Recommended Annual Workflows for Encumbered Subscriptions

General Processes

Steps for the Rollover

• Remaining ledgers rolled as follows:
  • Roll all ledgers
  • Roll all PO Lines where Continuity = Standing Order on encumbrance (does not impact the Standing Order non-Monograph orders)
    n.b. PO Lines of type Standing Order Non-Monograph should fully encumber, with the intent to release any remaining encumbrances in March
  • Roll all remaining PO Lines, identifying that for continuous orders to use expenditure plus an FPC factor of 4%
  • Run Update POLs Transactions job on the following sets, updating list prices to $0.01:
    • All Active Continuous Orders owned by Middle East
    • All Active Orders of POL type Standing Order Non-Monograph owned by Judaica
    • All active continuous orders not owned by ITS 625 eResources, encumbered on a 265 fund that are not gifts/technical

Application of Fund Rules

• Report on funds with rules should be run daily
• The report can be subscribed for email receipt from Alma Analytics, Shared with me, it is entitled FIN-Budget Status with Rules Filter
• Funds over 92% should have rules disabled
• Funds used for both subscriptions and approval plans should not have rules enabled
• At this time, the 26-50 funds HLF has agreed to allow use of rules for should continue
• If any funds appear as overspent, reports to identify invoices In Review that can be adjusted can be found at:
  Shared Folders/Harvard University/_WGs/FY23 Encumbrances Working Group/AnnualReports/Fund Rules

PO Lines of type Standing Order Non-Monograph

• PO Lines of order line type Standing Order non-Monograph will encumber on expenditure plus the FPC factor % in the rollover, because Alma considers them subscriptons
• As orders’ frequency are revealed annually through correspondence with vendors, it can make sense to use the Update PO Lines Information - Advanced job to change order line types:
• Make things that are sent less than annually Standing Order NonMonograph
• Make resources that are sent at least once per year Physical Journal - Subscription
• Order Line type = Physical - Standing Order Non-Monograph 
  • will roll over with new encumbrances based on expenditure
  • For any over-encumbered funds, review the dollar value of encumbrances associated with this order type, based on a pivot table of encumbrance values by Order Line Type ;
    if it is sufficient to bring the fund’s available balance within the 3% threshold to benefit from the rules, reduce this set of orders to $0.01 list prices
  • release encumbrances for these orders as needed where it can create positive available balances on over-encumbered funds
  • release any remaining encumbrances by April of the new fiscal year for all orders of order line type Standing Order NonMonograph

Pre-Rollover work

Allocation Matchup

Annual review process

Projections

• In the last week of June, reach out to Harvard Library Finance for access to the allocation spreadsheet files supplied by all fund-owners
• Following the Invoice payment deadline, run reports on all subscription expenditures plus the value of the inflation factor
  Filepath: Shared Folders/Harvard University/_WGs/FY23 Encumbrances Working Group/AnnualReports/AllocationAlignment/EOFYPreWork
• Report names:
  • Sole-sponsored: ExpenditureAmountbyPOL
    • Identify the fund encumbered on each order by running FundEncumberedPOL
    • Tie the encumbered fund into the report by using VLOOKUP, with the POL Reference as the matchpoint
  • Cost-shared: ExpenditureAmountByPOL_CostShares
    • For these, the best option still seems to be manually identifying each encumbered fund by searching the POL in Alma and pasting it into a column for encumbered fund
  • Paste the cost-shared order lines into the report for the sole-sponsored orders
• Create a pivot table by encumbered fund of the total values
• Calculate the difference in this amount and the allocated amount
• For any instances where the difference is within 3%, send the list of funds to Harvard Library Finance as a preliminary list of funds requiring rules
• For any instances where the value of the encumbrances exceeds the value of the allocation by more than 3%, reach out to the fund owner, supplying a report of the projected encumbrances on the fund, including a pivot table by order line type, to assess the role reducing Standing Order nonMonograph encumbrances would have on the fund's available balance, asking them to either allocate/transfer more money to the fund, if possible, and if not, to identify orders that can move to a new fund
  • Report name:
    • ExpenditureAmountByPOL_FundFiltered
    • FundEncumberedPOL_FundFiltered
    • Knit the encumbered fund amount into the first report, using VLOOKUP
  • Filepath: Shared Folders/Harvard University/_WGs/FY23 Encumbrances Working Group/AnnualReports/AllocationAlignment/EOFYPreWork

Creation of Sets to Minimize immediately post-rollover job

• Sets to compile prior to rollover:
  • All Active Continuous Orders owned by Middle East - Report named: MEAADOrderstoZeroOut
  • All Active Orders of POL type Standing Order Non-Monograph owned by Judaica - Report named: JudaicaStandingOrderNonMonos
  • All active continuous orders not owned by ITS 625 eResources, encumbered on a 265 fund that are not gifts/technical - Report named: LawOrderstoZeroOut
  • Queries for these sets can be located in the folder located at;
    Shared Folders/Harvard University/_WGs/FY23 Encumbrances Working Group/AnnualReports/PostRolloverUpdates

Midyear Maintenance

Encumbrance Release

• Report for instances where users forgot to check off the box on invoice payment

  • The report with a weekly cadence is subscribable from Analytics Shared with me, under the title: ACQ-Orders with Outstanding Encumbrances
  • A flexible version of this report, called OrderLineTypeAllExpendedWithEncumbrancesStill can be located in the following filepath in Design Analytics:
    Shared Folders/Harvard University/_WGs/FY23 Encumbrances Working Group/AnnualReports/EncumbranceReleaseReports
• Weekly review of cases where an encumbrance remains after an expenditure should take place
• Anything that looks like it was an accidental failure to check off the box to release the remaining encumbrance should be gathered into a set to run the Update PO Lines Transaction job on, in order to release any remaining encumbrance should be done regularly

• Annual follow up on orders expected to be invoiced that have not yet been

• These reports should be run at the beginning of February
• Reports to run for this purpose can be found in the folder located in Alma Analytics at:
  Shared Folders/Harvard University/_WGs/FY23 Encumbrances Working Group/AnnualReports/EncumbranceReleaseReports

• • These reports focus on ongoing orders that are fully encumbered on funds that do not allow carryover, either because they are unrestricted or do not carry over for some other reason
    • List of funds to run report on
    • Run for all funds at once, there are three pairs of reports to run for this
      • Unrestricted Undesignated Funds
        • OutstandingEncumbrances_OrdersList_UUFunds
        • InvoiceDates_FilteredfromUncarriedFundsUnspentOrders

• • • • Ledgers that do not allow for Carryover
        • OutstandingEncumbrances_OrdersList_UncarriedLedgers
        • InvoiceDates_FilteredfromUncarriedLedgersUnspentOrders

• • • • Endowed funds that do not permit carryover
        • OutstandingEncumbrances_OrdersList_UncarriedEndowments
        • InvoiceDates_FilteredfromUncarriedEndowmentsUnspentOrders

• In each of these pairs of reports, the invoice dates need to be pasted into a secondary tab of the OrdersList report, and pulled into the main tab using the VLOOKUP formula
• Sort the reports by Date, oldest to newest
• Filter to anything with a date over one year prior
• Review the list for anything that references a potential standing order in the receiving note (e.g. Analyzed or Various), but is coded as a subscription
• Convert these to Order Line Type Standing Order Non-Monograph, using the Update PO Lines Information - Advanced job – can be run by Amy Dittman or via ticket to LT
• Sort this sub-list by vendor
• Assign individuals in Acquisitions/Subscriptions from across Harvard Library to follow up on a vendor or vendors’ outstanding orders, regardless of PO Line Owning Library or associated fund
• Berenson – In FY23 they did their own whole report
• DOAK
• Serials Acq at 625
• CRA at Langdell
• ITS 625 eResources
• Judaica
• Harvard-Yenching ITS
• Slavic

• Orders of type Standing Order Non-Monograph

• Any orders on the reports above with the order line type Standing Order NonMonograph should have their list prices adjusted to $0.01 and the remaining encumbrances released in March

• Handling of orders typically billed April-June

• Case study using the Fine Arts Bliss fund
• All orders excluding those that were cost-shared or flagged by the selector had their encumbrances released on April 1
• Recommend this approach going forward for all funds without carryover

• Funds permitting carryover

• Any orders w/o any expenditure in 4 years should be minimized to penny list prices/encumbrances released every April 1

Post-Rollover Assessment

1. Once Alma Analytics has had a chance to refresh after all penny reduction jobs were run
2. Run the report called OverEncumberedFundOrders located in /Shared Folders/Harvard University/_WGs/TSWG/Rollover/PostRolloverFundAssessment
3. Remove/hide the following ledgers/funds:
1. DOAK (110) - these all have over-expenditure rules enabled and are self-sufficient
2. Countway (520) endowments - these will be allocated later in the summer, usually resolving any problems before the renewal invoices arrive
3. Schlesinger (285) endowments – these will be allocated later in the summer, usually resolving any problems before the renewal invoices arrive
4. Sort the remaining report by percent committed, anything encumbered at 95% or less should begin the year without problems.

• Over-encumbered/under-allocated funds - Funds where percent committed >103

  • Filter the report to anything where the percent committed exceeds 103
  • Reach out to selectors about these funds, asking if they have the ability to allocate more funds, anticipate more funds being allocated in the future – sometimes the case for certain ledgers' endowments, or if they would like assistance in identifying orders that could transition to a different fund
  • Include copies for each of the responsible selector’s over-encumbered fund strings entitled OverEncumberedFundOrders, also located in the folder:
    /Shared Folders/Harvard University/_WGs/TSWG/Rollover/PostRolloverFundAssessment
    • If there are obvious suggestions for how to bring the fund’s available balance back to positive, such as minimizing encumbrances for Stanidng Order nonMonongraph orders reference those in the outreach message.
  • It might also be useful to compare how these same funds were allocated the previous year – sometimes this highlights areas where there are planned transfers – PreviousFYAllocationByFund, in the same subfolder

• Rules application - Funds where precent committed is between 95 and 103

  • HLF will only permit up to 50 funds having the Alma rules, be cognizant of this limitation when sending the request
  • Filter the report to anything where the percent committed is between 95 and 103
  • In a new column to the far right, calculate 3% of the fund’s allocated balance
  • Send this list to hl_finance@harvard.edu, indicating that they are a list of funds that would benefit from use of the Alma rules

• Communications

• • Over-encumbered funds report
    • follow up with selectors for any over-encumbered funds with lists of encumbered funds, unless changes described in the Alma roadmap for the first half of 2024 make identifying this information simpler 
    • One week after the all-clear, share a copy of the report detailing the status of any over-encumbered funds and their anticipated resolution via the ER&S email list hl-its-eras@calists.harvard.edu

Communication improvement

HLF sends a message to selectors in late May, incorporate this into their message, or write our own topper to send the first Monday of June?

Full message that assumes a separate one:

Dear Colleagues,

Harvard Library Finance recently wrote to you regarding fund allocations for the upcoming fiscal year rollover.  Due to the shift in FY23 to fully budget for subscription orders through the Alma rollover and encumbrance process, funds associated with subscription orders begin each new fiscal year heavily encumbered.  In cases where less money will be allocated in the new fiscal year than was spent in the old, this will lead the fund to begin the year with a negative available balance. No matter how large a fund’s cash balance might be, if its available balance is at all negative, it is not usable to process invoices, even for orders associated with those encumbrances. 

For this reason, it is ideal to make sure that at least as much is allocated to these funds as was the previous year. Although ideal, it is understood that this is not always possible. If there are cases where you anticipate a fund’s allocation decreasing in the new fiscal year, please reach out to Amy Dittman requesting a report of the fund’s expenditures, to assess the projected value of subscription encumbrances in the new rollover. Depending on the results, there are a few different options available to help ensure the fund will be available for use once the new fiscal year begins.

Sincerely,

The Alma FY? Encumbrances Working Group

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