Fiscal Close

Rollover Ledgers

This can be done ahead of time.

Acquisitions => Advanced Tools => Rollover Ledgers

Add Job

Create allocation from: None

Ledger: Pick which ledger to roll over. Do one at a time. 

• onetime - One-time purchases

• continuing - Continuing

• approval - Approvals

• eba - Evidence Based Acquisitions

• [deposit - Deposit Accounts]

• foundation - Foundation Funds

• [external - External Funds]

Action: Copy [Ledgers with open encumbrances or expenditures cannot be deleted]

Create status: Draft

From Year: select fiscal year ending / just ended

Add and Close

The job runs immediately

Click Refresh.

Click Actions => View to see the outcome of the job. 

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Repeat this process for each ledger. 

Note: According to ALMA-L, when ledgers and funds are still in Draft mode, before they are activated, it is possible to change the codes if desired.

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Update New Fiscal Year Description

Alma Configuration => Acquisitions => General => Fund and Ledger Fiscal Period

The new fiscal year description will be created by Alma as, for example "7/01/2016-6/30/2017".

Edit the Description field to format "FY-2017".

Save

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Activate New Ledgers

Do this on the first day of the new fiscal period.

Do this before rolling over PO Lines.

Acquisitions => Acquisitions Infrastructure => Funds and Ledgers

Filter for Ledgers in Draft status for new FY.

Use the drop-down "..." menu to Activate each ledger for the new fiscal year.

Confirm that all new ledgers and funds are active.

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Set Ledger Rules for Library Funds

Note: Ledger rules for prior fiscal year should roll over with ledgers. Check them, but they should not need to be reset.

Note: As of 6/2016, I have no expenditure limits on any ledger, choosing instead to rely upon Acquisitions staff not to over-encumber. Otherwise funds disappear, confusion results. 

This corresponds to the graphic below.

No limits:

If we limit:

Overencumbrance allowed: Yes

Note: "Yes" needs to be paired with overencumbrance limits. "No" will make the fund totally unavailable if overspent. "No Limits" will allow overencumbrance without any limits. 

Overencumbrance warning percent: 1.0

Overencumbrance limit percent: 50.0

Overexpenditure allowed: No Limits

Ledger Rules for Foundation Endowment Funds

NOTE: When creating the new fiscal year ledgers, set the Endowment Funds rules to the same as regular funds, i.e. with no limits (see above). Limits cause the funds to be unusable before allocations are made. After the allocations are made, apply the rules below.

Overencumbrance allowed: Yes

Note: "Yes" needs to be paired with overencumbrance limits. "No" will make the fund totally unavailable if overspent. "No Limits" will allow overencumbrance without any limits. 

Overencumbrance warning percent: 1.0

Overencumbrance limit percent: 1.0

Overexpenditure allowed: No Limits

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Rollover PO Lines

Do this on the first day of the new fiscal period.

This process copies PO Lines from the closing fiscal period to the new fiscal period. 

The following POL types are rolled over:

• • active, continuous PO Lines

  • active, one-time PO lines that still have an encumbrance

Acquisitions => Advanced Tools => Rollover PO Lines

Add Job

New Encumbrance Calculation: Expenditure

Select the way in which you want to calculate the encumbrances in the new fiscal period. When working with continuous PO lines (only), you can base this calculation on:

Encumbrance – Adds all the encumbrances and moves them to the new fiscal period (plus or minus the FPC factor %). It then runs the dis-encumbrance on the entire expenditure.

Expenditure – Calculation is based on the sum of all expenditures related to the fiscal period (plus or minus the FPC factor). The encumbrance is relative for each fund. If this option is selected and the PO line does not have expenditures, calculation is instead based on encumbrance.

Calculation for one-time PO lines is always based on Encumbrance, but the FPC factor % is not calculated.

FPC Factor (%): 4% [only applies to continuing PO Lines; set to 0.0 for one-time POLs.]

From Year: select fiscal year ending / just ended

Libraries: [leave blank for whole institution]

Check Over Encumbrance: uncheck

Report mode: check

Check one of the following:

• Continuous Order Only

• Standing Order Only

• One-Time Order Only

Note: You will repeat this process three times, one for each PO Line type. If none of these options are selected, or if all of them are selected, then encumbrances for all PO lines types are rolled over. Otherwise, only the selected type/types are rolled over.

Add and Close

The job runs immediately.

Click Refresh.

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Note that the job runs for all PO Lines. PO Lines that do NOT have ledgers in the new fiscal period are rejected. Therefore you may be able to ignore the "Completed with Errors" message.

Click Actions => View to see the outcome of the job.

Under Job Events, you can identify the PO Lines that did not roll over by category and make corrections as needed. 

An Export to Excel button which enables viewing the problematic PO lines in an Excel file. The PO lines are grouped by the error message with which they are associated, and the Excel tabs are named according to the generated error messages.

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To do the actual rollover, repeat the process above, but this time with Report mode: unchecked

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Deactivate Old Ledgers

Acquisitions => Acquisitions Infrastructure => Funds and Ledgers

Filter for Ledgers from the prior fiscal year.

Edit each ledger to make sure "fiscal period end encumbrance grace period" for old fiscal year is set to 0 so the previous fiscal year is no longer visible.

[Note: I don't tend to do this; I trust staff to be careful to select the correct fund for the new FY, for example F-ECN (FY-2020) and not FY-ECN (FY-2019). I think the reason I decided not to do this is because of POLs connected to open invoices (see below).]

Use the drop-down "..." menu to Deactivate each ledger from the old fiscal year.

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Deactivate Previous Fiscal Year

Alma Configuration => Acquisitions => General => Fund and Ledger Fiscal Period

Change the drop-down menu in the Status column of the previous fiscal year to Closed.

Save

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Allocate Money to Funds

Allocate money to funds once budget has been determined.

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IMPORTANT: Check POLs Attached to All Open Invoices

The process detailed above rolls over open POLs to the identical fund for the new fiscal year. 

For example, open POLs charged to Social Sciences Firm (FY-2022) will have their funds changed to Social Sciences Firm (FY-2023).

However, some POLs that are not yet closed are NOT rolled over, probably because they are connected to an open invoice (and maybe also because they have been received).

Therefore, at the beginning of the new fiscal year when we pay invoices again, we need to:

1. Identify all open invoices in the system. This might include invoices entered manually but not yet closed, but most likely consists only of EDI invoices, the ones that come into Alma automatically. Right now, we only have EDI invoicing with EBSCO and GOBI. Search for the vendor, go to the invoice tab, and select invoices with Status:Review to identify the invoices and the associated POLs in question.

2. Go into each POL listed on any open invoice and change the fund in the POL itself from the old fiscal year to the new fiscal year. For example, F-ECN (FY-2021) would need to be changed to F-ECN (FY-2022) in the POL.

3. Likewise, go into each invoice and change the fund on the POL in the invoice from the old fiscal year to the new fiscal year.

This will assure that expenditures are booked in Alma in the same fiscal year as they were paid by URI.

Also, for this to work, "31" (or possibly more) needs to be entered into the ledger rules in the following fields:

• • Encumbrances prior to fiscal period (days)

  • Expenditures prior to fiscal period (days) 

  • Transfers prior to fiscal period (days)

  • Fiscal period end encumbrance grace period (days)

  • Fiscal period end expenditure grace period (days)

See first graphic above. 

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Note: I had thought it might be possible to reload the EDI files for all invoices still in review at the end of the fiscal year to avoid updating the funds in each POL for each invoice. This was what I did:

Search for the vendor in question. In the drop-down menu, select "View EDI files." When viewing the list of open invoices, in the drop-down next to an invoice, select "Reload." Choose the option to delete the existing invoice. See https://knowledge.exlibrisgroup.com/Alma/Product_Documentation/010Alma_Online_Help_(English)/090Integrations_with_External_Systems/020Acquisitions/020Electronic_Data_Interchange_(EDI)#Working_with_EDI_Files. 

This did not work. When I re-imported the EDI invoices after the start of the new fiscal year, even after deleting the old EDI invoice, the PO-Lines remained in the old fiscal year. See attachments to this page.

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Best Practices for Changing Funds and Ledgers in the New Fiscal Year

Roll over all the old ledgers, funds, and PO Lines to new fiscal period.

Create new funds and ledgers as needed. 

Deactivate funds and ledgers that you no longer want to use.

Create a new "Inactive Funds" ledger for inactive funds and move inactive funds there. When viewing funds, use facet to filter to active funds.

As invoices come in to be paid, update PO Line manually with new, active fund. Note that fund needs to be changed on the PO Line itself, not just on the invoice.

The following year, do not roll over "Inactive Funds" ledger.