:
depends on your roles in Alma
for roll over, need Fiscal Period Manager role
to see PO lines, Purchasing Operator role - if don’t have order lines search, probably can’t see PO lines
also check if you have the acquisitions menu where you can see the roll over jobs under advanced tools
Amy:
Is it possible to only rollover specific ledgers? One from 2 years ago?
Katie:
might not be possible to roll over the ledger from 2 years ago:
when you add the job, Alma usually does the last 2 years
Yes, you can roll over specific ledgers - Add Job screen shows you all the ledger names and you can roll over one ledger at a time
if you have notes and attachments, definitely want to copy those over - check the Copy Notes and Copy Attachments boxes in the Add Job screen
if you roll over ledgers one at a time, make sure your from year is correct:
the first time the job will roll over the ledger that you chose and it will add a new fiscal year to the Fund and Ledger Fiscal Period mapping table
if you run the 2nd ledger, make sure you choose the correct “from” year so you don’t roll over from the current year into the next year again, keep making fiscal years
Rebecca Pearson, Lambton:
If you rolled over 1 ledger from 2023 and then want to do all ledgers from 2024 and there was a duplication of codes, how would the conflict be resolved?
Katie:
codes the same each year unless you changed them
what the funds and ledgers are attaching to is the fiscal period, which has an individual ID, so even though the code is the same, it would be a different ledger because it’s attached to a different fiscal period ID
so even if you rolled over a fund from 2023 to 2024 and then you rolled over all of 2024, that would be fine because it’s assumed that the 2023 fund isn’t already in 2024
you can only roll over funds once, can’t roll them over multiple times into the same fiscal year
can use 2 fiscal years but that’s set up in a very specific way in Alma to make it work
if you ever run into weird situations, you can just open a support case and we can look into it
Stacey:
Another question from St Lawrence: How does fiscal roll over change now that we have Rialto in place?
Katie:
doesn’t change at all
you already have funds and ledgers and Rialto will make PO lines normally in your system, embedded in Alma
Marnie Kursiss-Morrow, St. Clair:
Since we have Rialto, we don’t have to do roll over at all?
Katie:
No, you still have to do the roll over
Rialto just gives you ability to keep everything from Rialto in Alma
Marnie:
Does the documentation we originally filled out with ProQuest have to be redone?
question for Rialto
Linda:
Centennial did roll over with Rialto
Doesn’t matter if info is coming from Oasis or Rialto, it is all in Alma and just roll over altogether
Katie:
doesn’t matter where your funds and ledgers, PO lines come from as long as they are in Alma; there isn’t an option to to do the roll over by where you got the PO lines from
but you can rollover individual libraries or individual PO lines (although this is not done a lot)
Erin:
Tips on timing? If we're done spending can I start rollover now? And put new ones in draft mode?
Katie:
you can roll over whenever
suggest not to start ordering new stuff until the previous fiscal year is kind of closed off and completed and you’ve rolled over everything and have the new funds and ledgers set up correctly
can roll over in draft mode, leave them there if you know everything you’re doing / make sure you’re not ordering while previous fiscal is active
every institution does things differently
Michael Reansbury, George Brown:
Is there any way to stop people from ordering before roll over is done other than changing permissions?
Katie:
No, either removing permissions or send a message asking people to stop ordering during this time or have their orders in by a certain time
otherwise, the system will allow them to keep ordering until the end of the fiscal period - then, if you don’t have grace period rules on your fund, the system won’t let you put any encumbrances on funds
Linda:
grace periods:
we didn't get final report from finance dept last year until almost end of April
to mark invoices as paid from previous the fiscal period, the only way to get those invoices to appear is to go into the ledger or funds to extend the grace period
Katie:
there’s an encumbrance grace period (“Fiscal period end encumbrance grade period”) for making PO lines
but if you’re done making your PO lines, you don’t need a grace period for that but want to pay invoices, you can extend the expenditure grace period (“Fiscal period end expenditure grace period”)
by days - you can go up to 999
can also do it so you can start ordering previous to the fiscal year (“Encumbrances prior to fiscal period”) and also expenditures, so you can pay for things before the fiscal year starts (“Expenditures prior to fiscal period”)
a lot of things can be done with the rules
Rebecca:
Where's the best page for the rules?
Diana Borges, OCLS:
Kirti Mistry, Sheridan:
First time using Alma and Rialto
only have two ledgers open: one for Rialto print, one for Rialto digital - received everything for Rialto digital, just waiting for 3 things to come in for print
Do i still need to do a rollover or can I just close those ledgers once I’ve received everything? If I don’t receive those 3 items before March 31st, do I have to do a roll over for that ledger?
Katie:
Depends on whether you want to use your ledgers for next year
Kirti:
Not sure we want to be using Rialto next year
Katie:
Not planning on using Rialto, can close them out
can set an expenditure grace period and keep them open until you receive everything and then you can close them
if think you are going to use Rialto again, may want to do the roll over because then would have to add fiscal years back in later and recreate everything
Kirti:
if think we may want to use Rialto digital, for example, I can just roll over that one and then just add new funds once we know what we have
Stacey
Everyone clear on the order of operations? Process from beginning to end?
Katie:
Making sure previous fiscal year is closed
Rolling over all the ledgers
ledgers have to be active before you rollover PO lines, otherwise there’s nothing for the PO lines to roll into
don’t need $ but need to be active
Once all funds and ledgers are active, concentrate on PO lines
rollover all at once or a certain library at once, continuous orders only, standing orders only, one time orders only, single PO line
can uncheck Check Over Encumbrance box
Once all PO lines rolled over, done - new fiscal year
Can go into previous year and deactivate all of the ledgers or make previous fiscal year inactive as well (up to institution)
Michael:
Want to restructure ledgers but have to roll over PO lines, can you change which ledger a PO line is associated with when you roll it over?
Katie:
No
Can roll them over and then they won’t be attached to anything and then you can mass update them through a job to attach them to a fund - update POL transaction job:
make a set out of PO lines and one of the options is Fund, then you can select the fund and attach all of the PO lines you want attached to that fund en masse
Stacey:
What reasons are coming up for changes to funds etc.? Do we foresee this as happening often?
Michael:
We were using Excel spreadsheets to organize all the information, but now that we’re using Alma, the directors and managers are asking for statistics and reports and we’re realizing that what we had previously structured doesn’t make sense
looking at whether there is a better way to structure things based on what we’re being asked to pull from Alma to have the canned reports work for us so that we don’t do a lot of analytics or as much manipulation in Excel to create reports
Linda:
there is a great canned report in Alma
sends out the expenditures, encumbrances, everything for each of the funds to all the librarians and administration, so I don’t have to take it from Excel and manipulate it
Centennial runs it monthly
we had to do a big fund name change because one of our school names changed
the librarian that does the collection development for that set of funds wants me to change the fund names and codes
found that names are easy to change but the fund codes are impossible to change
Katie:
can change the code if you roll over in draft mode
can change both the name and the code
the only way you can change the code
can’t put it in draft mode except when rolling over
once a fund is activated, the only other status you can put it in is inactive and then you can’t change it
Jenn:
Are there any downsides to not rolling over any PO lines?
Katie:
nothing wrong with not rolling over
usually want to roll over continuous orders, but if you’re not going to continue them, you can just close them out
all the PO line roll over job does is change the fund to the next fiscal year
Rebecca:
What happens to PO line that you try to roll over for a fund that you’ve changed the code for?
Katie:
the PO line is attached to the fund through the code, so if the code changes then you would have to re-attach the PO line to the new code through a job
changing codes something you should do if restructuring everything and not something you should do every year
if you are in roll over process and have any issues after this meeting, just chat with support or make a case, we try to prioritize fiscal year over cases
Stacey:
When does the work start, generally?
Michael:
At George Brown, started because finance department has asked to have all visa statements, invoices etc. submitted, so going through the process to make sure things are closed off, ID things we want to roll over, how we want to restructure things
ideally by the 2nd week of April, we’ll be ready to start ordering in the new fiscal year
Jenn:
I think I'll be doing it next week as we're pretty much done spending
Marnie:
April 1st
Rebecca:
No routine yet. And this year will be strange anyway here.
Stacey:
Does it usually take 2 weeks, a month? Depends on how much restructuring you’re doing?
Linda:
don’t remember it taking too long to roll things over
we don’t get our final Finance reports until mid-April so closing takes a bit of time
rollover process is pretty quick, closing things off takes more time
this year might be longer because of name/code changes
Katie:
we’ve updated some of the roll over jobs recently, particularly the PO line roll over job, to make it run faster
Recording
