82VINEb

VINE

Vine Volume 12 Issue 4 1982 pp49-50

Page 49

A LIBRARY ACCOUNTS PACKAGE FOR MICROS

Edinburgh University Library (EUL) has recently developed a package to handle its library accounts. EUL's requirement was for a system which would provide for the whole of library expenditure, for items like staff travel and binding costs as well as book-funds, which would cater for library income from a wide variety of sources and which would specifically deal with the troublesome area of annual re-commitment of serials expenditure. Commercially available packages did not meet the library's specifications: if library orientated, they formed as a rule part of an acquisitions system and did not cater adequately either for income or for expenditure on items other than books; purely accounting packages were too sophisticated and detailed on the accounting side for internal library needs. One possible American system existed but this required considerable adaptation to suit UK needs and practice so it was deemed cheaper to write original software. This was commissioned from the Edinburgh Regional Computing Centre.

The Accounts System was written in PASCAL to run originally on a pair of 48k Apple II's attached through a Constellation multiplexor to a 10mb disc drive. The two VDU's are Hazeltine Executive's and there is a Paper Tiger for hard-copy output. The system has recently also been transferred successfully to a Sirius. The system was designed to be as comprehensive as possible and can cope with up to 900 different funds. On the income side, it allows for an allocation from the U6C grant to any fund and also controls real income from fines, fees, photographic work, telephone coin boxes, credit notes, and sale of publications, to name but a few examples. The system deals exclusively with money actually under the library's control.

The need for a detailed and accurate system is forced on the library by the need to agree the accounts monthly in arrears with the University Accountant. This imposed great strain on the manual system in identifying and correcting the inevitable discrepancies. These still occur but the machine traces them much more rapidly. Expenditure is taken either from de-committed orders or directly input purchases where no commitment has existed. Income is allocated either from sales (where records have been created in advance) or from casual income and grants from outside bodies, which have not been predicted. All expenditure is checked and balanced and traders lists then sent to the University Accountant indicating the sum to be paid to each of our suppliers

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in that month.

A major requirement on the expenditure front was a method for automatic incrementation of the previous year's subscriptions for periodicals and for a corresponding adjustment to funds and monies committed. This is now carried out by a single pass of the file and up to 10,000 titles can be accommodated. Full currency tables are provided and a useful feature is that when currency rates change it is possible to calculate their potential effect on money committed without at that point altering the actual sum committed: the decision to do that is an optional choice.

The package will have four subsystems; commitment, expenditure, sales, serials. Expenditure is now running; serials is at present being tested; commitment and sales are largely written but will only be examined and tested in detail when the serials system is running satisfactorily.

Information supplied by: Mr. D. Law, Sub-Librarian, Medical Library, Edinburgh University Library