Hi all,

 

Here is a very belated response (and again, apologies for cross-posting). I had only one list reply by somebody who’s actually doing this, and I contacted somebody off-list at a school who’s been handling this for several years now.

 

·         This accounting practice is known as “deferred” instead of “split” at one institution. At the other institution it’s called “annualize over the fiscal year.”

·         “Prepay account” refers to the portion paid by the institution rather than the library; the library pays up at the start of the new fiscal year.

o   Example: January 1 2014 start subscription, July 1 2014 FY; $10,000 database

o   Vendor is paid 100% up front. On the back end, 50% comes out of library budget, 50% comes from the institution’s prepay account

o   The library is charged $5,000 in FY13-14,  and the other $5,000 charged to FY14-15. (If I figured that right).

·         It’s good to get as many subscriptions as possible to start on the same date as the institution’s fiscal year start. This will probably involve prorating costs to get on the right schedule. It also means having a large number of renewals at once.

·         One library is setting up Serials Solutions 360 Resource Manager to track payments & renewals

·         The other library uses Millennium and a spreadsheet. Next fiscal year they are looking at implementing this plan:

o   Creating two new orders record every year for the split-paid subscriptions, with status “o” rather than “f”

o   The first order record has the FY current year payment from whatever normal fund is assigned.

o   The second order record has the next FY prepay cost.

§  There will be a fund code for prepay from the next fiscal year.

§  Prepay amounts are  encumbered on these order records.

§  The prepay fund total should match the institution’s reporting system (Banner).

§  When the current fiscal year closes, the order records carry forward and are paid in the new fiscal year

 

If you see any errors in my reasoning or terminology here, please let me know!

 

Thanks,

 

Diane Westerfield, Electronic Resources & Serials Librarian

Tutt Library, Colorado College

diane.westerfield@coloradocollege.edu

(719) 389-6661

(719) 389-6082 (fax)

 

 

 

 

Hi all and apologies for cross-posting:

 

Are there any libraries out there who use Millennium at an institution that uses Banner and split pay accounting?

 

What I mean by split pay accounting (and I may be using the wrong terminology) is that if the subscription term of a database doesn’t match the fiscal year exactly, then the college splits the charge to the library’s account based on how much of the subscription falls in the current fiscal year. The remainder is charged to the library budget at the beginning of the new fiscal year. Our fiscal year starts July 1.

 

So for example, many of our subscriptions start January 1. These subscriptions have 50% of the cost taken out of the library budget in the current fiscal year and 50% charged in the next fiscal year. The vendor is paid the full amount and doesn’t see this split payment at all.

 

Prior to the introduction of this new accounting, we didn’t have trouble with making our complex fund structure match up very closely with Banner’s figures, and we were good at spending out most of the funds very closely. Now Millennium doesn’t have correspondence to Banner for the continuing resources that get split-paid and it’s gotten very confusing.

 

So I’m wondering how the libraries who have to use this method are dealing with tracking their funds. Anything that can be done in Millennium, or to Millennium, to help straighten this out? Any other techniques or ways of thinking that help?

 

Thanks,

 

Diane Westerfield, Electronic Resources & Serials Librarian

Tutt Library, Colorado College

diane.westerfield@coloradocollege.edu

(719) 389-6661

(719) 389-6082 (fax)

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