Managing Funds

Funding Sources (Required)

Funding sources allow you to specify the sources that contribute monies to your fund(s). You can create as few or as many funding sources as you need. These can be used to track exact amounts for accounts in your general ledger.

Example funding sources might be:

  • A municipal allocation for your materials budget;
  • A trust fund used for collections;
  • A revolving account that is used to replace lost materials;
  • Grant funds to be used for collections.

Funding sources are not tied to fiscal or calendar years, so you can continue to add money to the same funding source over multiple years, e.g. County Funding. Alternatively, you can name funding sources by year, e.g. County Funding 2010 and County Funding 2011, and apply credits each year to the matching source.

  1. To create a funding source, select Administration → Acquisitions Administration → Funding Sources. Click the New Funding Source button. Give the funding source a name, an owning library, and code. You should also identify the type of currency that is used for the fund.
  2. You must add money to the funding source before you can use it. Click the hyperlinked name of the funding source and then click the Apply Credit button. Add the amount of funds you need to add. The Note field is optional.

Funds (Required)

Funds allow you to allocate credits toward specific purchases. They typically are used to track spending and purchases for specific collections. Some libraries may choose to define very broad funds for their collections (e.g. children’s materials, adult materials) while others may choose to define more specific funds (e.g. adult non-fiction DVDs for BR1).

If your library does not wish to track fund accounting, you can create one large generic fund and use that fund for all of your purchases.

  1. To create a fund, select Administration → Acquisitions Administration → Funds. Click the New Fund button. Give the fund a name and code.
  2. The Year can either be the fiscal or calendar year for the fund.
  3. If you are a multi-branch library that will be ordering titles for multiple branches, you should select the system as the owning Org Unit, even if this fund will only be used for collections at a specific branch. If you are a one-branch library or if your branches do their own ordering, you can select the branch as the owning Org Unit.
  4. Select the Currency Type that will be used for this fund.
  5. You must select the Active checkbox to use the fund.
  6. Enter a Balance Stop Percent. The balance stop percent prevents you from making purchases when only a specified amount of the fund remains. For example, if you want to spend 95 percent of your funds, leaving a five percent balance in the fund, then you would enter 95 in the field. When the fund reaches its balance stop percent, it will appear in red when you apply funds to copies.
  7. Enter a Balance Warning Percent. The balance warning percent gives you a warning that the fund is low. You can specify any percent. For example, if you want to spend 90 percent of your funds and be warned when the fund has only 10 percent of its balance remaining, then enter 90 in the field. When the fund reaches its balance warning percent, it will appear in yellow when you apply funds to copies.
  8. Check the Propagate box to propagate funds. When you propagate a fund, the system will create a new fund for the following fiscal year with the same parameters as your current fund. All of the settings transfer except for the year and the amount of money in the fund. Propagation occurs during the fiscal year close-out operation.
  9. Check the Rollover box if you want to roll over remaining encumbrances and funds into the same fund next year. If you need the ability to roll over encumbrances without rolling over funds, go to the Library Settings Editor (Administration → Local Administration → Library Settings Editor) and set Allow funds to be rolled over without bringing the money along to True.
  10. You must add money to the fund before you can begin using it. Click the hyperlinked name of the fund. Click the Create Allocation button. Select a Funding Source from which the allocation will be drawn and then enter an amount for the allocation. The Note field is optional.

Fund Tags (Optional)

You can apply tags to funds so that you can group funds for easy reporting. For example, you have three funds for children’s materials: Children’s Board Books, Children’s DVDs, and Children’s CDs. Assign a fund tag of children’s to each fund. When you need to report on the amount that has been spent on all children’s materials, you can run a report on the fund tag to find total expenditures on children’s materials rather than reporting on each individual fund.

  1. To create a fund tag, select Administration → Acquisitions Administration → Fund Tags. Click the New Fund Tag button. Select a owning library and add the name for the fund tag.
  2. To apply a fund tag to a fund, select Administration → Acquisitions Administration → Funds. Click on the hyperlinked name for the fund. Click the Tags tab and then click the Add Tag button. Select the tag from the dropdown menu.

For convenience when propagating or rolling over a fund for a new fiscal year, fund tags will be copied from the current fund to the new year’s fund.