We, too, are facing this change in accounting practice, as required by auditors. We also found out about it when records did not reconcile.

In response, we are also trying to change database subscriptions to align with our fiscal year (July-June).

For other resources that can’t be changed to a fiscal year subscription, apparently our Accounting unit intends to actually pay the whole invoice, but enter it in the online payable system as pro-rated across two fiscal years.  We will have to wait to see how they post it (what the percentages are) and then go back after the fact and annotate our internal acquisitions records (we use iii’s Millennium) to match what they actually did.

Our Millennium fund report module will bear no resemblance to reality, as there will be a time lag in this process.

Joanna

From: SERIALST: Serials in Libraries Discussion Forum [mailto:SERIALST@list.uvm.edu] On Behalf Of Barbara Rauch
Sent: Tuesday, June 09, 2009 6:22 PM
To: SERIALST@LIST.UVM.EDU
Subject: [SERIALST] Overlapping fiscal periods

Hi,

I'm hoping that someone can help with a problem that we are having assigning invoices across two fiscal periods. This mainly applies to electronic resources.  Previously we have been assigning the invoice to the year in which the invoice is dated.  We are now being required to split the invoice amount according to the year in which the resource is active/used, which is strictly correct accounting practice but I don't really know how to represent this on our library Acquisitions module (we are using Voyager). 

So something that is renewed, say, Apr 1st (9 months of 2009) until March 31st (3 months of 2010) is divided 75% & 25 % over these two years.  Of course many are actually Jan - Dec or anytime in between for that matter.  So the problem is that we need to be able to create invoices at any time and yet still produce reports for budget management.

The library budget is based on a calendar year Jan - Dec. Our system does not seem able to approve invoices if there is more than one fiscal period with the same date coverage, as we have found out particularly when we've overlapped by a week when rolling over funds at the end of the calendar year.  What to do ?

I'd like to know if anyone else has been faced with this situation and how you resolved it.  At the moment we are planning to just enter the 75% as the invoice amount now, and wait until 2010 (creating a dummy invoice) to enter the rest of it.  This seems to me poor accounting practice and I'm not willing to use this method if there is any other way.

Any advice or guidance would be appreciated.

Regards

Barbara.

My opinions are my own.

Barbara Rauch, Acquisitions Coordinator, Mail No. B-30

59 Wellesley Street East

AUT University Library
Private Bag 92006    

Auckland 1142
New Zealand

ph: +64 (09) 921 9999 ex 8874  fax: + 64 (09) 921 9977