Hi Teri,

Do you mean that your accounting department will want to pay for part of the subscriptions in one part of the year, and another payment later?  If that's the case, you might consider asking your subscription vendor to go with you to visit your accounting office, and try to educate them on the realities of purchasing serials. The industry standard is that publishers (most of them, anyway) require full payment in advance of delivery.  Most publishers will not allow partial payment.  And if your subscription vendor allows you to do that, that means they would probably pay the publisher up front and then have to charge you some sort of "carrying charge" on the balance you owe them.  So, making partial payments would have a negative financial implication for your accounting department/university.

I advise that you do NOT attempt getting your subscriptions to coincide with your fiscal year.  For one thing, some publishers simply will not allow it.  Some insist that your order begin with the first issue of a volume.  And so many volumes begin at the start of the calendar year. (One exception is many education-related journals and magazines, which often begin volumes at the start of the school year, in Aug. or Sep.)

I predict that claiming missing issues would also be a problem if you order split volumes during the year.

In short, you need to do whatever you can to get your accounting department to make an exception for you!

Good luck!

Katy G.

Katy Ginanni
E-Access and Serials Librarian
Coates Library, Trinity University
San Antonio, TX 78212-7200
210-999-7613 ph.
210-999-8182 fax
katy.ginanni@trinity.edu
"We need magic, and bliss, and power, myth, and celebration and religion in our lives, and music is a good way to encapsulate a lot of it." --Jerome John Garcia, 8/1/42-8/9/95

-----Original Message-----
From: SERIALST: Serials in Libraries Discussion Forum [mailto:SERIALST@list.uvm.edu] On Behalf Of Teri Koch
Sent: Tuesday, August 26, 2008 8:57 AM
To: SERIALST@LIST.UVM.EDU
Subject: [SERIALST] subscriptions: fiscal year vs. calendar year accounting issues

Hello,

I am writing to find out how other institutions assign costs for
journal and/or database subscriptions for accounting purposes.  Most
of our journal subscriptions are on a calendar year basis, but our
fiscal year runs June 1-May 31.  Just recently our Accounting
Department has decided to begin splitting the charges between fiscal
years.  That is, the cost for a calendar year subscription would be
assigned 5/12ths (Jan-May) to one fiscal year; and the other 7/12ths
(June-Dec) to the next fiscal year. This is going to require that we
keep two sets of books for each title/database, one for the current
fiscal year, and one the upcoming fiscal year.  This seems like a
nightmarish amount of paperwork/trouble.

How do other institutions handle subscriptions for accounting
purposes?  I suppose one alternative is to attempt to get all
subscriptions to coincide with our fiscal year.  Do others do that?

Any insights into how your institutions handle this and/or advice
would be appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

Regards--

Teri Koch
Collection Development Librarian
Drake University
Cowles Library
2725 University Ave.
Des Moines, IA  50311

teri.koch@drake.edu  (e-mail)