Acquisitions is the process of acquiring or purchasing new books and other items for your library. Items may be acquired via purchase orders to suppliers or they may be acquired in other ways, e.g., ad hoc purchases or donations.
Acquisitions Management For Your Library
Use of Acquisitions is not required to track expenditure on resources in your library or the value of your collection, but if your library wants to monitor expenditure against set budgets for defined periods of time, then Acquisitions will assist. Your school purchasing policy will determine to extent to which your library uses Acquisitions.
Note: You can choose not to use Acquisitions and just accession or catalogue new items as the are purchased, optionally recording supplier details and associated costs as required, or you can choose to use one or more of the following acquisitions options that best matches your operational scenario to manage your acquisitions.
Acquisitions Options
Prior to creating an order for a supplier you must indicate how the order will be managed and therefore the workflow process it will follow:
- Library Managed - the library will create orders and associated item bibliographic records as required for acquisition in the future, and email selected orders directly to suppliers when ready. The individual cost of each item and its replacement cost will be recorded against each item record. Payment will be independently processed in line with the school's preferred payment policy.
- School Procurement System - the library will create orders and associated item bibliographic records as required for acquisition in the future, and pass them on or direct them to school's procurement service for ongoing procurement and management. The individual cost of each item and its replacement cost will be recorded against each item record. Items will be accessioned upon delivery. Payment will be made in line with the school's procurement payment policy.
- Retrospective Orders - the library will create orders, associated item bibliographic records and cost details for items that have already been acquired as ad hoc or random purchases can be recorded in line with the school's preferred ad hoc purchase policy, e.g., assign purchase cost to an appropriate budget. Note: There is no specific Acquisitions workflow for retrospective or ad hoc purchases.
- Donations - the value or individual cost and replacement cost of donated items can be recorded against each item holdings record in line with your school's preferred donations tracking policy, e.g., one or more Donations budgets. Note: There is no specific Acquisitions workflow for donations.
Note: Options 1-4 above can be used as required.
Manage Orders
- displays all active orders in order number order, starting with the most recent order at the top. An active order is one which is currently in the Order Workflow as Open, Receiving, or Completed. 
- displays all historical orders in order number order, starting with the most recent order number at the top. An historical order is one which has exited the Order Workflow and has not been deleted. 
- for legacy orders. Note: This option will only be visible if you have legacy orders.
- displays all invoices in order number order, starting with the most recent order number at the top. If supplied, invoice details can be recorded if required.
- record invoice details if supplied and required. Note: Invoice details must be recorded prior to cataloguing each copy of a new delivery to ensure the invoice details will be available for each copy.- Filters - use filters as required to locate orders.