Order Lines and Invoices - Finances Module

Owned by Jennifer Koerber (Unlicensed)
Last updated: Dec 04, 2018Version comment

This is the third 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:

Welcome to the Orders and Invoices video of the Financial Overview module. In this video, we will review how to find both order (known as PO Line) and invoice records and walk through the information available in those records. We will not go over how to place orders or pay invoices – these topics will be covered in later functional training.

Unlike Vendors and Funds, there is no way to get to a single list of all Orders or Invoices via the main menu – which is smart, because this would result in hundreds of thousands of results in your list. You must use the persistent search bar or click through to these records from related funds, vendor, or bibliographic records.

Orders

Let’s begin with PO Line records, the record for an order for an individual item.

Finding and Viewing Order Records

In the Alma Overview module, we saw that you can get to any order for a title in Alma directly from the title record. If I search for the title Getting to Yes, and scroll down just a little bit, I can see that I’ve found a title record that has 7 orders on it. Click on the number 7 to see the list of order records, which will display the most important information about the order right in the results list, including the current status in this expandable section. This indicates that the item has been received and what the receipt date was.

To see the Purchase Order Line Details, click on the title or the number next to the Order Line if there was only one order back on the title record. This brings us to the order record, and we’ll see a familiar set of tabs:

  • First we see a Summary of the order information, including the funds. And here you’ll notice that this is a link, which means I can click directly through to this allocated fund and see all of the transactions placed against it.
  • Next, a Description of the title purchased with basic bibliographic information.
  • Next, any Alerts on the order that might affect its approval. There weren’t any for this one.
  • Associated Invoice Lines, so since this item was received, an invoice was submitted and this item was paid for.
  • Next, on the associated PO Lines tab, we can see all related purchase order lines for that title, including other orders for that same title. This might include re-orders, or any other choices like that.
  • The Communications tab is where you would send an email communication directly to the vendor if there was an issue with this particular order. We saw in the vendor records video that you can get a general communications tab for the main vendor record, but if there’s just an issue with one particular order line, the better practice is to put it on the Communications tab in the individual order itself, not on that main vendor record.
  • Next up is the Interested users tab. When staff place an order for an item, they can identify Interested Users who want to know when the item is received but not necessarily place a request on it. At least one library at Harvard is also using this feature as a routing list for journal issues to be read by staff and faculty. If there were any interested users for this title, they would be listed here.
  • The History, Notes, and Attachments tabs are exactly what they sound like. Since there is content here, I can click through and show you that this was updated by the system for the core collection. If there were any attachments, they would be on this tab.

Searching for an Individual Order

Now, from here, I’ll demonstrate the second way to find an order record: using the persistent search bar. For this, I will go ahead and copy the order line number. You can search for a specific order by the persistent search bar by choosing the Order Lines search type, the PO Line criteria, and then pasting or typing that (number) in and go ahead and click search. You can see that we’ve come straight to that one individual order record, and I can click through as before to view it.

Also note that from the order record, I can not only see this individual order, but I can see all of the items that were ordered on any single Purchase Order that this particular order line was bundled with. If I click through on the purchase order number, I can see summary details about that PO and see the PO line list. In this case, it was just that one title, but if there were multiple titles on a single PO, those separate order lines would be listed below.

 

Invoices

Now, let’s move on to Invoices, and we’ll see the many similarities between searching for and viewing order records and invoice records.

Finding and Sorting Invoice Records

In this case, we’re going to start by searching for an invoice number. Note that we are looking up the invoice number independent of a vendor code, so you will see invoices from any vendors who have used the same invoice number.

Right from the top, I’ll choose the search type Invoice and then choose the criteria of Invoice Number.

I’m going to search for any invoice whose invoice number includes "2018." Type that number into the search and we’ll get a list of results. For the most part, this looks like all of the other lists of search results in Alma – we have the facets down the left so we could limit this list of 490 items.

However, what is different is the sort functions. Instead of a sort drop-down up at the top, you can sort by any column heading that has these up and down arrows or a single arrow on it. A double arrow indicates that that column isn’t sorted on currently, and a single arrow – like the one next to Updated Date – indicates that that is the column that is currently sorted. The results are being displayed in that order. Now, because this is facing downwards, we know that this is in descending order by Last Updated date: 11/28, 11/27, 11/26, and 11/20 and backwards. I could change this to sort by vendor by clicking on the Vendor heading, which now puts it in ascending order alphabetically by the vendor name. If I wanted to change that to descending order, I just click again to change my upward facing arrow to a downward facing arrow.

You can only sort by one column at a time, but note that you do have all of these facets on the left to limit your list first and then sort it in a useful way. Also, pointing out that there is the Export icon again, so you can export that list of invoices that match your search criteria out to an Excel list for further work.

Viewing the Invoice Record

Finally, I want to point out that from the results list, you can click on the invoice number to see a particular invoice record. You could also click on the vendor to see the vendor record, and you can click on the number of PO Lines to see each individual line attached to that invoice. So you have a lot of choices by searching for invoices, you can get to a number of different aspects of the invoice, just from one place. If I go ahead and click on the 14 for this one, I will go straight to the invoice detail record and see all 14 order lines associated with that single invoice.

And once again, here is our familiar layout: the invoice number at the top, the unique invoice identifier (since we saw that (the invoice number) is not a unique identifier necessarily), its status, the total amount, the vendor.

  • The Summary tab has details about the invoice. You’ll notice that none of this is editable except that it was paid and what that payment date was.
  • Any Alerts on the invoice that would have prevented it being approved or had an affect on its being approved.
  • Again, all these Invoice lines. And if you click on a fund, or on a PO line, you can get to that additional information.
  • To get ahead (to other tabs), History is the history of that invoice, any Notes on that invoice, and any Attachments such as a PDF image of the actual physical invoice, if there was one.

Connected Records: Funds, Vendors, Orders, Invoices

If I come back to Invoice Lines for a moment, I want to show you that we began this particular finance overview video series by talking about funds. You might have seen that from the funds records, from the vendor records, from the order records, and from the invoice records, I can get back to any fund record just by clicking on the link. That will take me back to that fund record, on the Transactions page, so I can see the full title of the fund, the full code for the fund, and its available balance if there is one.

So, we have gone absolutely full circle, from funds to vendor records, to orders, to invoices, and now back to funds. This is one of the things that makes Alma such a useful tool: it is very easy to move within related records in this way.

More Information About Orders and Invoices

For more about Orders and Invoices, visit the Acquisitions section of the Alma wiki, which will show you definitions of purchase order lines and owners, the various PO Line status definitions that you might see as you look for information, and some basics on creating and editing both orders and invoices, which you will review in your functional training.

You can always also click on Help for this Page to get to the Ex Libris Knowledge Center documentation.