Alma
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For more information please review our FAQ and guidelines. Thank you.
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Allow Acq managers to force POs to close.
There are a number of occasions where POs get stuck at 'sent' where they should be closed. Currently we have to contact Salesforce to close these which is needlessly time consuming for all parties. It would be very helpful if Alma had the option select closed as a status type that would override the sent status regardless of activation/receipt status of the order.
162 votes -
Copy PO Line Prices to Item Replacement Cost
Add a new configuration parameter to automatically copy the physical one time PO line price to the item Replacement cost. If the PO line's currency is different than the institution's default currency, the amount is exchanged and copied to the item (with no currency). The possibility (for an operator, a job or an API) to update or remove the amount in the Replacement cost should remain. Customers should be free to activate or not this configuration (true/false parameter).
199 votes -
PO Line and invoice attachments: Upload/View/Edit/Delete - additional user roles needed
It is possible to upload attachments to a PO Line or an invoice. These attachements can be viewed, edited and deleted as well.
In case of using Alma as (the only) data storage for e.g. invoice PDFs, it is very important that attachments can be deleted only by specially privileged staff users. Deletion might be necessery e.g. because of erroneous uploads.
Looking into the 'Roles Reports' shows that there is no 'Delete' option listed (so Edit means also Delete):
# Purchasing Operator / Purchasing Manager
- po_line_attachments.xml ... View Edit
- po_attachments.xml ... Edit
- invoice_attachments_tab.xml ... View
- po_line_attachments.xml…28 votes -
Set the sender address to the address of the staff that made the PO and automatically forward the mail to the said staff.
With multiple librarians handling PO, this can help us keep better track of PO details and increase process efficiency.
56 votes -
Adding a field in the Excel Example of Creating Invoice from File.
Adding a field in the Excel file under batch process that allows for inputting custom exchange rates. The reason for this is because the invoice creation date may not always be on the same day as payment, resulting in outdated rates.
61 votes -
Acquisitions workflow for born digital material
The National Library of New Zealand (NLNZ) is ordering and receiving an increasing amount of born digital material, particularly through Legal Deposit. These publications are collected as individual monograph publications and serial issues, not as part of an aggregation or domain/website harvesting, for the purposes of long term access and preservation in our Heritage Collections. They are publications in their own right, not digitised version of print holdings. Alma’s Acquisitions workflows do not currently have any options to allow for steps that are specific to receiving born digital material.
Our current workflow involves the creation of Vendor records and POLs…
74 votes -
Reopening closed POLs should re-encumber funds
Currently re-opening a closed POL doesn’t re-encumber the funds. The workaround for this is to delete the fund, save the change, then add the fund back and save again.
When we brought this up with Ex Libris they advised this can't be done automatically, but that they would instead add a popup message advising the funds will need to be manually re-encumbered. This was supposed to be added in December 2016 release but we noticed some time later that it didn't eventuate (SalesForce case #00436654).
It would save a lot of time if re-opening a closed POL automatically re-encumbered the…
16 votes -
Enable configuring VAT on the purchase order line level
Institutions should be able to enable configuring VAT on the purchase order line level so that it can be taken into account for encumbrance calculation. Having the VAT only configured at the invoice stage creates incorrect Fund Balance reports where Encumbered Balance is always underestimated and Available Balance always overestimated. A distinction between Inclusive and Exclusive VAT in the POL would be necessary.
13 votes -
Add checkboxes for the single positions at the invoice details in the invoice lines tab
Add checkboxes for the single positions at the invoice details in the invoice lines tab.
We create all of our invoices manually. Usually we don’t use the pro rata checkbox and four invoice lines for shipment, discount, overhead and insurance are created automatically.
In most cases not all invoice lines are needed and we delete the redundant lines manually. Therefore it would be easier to have a checkbox for choosing these lines and to be able to delete all of them at once instead of choosing and confirming the deletion of each line separately.87 votes -
Ability to attach bibliographic record to CZ order
The Change Bib reference action is not available for POLs that have originated from the Community Zone. This is an issue as POLs with CKB references don't have bib record information which can be used in Analytics.
In our SalesForce case about this (00570591) we were told that POLs for an electronic item can be relinked only if it has an MMS ID in the first place, and we see from the manual that changing the bib record isn't possible using the relink action if there’s not already a bib record attached:
https://knowledge.exlibrisgroup.com/Alma/Product_Documentation/010Alma_Online_Help_(English)/020Acquisitions/020Purchasing/045Closing%2C_Reopening%2C_and_Relinking_PO_Lines#Relinking_PO_LinesSo what we want is the ability…
13 votes -
Stop POL lines closing from Receiving?
Currently when receiving an item back ordered item (ordered 4 but received 1) the process is you receive just the one and the invoice just the one item. But when the other 3 items have been received Alma is closing the POL once they have been received? This is causing issues as the Supervisor must then delete the invoice and unreceive the item and start again. After checking all the learning material and ex-Libris/Alma videos there is no way for a person to be doing this and the Pals from the area have even watched the whole process and it…
8 votes -
Copy subscription date range
When adding an invoice line for a POL which has subscription date it would be useful if there was an option to copy the POL Subscription dates to the ‘Subscription Dates Range’ in the invoice line rather than having to enter it. Especially if there are multiple invoice lines it would speed up entering the data and avoid errors.
21 votes -
Add the ability to upload EDI files from FTP sites manually
Currently, Alma will only allow you to manually upload an EDI invoice file from a local folder. If you map an FTP site shortcut to your desktop and attempt to manually upload the EDI invoice file from that location, it will say there is an error. I have confimed that Alma does not currently support manual EDI invoice file uploading from ftp sites, only when you configure it to run automatically.
Import profiles support both processes, so it seems like this area of Alma should support both manual and automatic uploads from FTP sites as well.
10 votes -
Ability to add notes to invoice lines from invoices that are paid and closed
We are aware that one can edit notes on an invoice that is already paid and closed. However, for subscriptions, journals and continuations we often have the need to add/edit notes on the invoice lines of invoices that are already closed and paid. Manually putting the invoice back in Review to edit / add notes to the invoice lines doesn't solve the problem as this makes the payment information disappear which we then have to re-enter.
We require the ability to add notes to invoice lines from invoices that were already paid and closed without having to re-open the invoice.
24 votes -
Improve performance of Usage areas in Alma
The Usage sections of Alma are extremely slow. Please improve the overall performance of the Usage Data Loader, and especially the Missing Data Tab (which can take multiple minutes to load). Also, create a Usage search option in the general Alma search for such things as:
File Name
Vendor
Sushi Account
Upload Date
Uploading user
Subscriber
Status
Report type
Data Start Date
Data End Date
Vendor URLWe don't always want to use Analytics to find the answer to a simple question.
19 votes -
Fiscal Period Rollover - Move Cash Balance forward to new period
The latest release of Alma added functionality to the Fiscal period rollover that offers an option to Allocate new funds based on the Cash Balance of the same fund in the closing Fiscal period. We’ve been testing this out and it seems while the cash balance is indeed allocated to the new period, it is also left on the old period!
This means the same money is being reported and allocated twice on Alma, which leaves great scope for confusion and I believe is contrary to good accounting practice.
I believe this enhancement needs a further tweak, to allocate the…
44 votes -
Search more than one POL at a time
The new feature of the october 2018 release made it possible to receive several POLs at once by selecting the desired POLs. We usually have a very large number of POLs and can't filter them by any more details. That makes finding the wanted POLs difficult.
We would like to be able to search for more than one POL at that point.32 votes -
don't mark zero usage SUSHI reports as invalid
When SUSHI harvests a report that has no usage for the selected dates, it is labeled as invalid. This is misleading. As long as all the correct headings for the report are in place, the report should be considered valid.
9 votes -
Improve po_line_remove_interested_users_job
The po_line_remove_interested_users job allows institutions to delete Interested Users from PO lines that have closed. However, there are many times when a PO line is closed before the item has left the department; consequently, running the po_line_remove_interested_users job means that interested users may be deleted before the item becomes available. Additionally, while the job removes the Interested Users from Alma, it does not remove the information from Analytics.
We request that:
A. Institutions have the ability to set a delay on the job based on the date the PO line was closed. (E.g., the job runs weekly, but only deletes…5 votes -
The pre-check function during creating an invoice
A customer needs a pre-check function during creating an invoice line, if the vendor of the selected PO line is different with the invoice line's, Alma should notify the user. So it could save time than verify it during the save stage.
2 votes
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