Receiving Continuous Orders

Owned by Jennifer Koerber (Unlicensed)
Last updated: Apr 05, 2019
6 min read

In this video, we'll cover:

 

Receiving Serials Items

As with One-Time Orders, receiving new issues of a serial begins by going to Acquisitions, then Receive. Once there, make sure you’re on the Continuous Tab to see all continuous orders.

The Continuous tab includes the following order types:

  • Print Journal subscription (i.e. subscriptions for annuals and periodicals)
  • Physical Subscription (i.e. microfilm, DVD subscriptions)
  • Physical Standing order non-monograph (i.e. series standing orders and multi-part monographs)

This last order type replaced other standing order types during the migration. See the Standing Orders - Overview documentation in the Alma wiki for more information.

Now, let’s receive a predicted item. We’ll go back to Art Doll Quarterly.

 

Differences When Receiving Continuous Orders

But first, I want to point out two differences in receiving Continuous Orders versus One-Time Orders.

  1. When receiving a continuous item, if the Keep in Department box is not checked, the status of the item will immediately become Item in place after it’s received, indicating that the item is on the shelf in the owning library, and not, say, in a technical services area. It will not go into Transit like One-Time Orders will.

  2. Also, the status of Continuous Order item will not change during the receiving process – it will remain Waiting for Renewal, and not change from Sent to Waiting for invoice like One-Time Orders.

These are two primary differences between receiving one-time and continuous orders to be aware of.

 

Receiving Predicted Items

Receiving Predicted Items Without Edits

  1. So, we will keep Keep in Department checked, and change it to Processing area (unit).
  2. Find the title you want to receive in the list using the search or sort functions on the page. (Since I chose something that starts with A, it’s right here at number 5.)
  3. Click on the row action item list icon and select Manage items.
  4. You are now on the Received Items List page where you can see the title and other information about the order, including any Receiving notes. So, there’s our new subscription for “Women and Craft.”
  5. There are 3 tabs:
    • The PO Line items tab lists received and unreceived items
    • The Bibliographical Information tab has brief bib information. If you want to see the full bib record, click on the title up at the top.
    • The Holdings Information tab includes holdings information. Holdings can be edited here by clicking the Edit Holdings link, which brings you into the Metadata Editor.
  6. We’ll go back to the PO Line items tab to receive our new item.
  7. There are only 4 items for this order. However, if there were many more items, we could organize the list to find it:
    • To change the sort routine, click on Sort routine and select a sort option from the drop-down menu.
    • The Receiving status and Location filters are set to "All" by default, and can be used to limit a long list. For example, if we select Not Received, only those items not yet received are displayed.
  8. You can also click Analytics Issues Report to view a missing issues report of non-received items for this PO Line, which will list the expected arrival dates of the unreceived predicted items. (Since we’re in the Sandbox, I can’t click on that because there is no Analytics module – this will work in Production.)
  9. Speaking of which, the expected arrival dates of unreceived items do not appear in the Received Items List display. To view arrival dates, click on the row action item list icon next to an item and select Edit inventory item. We’ll do that in a moment.
  10. Now, find the item record in the list that matches the issue that you have in hand.
    1. If the item you wish to receive does not require editing except adding a barcode, click the row action item icon to the right of the item and select Receive, because you can edit the barcode right here.
    2. If you’re receiving more than one item at once, click box to the left of the items, then click Save and Receive in the upper right corner. However, you will not be able to edit the items if you do that.
    3. If the item you wish to receive does require editing, click on the row action list and click on Edit Inventory Item, where you can see the expected receiving date and edit anything in the item record.
  11. In this case, we’re going to go ahead and change the barcode, and then click on Receive.
  12. After receiving the item in hand, we are returned to the Received Items List screen for that POL.
    1. Date Received is updated to today’s date.
    2. Current Step is updated to next step in the workflow, in this case Processing area (unit).

 

Un-Receiving Items

We can unreceive any item we just received by clicking on the row action item icon next to the received item and selecting Un-Receive. Note that you can only unreceive items if:

  • They are still in your department.
  • There are no interested users.

Since both of those are true, we can Un-receive the item we just received.

 

Receiving Predicted Items with Edits

Now what if one of these items had needed to be edited before it was received? We’ll use that same item and, in this case, click on Edit Inventory Item. This opens the Physical Item Editor and we can edit anything in the item record that needs to be edited before it’s received. This might include changing the enumeration and chronology, adding additional information, or putting the item into a temporary location. All of that can be done here.

When you’ve updated your information, click on Save and go back to the Received Items list, where you can continue to receive as normal.

 

Receiving Continuous Orders Without Predicted Items

Finally, what if our continuous order did not have predicated items? You can, from the Received Items List, also duplicate and edit an issue to create a new item record very quickly.

From the Received New Items list:

  1. Click on Receive New Items link above the list of items.
  2. Again, we have our Keep in Department box. We’re going to keep it in our processing area.
  3. We have all of the information from the Last received item.
  4. If this is mostly correct, click on Duplicate. This will duplicate the item information into the New item details.
  5. Update the new item details. In this case, I’m going to say that we went back and got issue number 16, so I change it to issue number 16 and click on Generate and now the description updates as well.
  6. After adding the information for your new item, choose one for the following action steps:
    1. Cancel: Clicking the Cancel button will return you to the previous screen.
    2. Create and Receive will save the newly created item, mark it as received, add the receipt date, and return you to the Received items list.
    3. Receive and Set Barcodes will open a screen that lets you change or scan in a barcode, save the newly created item, mark it as received, add the receipt date, and return to the Received items list.
  7. Let’s click Receive and Set Barcodes
  8. Enter a barcode (in real life will scan in barcode).
  9. Click Submit.
  10. We are returned to the Received Items List. Our new item is right here and received.
  11. If I needed to further edit the new item, click on the row action item list and on Edit Inventory Item, and continue to edit the new item record.

 

As you can see, there are many different choices on how to receive serials items, either by using predicted items or by creating items based on the last received item.

So what happens when you run out predicted items?

 

Predicting More Items

If you have received the last predicted item, you will need to open a new set of predicted item records. While still on the Received Items List:

  1. Click on the Holdings Information tab.
  2. Click on the Edit Holdings link.
  3. This will open the holdings record in the Metadata Editor.
  4. Click on the binoculars icon to the left of the most recent 853 field.
    1. View the next predicted item's information (and edit if needed).
    2. Click Close
    3. Make sure cursor is on the 853 field.
  5. Click on the Tools drop-down menu.
  6. Go down and hover over MARC21 Holdings.
  7. Click Open Predicted Items. A pop-up will display the next set of predicted items and their expected arrival dates.
  8. Click Save to save the list of newly predicted items. These newly predicted items are now in the Received Items List, although you can’t see them in the MD Editor screen.
  9. Save and release the record