Line Items, Selection Lists, and Purchase Orders

There are two new Library Settings related to ownership of automatically created items. These settings apply to items created as the result of the Provider Default Number of Copies setting.

At various points in the ordering process, selection lists and purchase orders will display line items with a colored background as a visual shorthand indicating the status of the line item. Those colors are as follows:

The line item status is affected by the status(es) of all items attached to the line item. While items do not have a separate status field per se, they can have implicit statuses such as new, pending, received, or canceled.

When an item is canceled, the parent line item is checked to see if all of its items are now canceled. If so, the line item is canceled. Delayed items represent a special case of canceled items. For more information on canceled and delayed line items, see Canceling or Delaying Line Items, below.

When all items associated with a line item are received, the parent line item is marked received. While items are in a mixed set of statues (e.g., some delayed and some received), the line item status will remain as on order.

A purchase order is marked received once all of its line items are marked either as received, or as canceled with a non-keep-debits reason.

Line items show a large amount of detail about the titles and items that are in various stages of the Acquisitions process. Line items are filterable and sortable. You can perform actions on a single line item, several line items, or all line items. You can also expand the line item display to show details of a single line item or all line items.

For specific selection list actions, see the documentation covering Selection Lists. For specific purchase order actions, see Purchase Order Actions. Below we will describe Line Item Batch Actions that apply to both selection lists and purchase orders.

The screenshot below shows an on-order item in a purchase order.

This line item shows:

Line items will also display cover images, if available, to the left of the line item.

Selection lists can be created in four areas within Acquisitions. Selection lists can be created when you add brief records, use the Load MARC Order Records interface, or find records through MARC Federated Search. In each of these interfaces, you will be able to add records to a new or existing selection list.

Selection lists can also be created through the selection lists search interface:

Once your new selection list is created, you can search for it and retrieve it via the selection lists Search interface.

Cloning selection lists enables you to copy one selection list into a new selection list. The new selection list is independent of the original and each can be changed or even deleted without affecting the other.

You can search for and retrieve the cloned selection list via the selection lists search interface.

You can merge two or more selection lists into one selection list.

You can delete selection lists that you do not want to save. Deleting a selection list also deletes its line items. You will not be able to retrieve these items through Acquisitions Search after you have deleted the selection list.

You can add line items to a selection list in one of several ways:

To add a line item from within a selection list:

After a line item has been added to a selection list or purchase order, you can mark it as Ready for Selector. A selector can then search for line items with the status Selector Ready for review and approval. This step is optional but may be useful to individual workflows, specifically those workflows where a library divides responsibility between the staff member who builds a selection list and the staff member who approves those items and sends them on to a purchase order.

Use the actions menu to send a selection list or its line items to a purchase order.

You can only link selection list line items to one purchase order. If you attempt to create a purchase order from selection list line items that are already part of a purchase order, those line items will be ignored when creating the purchase order and you will see the following warning message in the Create Purchase Order interface:

After you create your purchase order, if you navigate back to your selection list you will see that all line items sent to a purchase order are marked Pending-Order. The selection list will continue to update line items as they move through the Acquisitions process.

You can create a purchase order from a selection list, from the Load MARC Order Records interface, or you can create a new purchase order from scratch.

To create a new purchase order from scratch:

You will be taken to the purchase order interface where you will be able to add line items and take actions with your purchase order.

You can choose to give your purchase order a name. If you don’t give your purchase order a name, the system ID number will be used as the purchase order name.

When creating a purchase order or editing an existing purchase order, the purchase order name must be unique for the ordering agency. Evergreen will display a warning to users if they attempt to create or edit purchase order names that match the names of already existing purchase orders at the same ordering agency.

Purchase order names are case sensitive.

Across the top of your purchase order are several links and actions associated with the purchase order.

Other actions related to purchase orders are accessible via the Actions button. Actions related to purchase orders in this menu include:

All of these actions, except Load Bibs and Items, will be applied to selected line items. You can select one, several, or all line items.

Actions that apply to line items regardless of whether they are in a selection list or purchase order are detailed above, under Line Item Actions.

If you created your purchase order from a selection list or from the Load MARC Order Records interface, your purchase order will already have line item information listed.

To add individual line items from within a purchase order:

You can also add line items to a purchase order from other interfaces:

You can add direct charges to a purchase order. Direct charges are not associated with individual line items, but rather with the purchase order itself. You can add one or several direct charges to a purchase order. If a direct charge is directly linked to an invoice charge, the state of the invoice charge controls how the fund debit is handled.

Direct charges can be created for taxes, shipping fees, handling fees, blanket orders, or other reasons. To create a new direct charge, scroll to the bottom of the purchase order and select New Charge.

Select Save to save your direct charge. Direct charges will appear on an invoice that you create from the purchase order.

You can edit an existing direct charge by selecting Edit, or remove an existing direct charge by selecting Remove. You will not be asked to confirm removing a direct charge, so only select Remove if you are sure you want to remove the direct charge.

There are circumstances where a direct charge will be debited from a different fund than the one originally entered - e.g., prorating a charge can do this; or where the debited amount be different - e.g., proration, or the invoice charge simply having a different amount. The direct charges list now can display that information in the estimated cost column. The amount actually expended will be labeled Amount Expended.

There is a Disencumber Charge button which will be visible under select circumstances:

To see how direct charges are used with blanket orders, see the Blanket Orders documentation.

Typically, for a purchase order to be activated, all line items must have items attached. Line items must have a price and be assigned to a fund. If any of these elements are missing, or if there is another reason the purchase order cannot be activated, the purchase order Status will indicate the reason the purchase order cannot be activated.

NOTE: Line item prices may not be null, but they can be set to zero.

NOTE: If activating the purchase order will cause one of your funds to exceed its warning percentage, you will see a warning in the purchase order Status. If activating the purchase order will cause one of your funds to exceed its stop percentage, you will not be permitted to activate the purchase order.

Note that you can opt to allow a purchase order to be activated without items attached. If you wish to do this, select the checkbox Allow Activation with Zero-Item Line Items?

Once your purchase order is in an activatable state, you will see two options to activate the purchase order: Activate Without Loading Items, and Activate Order.

If you select Activate Without Loading Items, the order will be activated but no on-order items will be loaded into your catalog. Once the purchase order has been activated without loading items, it is not possible to load the items. This feature should only be used in situations where the items have already been added to the catalog, such as:

If you select Activate Order, the purchase order will be activated. Several things will happen when the order is activated:

After you click Activate Order, you will be presented with the record import interface if your purchase order contains items or records that are not already in the catalog. This interface will let you load on-order items and/or records into your catalog, and link these with the purchase order.

Loading parameters include templates, matching options, and quality parameters in the same manner that the regular MARC Batch Import/Export tool uses.

NOTE: This interface will create records and items based on the information already included with the line items. For example, if your line items only contain brief record information, this is what will be loaded into the catalog.

Once you complete entering in the parameters for the record import interface, select Submit. A progress bar will appear and the purchase order screen will refresh when the load is complete.

Marking line items as received indicates that your library has received the physical items ordered. To receive line items, open the purchase order in question. You can select individual line items, all line items in the page, or all line items on the purchase order. Navigate to the Actions button in the upper left of your purchase order and select Mark Selected Line Items as Received.

The screen will refresh and the selected line items will now be in a Received status. If you have alerts on any line items, you will be presented with a confirmation dialog for each alert in your selected line items. If there are multiple alerts, the dialog will show “Alert X of Y” and you must acknowledge each alert to receive the line item(s) associated with the alert(s).

If you have erroneously received line items, you can select the line items in question and then navigate to the Actions button in the upper left of your purchase order and select Un-Receive Selected Line Items. This will return selected items to an On Order status.

Line items may also be marked as Canceled or Delayed. Cancel and delay reasons and parameters are set up in Acquisitions Administration.

To cancel line items or mark them delayed, select one, several, or all line items in the purchase order:

Cancel/delay reasons will appear on the worksheet and the printable purchase order.

Items which are marked canceled or delayed with a reason that has Keep Debits set to true will still have their funds encumbered, and can still be marked received at the line item level.

Items which are marked canceled or delayed with a reason that has Keep Debits set to false will have funds released and cannot be marked received at the line item level, and will further attempt to delete any catalog items associated with the canceled line item. Since deleting items requires the DELETE_COPY permission, the cancel or delay will fail with the ACQ_NOT_CANCELABLE error if the user does not have this permission.

NOTE: Using the Actions → Mark Selected Line Items as Received action will always receive canceled line items, regardless of the cancel reason. If the cancel reason had Keep Debits set to false, the act of receiving said line item will recreate the encumbrance.

NOTE: When all the items of a line item are canceled through the Acquisitions interface, the parent line item is also canceled. The cancel reason will be calculated based on the following:

Claiming lets you apply a claim policy to selected line items. Claiming policies are set up in Acquisitions Administration.

The default claim policy associated with each Provider is automatically assigned to line items and items ordered from the provider, or you can choose to assign another claim policy to a line item.

After you order an item, once the time interval defined by the claim policy has passed, you can claim the item. You can claim items individually by navigating to the Line Item Actions Menu and selecting Claims.

A dialog will open allowing you to initiate a new claim against the line item. Select the item barcode(s) you wish to claim, select the Claim Type, and enter a Claim Note if you wish. Click Claim Selected to mark the selected item(s) as claimed. Click Exit Dialog to exit without claiming the item(s)

Claiming can be done in batch via the Acquisitions → Claim Ready Items interface.

From a purchase order, you have several invoicing options. You can create or link an invoice at any point after your order is placed, whether or not items are received. Open the purchase order and select either Create Invoice to create a new invoice or Link Invoice to link the purchase order to an existing invoice.

To view invoices linked to a purchase order, open a purchase order and select Invoices. The number in parentheses indicates the number of invoices that are attached to the purchase order.

Please see the Invoicing documentation for specific information about invoicing.

You can also add brief records from within an existing selection list.

You can also add brief records to new or existing purchase orders.