RE: [ALCTS-acqnet] reconciling ILS payments to campus payments

Hi Mark,

Our ILS (Alma) is integrated with our campus financial system (PeopleSoft), at least to the extent that our invoices are packaged in a file for uploading to the campus PeopleSoft system after they have been approved. So almost all our financial entries into the campus PS system come directly out of Alma. The biggest exception to this is items purchased on the library’s procurement card, which are in a different system (Concur). However, even those p-card expenses are then entered into Alma, for us to track the overall spending budget.

That said, we do still reconcile each month. We try to make it as streamlined as possible – if the total spending from the fund report out of PeopleSoft matches our total spending from Alma, we don’t look at specific entries. When the numbers do not match, then we will look at the specific entries in the two reports to see where they differ.

Some of the situations that can cause problems:

·         P-card purchases that were missed and not entered into Alma, or there is a discrepancy between the fund used in Alma and the fund used in Concur.

·         A credit or deposit may have not been entered into Alma

·         On some rare occasions, we have found entries made by our campus Accounts Payable to one of our accounts by mistake

We have found that reconciling gives us the opportunity to enter purchases into Alma that may have been missed otherwise, to correct p-card entries using the wrong fund numbers, and to correct the rare mistake by Accounts Payable.

Perhaps if all the system were fully integrated, we could stop reconciliation!

Hope this helps,
Angela

Angela Jones
Head of Technical Services
Underwood Law Library, Dedman School of Law
Southern Methodist University
P.O. Box 750354
Dallas, TX 75275-0354
214-768-1827
arjones_at_smu.edu<mailto:arjones_at_smu.edu>

From: acqnet-request_at_lists.ala.org [mailto:acqnet-request_at_lists.ala.org] On Behalf Of Mark Hemhauser
Sent: Wednesday, July 18, 2018 7:22 PM
To: acqnet_at_lists.ala.org
Subject: [ALCTS-acqnet] reconciling ILS payments to campus payments

I sent this a few weeks ago, but looking at it again, it seems I used an old acqnet email address, so trying again.

Do people still try to balance their payments in the ILS with the payments in the campus system?

Do you try to reconcile and balance your overall spending and income by fund between the two systems?

When I started in serials in 1994 we would monthly compare a campus payments sheet, printed out, to the ILS payments (also printed) to confirm campus paid the invoice and the amount correctly. Later we used the campus print out to record the voucher number and payment date in the Voyager invoice record. Some places have moved to automated processes where the ILS transmits data to campus and campus passes voucher numbers back. That is more or less automatically reconciled. The dollar amounts shouldn’t go wrong, they aren’t being rekeyed. But if you don’t have that back and forth communication between systems, do you do anything to reconcile?

Thanks for thoughts or practices.
Mark


Mark Hemhauser
​Head of Acquisitions, The Library
250 Moffitt Library, MC 6000
University of California, Berkeley
Berkeley, CA 94720-6000

510-664-4310