Aleph Update: Some encumbered amounts on M orders not cleared when payment made


This message will be of interest to acquisitions and financial staff.

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When you make a payment on a Monograph (M) order and the original encumbered amount is less than the actual amount being paid, the active encumbered amount changes to $0.00.  If the original encumbered amount is more than the actual amount paid, the active encumbered amount SHOULD change to $0.00 if you check the "Order Completely Invoiced" box on the line item.  If you have not changed the budget, this is working correctly.  If you change the budget in response to a message (e.g. Max Overexpenditure in Budget, Invalid Budget Code), this is working correctly.  But, if you change the budget by clicking on the Budgets button on the line item without seeing any error message (as you might if you were under instructions to always use a certain budget regardless of original encumbered budget), the leftover encumbrance will not be cleared.  Note that this problem occurs even if the budget you change to is the same as the original encumbered budget (which you might do if you were not checking to see which budget had been encumbered originally).  This leftover encumbrance will appear as the Active Amount on the Order Budget list which you see when you click on Encumber on the Nav Tree.

To fix the leftover encumbrance problem after the fact, do the following:

   1.  Uncheck the "Invoice Status Complete" box on tab 2 of the order
   2.  Click on Update
   3.  Check the "Invoice Status Complete" box on tab 2 of the order
   4.  Click on Update

One way to prevent the problem is to change the encumbered budget before you create the line item.  Here is the workflow for doing that:

   1.  Highlight the order on the Order List
   2.  Click on Encumber on the Nav Tree
   2.  Highlight the original encumbered budget
   3.  Click on the Delete Budget button
   3.  Type the new budget in the Budget Code to Add field (or open the Budget List and select the budget)
   4.  Click on the Add Budget button
   5.  Go back to the Order List and record arrival and make payment as usual

Note that this problem is only relevant to M orders since encumbrances on S and O orders are not cleared in this way.

This problem has been reported to Ex Libris.

If you would like help identifying orders with these leftover encumbrances for your Order Unit, please send a request through the Aleph Support Center using the category Acquisitons/Financial Processing.  The URL is ...

        http://hul.harvard.edu/ois/systems/aleph/forms/f-supp-acq.html

Thanks.

KA

Kathleen Anderson
Library Systems Manager
Office for Information Systems
Harvard University Library
90 Mount Auburn Street
Cambridge, MA 02138

Phone: 617-495-3724
Fax: 617-496-5600