Purchasing | Ordering - Acquisitions Overview Module

This is the second section of the Acquisitions Overview module to the Alma Overviews course. The video is at the top of the page, followed by the script.

In this video, you'll review:

Purchasing Workflow

In this video, we will review the Purchasing workflow for a one-time order and mention considerations for serials. Detailed information about orders of all types is available in the hands-on training scripts and the functional documentation on the Alma wiki.

This is the overall workflow for purchasing in Alma:

1. The purchasing workflow starts when an order is created, either manually, through a service provider, or via an order load (EOD stands for Embedded Order Data)
2. Next, Alma automatically reviews the order and tags it with an alert if information is incorrect or missing. These tagged orders must be reviewed by staff before they can proceed.
3. At this point, depending on options chosen during order creation, a POL will either become a purchase order of one item and be sent on for approval, or a number of POLs will be automatically or manually packaged into a larger PO.
4. Again, Alma will approve and send some purchase orders automatically – depending on the vendor settings – or flag others for approval and final sending by staff.
5. Then, we wait until the materials are received or the resource is ready for activation, then begin those workflows.

Placing a straightforward One-Time order

Let's walk through placing a straightforward one-time order so we can see how these concepts play out.

Pre-Order Searching

In Alma, orders are placed from the bibliographic record, either one already present in the repository or imported during the ordering process. These bib records are identified using a pre-order search.

If you suspect that the bib record is already in Alma, you can use the persistent search bar and an All Titles, Physical Titles, or Electronic Titles search type to find it. From there, you can click on Order from the row action item list and begin the purchasing workflow.

If the bib record you are looking for isn’t in the system, you can Search External Resources to find a bib record and import it into Alma. This process is covered more deeply in the Acquisitions search examples video.

To quickly review, go to Resources, click on Search External Resources. The Metadata Editor will open, and you can use the available search fields to find an appropriate bib record in Harvard, OCLC, or the Library of Congress; Harvard has configured a pre-order searching profile that includes all of these.

From these search results, you can View or Import a bib record to the Metadata Editor, and begin the ordering process there by clicking on the shopping cart icon in the toolbar.

Whether the bib existed or was imported, the next step is to fill out the PO Line Owner and Type screen, which identifies the purchase type (like Print One-Time order) and POL Owner (like Schlesinger Library) we explained in the previous video. At this point you can also choose from a previously-created Purchase Template, which will pre-populate some fields in the order such as fund or provenance notes. Finally, you have the choice to assign inventory manually – in other words, to create items after the order is placed – or have Alma automatically create holdings and items records as part of the ordering process. Staff at ITS 625 and other Shared Services units will often need to create holdings and items manually to assign the correct owning library to those orders, because the owning library is different than who “owns” the purchase order itself. When you’re done, click on Create PO Line in the upper right corner.

Next is the PO Line Details page, in a familiar Alma format: snapshot at the top, Summary tab, then more specific tabs to the right. Here is where you choose the owning or holding location for the material, the vendor and price, where you add funds, acquisition method, material types, reporting codes, and any additional information. The Acquisitions functional documentation describes each of these fields and how to fill them out in great detail, and the hands-on training scripts will walk through each step.

Other tabs in the purchase order line include:

Description, which contains the Bibliographic Reference for the order – a quick description of the bibliographic information to help identify what’s been ordered. This information is pulled from the bib record, but it’s not linked directly – this will become relevant in a later video.

Alerts list any automated alerts that Alma has flagged the order with. Red alerts will force the order into review, while blue alerts are just informational.

Invoice lines are where the connected invoice information will live after the items are received or activated and the invoice paid.

Associated PO Lines are any previous orders for this same title, so we could see what other libraries ordered it and when.

Communications are direct communications with the vendor for claims and similar needs. We’ll look at this screen later in the Claims segment.

The Interested Users tab is a place to add users who want to be notified when an item is received or place a hold on the item for them at the ordering stage. For instance, this might be a place to create a routing list for issues of a journal, by creating that list of interested users.

History, Notes, and Attachments are exactly what they sound like: a history of changes made to the order, internal notes added to the order, or attachments to the order (such as URLs to title descriptions or a cover art image).

Fill in all the information you have on the Summary tab, then complete the POL by choosing how and when to place the order. Your choices are:

• Order Now, which immediately sends that single order to the vendor, and it becomes a purchase order of one order line (than one copy of the title on that order line).
• You could just Save the order and come back to it later.
• Save and continue, which Packages a POL. Certain order details need to be in common for packaging, including the vendor and purchase type. When you Save and Continue, you can choose between:
• Auto packaging, where Alma will automatically collect all the POLs with the necessary values in common, package them into a PO, and send them to the vendor
• Manual packaging, where you can manually package together the POLs you want to send together as a group to a vendor. This might be useful for approval orders that do not have an order load so they can all go on a single purchase order and then be invoiced together easily.

Note that even if you only save the POL with manual packaging – aka, you’re going to choose when to send the order – the amount of that order will be encumbered as soon as you click Save. This is important to remember as you spend down your budgets over the year, so do not leave saved but unsent orders sitting for long periods of time.

Differences with Continuous Orders

Overall, the process of entering a continuous order for a serial subscription or a standing order is the same as for a one-time order. You’ll conduct pre-order searching to find or import a bib record, click on Order, choose the purchase order line type and PO Line Owner, and then add all the information.

The primary differences between placing a one-time order and a continuous order are:

• Renewals and setting renewal dates
• Prediction patterns and receiving issues based on prediction patterns
• And eventually adding in the enumeration and chronology

We will look more closely at these details in the Continuous Orders segment of this module.

Before we end, let’s look at reviewing purchase order lines and purchase orders.

Order Templates

Order templates are a way to save yourself time and data entry during the ordering process for combinations of owning library, vendor, and order type that you place frequent orders for.

To create an order template, open any past order and then click on Save as template. Many of the mandatory fields will become part of the template and save you typing time. The best practice for naming a template is POL Owner / Inventory Location (or owning library) / Vendor / Order Type. For instance: ITS 625 / LAM / YANKEE / OT Print order. You can also save this as either a public or personal template.

Reviewing POLs and POs

If I am a staff person who reviews and confirms orders with an In Review status, if I go to the Alma home page, I will see Order Lines in my Task List. (If you don’t have a Task List widget, click on the plus sign on the home page and then click on the box next to Task List to add it.) This is a very large number of orders in review, so I can click on the header bar to open up a more specific list. Then, if I click on any one of these, I’ll get a list of just those POLs or purchase orders and can review them; the facets on the left help limit your list quickly, and you can take an action on an individual order right from the results list or click on Edit to edit the order to change or update needed information.

I could get to this same list by going to Acquisitions, then Review under Purchase order lines or Purchase orders. From this list, you can see three tabs: Assigned to Me, Unassigned, or Assigned to Others for review.

Now that we’ve looked at ordering, let’s review the receiving process in the next video.