Funds - Finances Module

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Last updated: Dec 04, 2018Version comment

This is the first section of the finances module of the Alma Overviews course. The video is at the top of the page, followed by the script.

In this video, you'll review:

Hello and welcome to the Finances Overview module of the Alma Overviews online course. In this series of videos, we will review the financial structure in Alma and the information available in funds, vendor, order, and invoice records. Unlike many of our other training videos, we will be using the Production environment (rather than the Sandbox), so we can demonstrate a few Analytics-related features. Remember that Analytics is not active in the Sandbox.

About Funds

Let's begin with funds. First, know that Alma uses the term Funds instead of budgets, and the term Code includes what we have called the "string" or portions of the string here at Harvard.

Alma divides funds up into three levels: Ledgers at the top, Summary funds beneath, and Allocated funds.

The top or highest level is the Ledger. Harvard has created a ledger for each Tub in the Chart of Accounts, as you can see in this list.

The middle level consists of Summary funds. Summary funds are new to Harvard with Alma and allow finance staff to group funds together into a summary for reporting purposes.

(Not spoken, but on screen: All ledgers will have at least one parent summary fund with at least one child summary fund. Many ledgers will have multiple parent summary funds with multiple child summary funds.)

The bottom or third level are Allocated funds. These have money associated with them, and are what staff placing orders will use for purchases.

As an example, we have the Harvard College Library tub 415, and you can see that the Ledger is the same as the tub. If I scroll down, you can see that there is a Parent summary for Sciences. Beneath that, a Child summary for Cabot Collections, and then beneath that, the Harvard Union Class of 1878 Fund, which is an Allocated fund that will actually have orders placed against it.

There is a list of all FY19 Ledgers, Summary funds, and Allocated Funds available as a reference here in the LTS Alma Documentation. You can scroll down and see a giant list of all the funds and their codes and their names.

Finding and Viewing Fund Records

Ok, let's go through and actually look at finding and viewing fund records. As you saw in the Searching module, you can find and view fund records in a few ways:

  • From the main menu, you can go to Acquisitions and over to Acquisitions Infrastructure, then just click on Funds and Ledgers to browse through all of Harvard’s budget information.
  • You can also choose the persistent search bar and choose the search type Funds and leave the search box empty to see a list of all funds as well.
  • To search for a specific fund or to find all funds matching a particular criteria – so, by Code, for instance – that you want to search for, use the search bar.
    • Choose Funds as the search type
    • Choose the criteria that you want to match for a specific or targeted search and type in the term.
    • Remember that if you’re using a fund code, you can use the asterisk wildcard at the beginning, end, or both ends of the search string. For instance, if I search on *504013*, I’ll see all funds related to Dumbarton Oaks.

For now, we’ll use the list of all funds to look more closely at the results and individual records. So, I’ll go back and search for All, empty my search string, and click Search.

When you do a search, notice that the results will default to include 2 parameters or filters: Current FY and an Active fund, because this is what people are often looking for. However, you can see all available fiscal years (back to 2002) by disabling these filters. Click on the x next to each filter or click on Clear All and you will see that we are now looking at all funds and if I click under Fiscal Year, I can see that they go back to 2003.

Note that these facets are sticky, so if I did another search, I would haver have to go back to all funds in all fiscal years. So, for right now, I’m going to put back on Active and the current fiscal year.

Also notice that if you have the permissions to view funds, you can see all Harvard funds and your location does not impact what you see. I’m currently set at Lamont and I’m seeing funds for all of Harvard. However, your permissions will affect what funds you are permitted to use or manage.

Ledgers

Let’s look at the fund records specifically. Clicking on the fund name allows you to view (not edit) the fund information. You could also choose View from the row action item list. Since I have editorial privileges for all of these, I’m just seeing Edit.

Let's click on a Ledger fund to start with ledgers. So, I’ll start by using the Ledger Type facet to limit my list to ledgers, and I’m going to scroll down to the Harvard College Library ledger, and I’m going to click on the title to view it.

This is a standard layout for any page in Alma:

  • There’s the title of the page at the top, with the summary details underneath with a snapshot of what we’re looking at, including all the balances.
  • A list of tabs, with additional information on each.
  • And then the contents of the page.

On each tab, you’ll find related information:

On the Summary tab, we see:

  • The summary of information about this fund, including the name, code, all of the individual libraries or units it’s available for, status, fiscal year, etc.
  • Underneath that, you do see a quick report view of the fund balances and the burn down rate from Analytics here in the production environment.
  • Beneath that are the rules for this fund: whether overencumberance is allowed, transfers, expenditures, etc.

On the Funds tab, you can view all of the summary and allocated funds associated with this ledger. And again, the facets on the left will let you limit your results to summary funds or allocated funds.

The Notes and Attachments tabs would list any notes added for this ledger record, or any attachments (PDFs) that were uploaded. But because they don’t have little dog-ears like the Funds tab does, I know that there’s no content there. We’ll see what that looks like in a moment.

Summary Funds

Now, let's look at a Summary fund. First, I’ll go ahead and click on the Summary fund facet to limit my list to Summary funds, and now I’ll scroll down and find a fund to look at more closely. In this case, the Houghton-Clyde Collection fund.

Notice that in your results list, you do get that same snapshot that’s at the top of the funds record page, including – once you’re down past the ledger level – you get the path of that fund. So, this is the Harvard College Library ledger, and the Houghton Parent summary, and then the Houghton-Clyde Collection Child summary underneath that. Again, click on the title to see the full record.

Same layout on the page, with a snapshot at the top, the same four tabs here, and the same reports and rules underneath.

This time, there’s definitely funds on the Funds tab, but I’m going to skip ahead to the Notes tab so you can see what a Note looks like. In this case, it’s simply that this fund was created for the Alma migration. The Attachments page would look the same.

Let’s go back to the Funds tab, where – once you’re on a summary fund – you will see a list of all the funds underneath that. This is a child summary, so everything underneath this is an allocated fund.

Allocated Funds

So, let's look at an Allocated fund. I’m going to scroll down and find the William Henry Bond Book fund, and again, you can see the full path and the full budget string for that fund. Click.

And again, same layout, same snapshot at the top, but instead of a Funds tab, we now have a Transactions tab. This is where all the transactions against this allocated fund will be listed. So, I do get my same report down here, but now when I click on the Transactions tab, instead of a list of funds, I get a list of orders and invoices set against this fund.

From any transaction that’s listed, you can click an order line or an invoice line to view that invoice or order, or you can use the list to view more information about that transaction. In this way, it’s easy to move from a ledger, to an allocated fund, to individual orders and invoices with just a few clicks.

One last thing to point out is that on any search results list – whether it’s on the Transactions tab of an allocated fund or the funds tab of a child or parent or ledger record – you can use the Export icon to export that results list to an Excel file, either the current view or all available fields. This is a quick way to get a snapshot of financial information at any level and work with it outside of Alma. It’s not as sophisticated as the reports available from Analytics, but it’s quick and easy to do.

For more about Funds, you want to visit the LTS wiki pages on Funds and Ledgers and the list of the FY19 Funds and Ledgers structures here in the functional area documentation under Acquisitions – General topics and references. You can also click on Help for this Page on any funds-related page in Alma for related Ex Libris Knowledge Center documentation.