Having been quite insistent for years that ye shall not crucify man on a cross of a university's retained income, Mr. Henderson now offers his beefs about the accounting profession, in whose contemporary practices Max Weber (d. 1920) is well-versed.

 I find all of this discussion quite peculiar.  I had some (very limited) training in accounting years ago and it was my understandable that payables and receivables were booked according to the date of issue of the invoice.  We generally receive two notable invoices from our agents - a one line invoice for our bloc prepayment and a proforma invoice on which the charges are distributed to each of our subscriptions.  Both invoices are issued within the boundaries of the same fiscal year, so we have one set of charges per year.  I am not sure how EBSCO or Harrassowitz would react if we requested the master invoice be issued in two installments, and I cannot figure how the state-of-the-world for your accounting apparat would be improved by this.  Did they explain themselves at all???

 I do not think it would add a whole lot to the labor of maintaining our journal-and-ledger (as the master invoice is an electronic data file injected into the system), but it might add a good deal to the labor involved in extracting bookkeeping data from our system for the preparation of internal memoranda.    It is difficult enough at the present time, with a fall invoice and subscriptions that run the calendar year, to get all three parties agreed on what the start date actually is.  Payment by installments would make that problem a good deal worse.

IW

I.  Woodward
Serials Office
Colgate University Libraries
Case Library and Geyer Center for Information Technology
13 Oak Drive
Hamilton, N.Y. 13346
Ph.:   315-228-7306
Fax:   315-228-7029

-----Original Message-----
From: SERIALST: Serials in Libraries Discussion Forum [mailto:SERIALST@list.uvm.edu] On Behalf Of ALBERT HENDERSON
Sent: Tuesday, August 26, 2008 7:06 PM
To: SERIALST@LIST.UVM.EDU
Subject: Re: [SERIALST] subscriptions: fiscal year vs. calendar year accounting issues

Here is an excellent example of the administrative excess that Max Weber described in Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft (translated as Economy and Society). By making the accounting system a jumble of jargon and redundancy, the back office trolls not only keep their jobs -- they get to put their relatives on the payroll to keep up with the extra work.

Newt Gingrich, Al Gore, and many others cried for years about this sort of waste. Unfortunately, no one outside of private business has been able to stop it.

I suggest you tell your accountants to handle the figures any way they want as long as they don't force you into more wasted labor, such as quarterly or monthly payments.

Best wishes,

Sincerely,

Albert Henderson

-------------Forwarded Message-----------------

From:   "SERIALST: Serials in Libraries Discussion Forum", INTERNET:SERIALST@LIST.UVM.EDU
To:     [unknown], INTERNET:SERIALST@LIST.UVM.EDU

Date:   8/26/2008  3:27 PM

RE:     Re: [SERIALST] subscriptions: fiscal year vs. calendar year accounting issues

At one university where I used to work, we were asked to do the same kind of fy accounting though our fy began in July.  But it was just that, an accounting maneuver.  We paid as usual in (in Sept or Oct) but we had to turn in some paperwork that showed that in fy 99 (for example) we paid 1/2 of the 08 cost and 1/2 of the 09 cost.  We didn't keep two sets of books.  We just looked at our online records and figured the cost.

And we ignored (though we probably shouldn't have) those titles whose subscription period was Sept-Aug or some other non-calendar year basis.

It didn't affect WHAT or WHEN we paid, just some extra paperwork.

Note that this was some time ago so don't ask me the details on how we did it.  We may have just taken the total amount paid for subscriptions for the year and split it and not worried about a title by title basis.
We did talk with the Accountants and they approved of the method.

You need to find out exactly what they are asking for before you panic!

JoAnne Deeken
University of Tennessee Libraries
-----Original Message-----
From: SERIALST: Serials in Libraries Discussion Forum [mailto:SERIALST@LIST.UVM.EDU] On Behalf Of Ginanni, Katy
Sent: Tuesday, August 26, 2008 12:39 PM
To: SERIALST@LIST.UVM.EDU
Subject: Re: [SERIALST] subscriptions: fiscal year vs. calendar year accounting issues

Hi Teri,

Do you mean that your accounting department will want to pay for part of the subscriptions in one part of the year, and another payment later?
If that's the case, you might consider asking your subscription vendor to go with you to visit your accounting office, and try to educate them on the realities of purchasing serials. The industry standard is that publishers (most of them, anyway) require full payment in advance of delivery.  Most publishers will not allow partial payment.  And if your subscription vendor allows you to do that, that means they would probably pay the publisher up front and then have to charge you some sort of "carrying charge" on the balance you owe them.  So, making partial payments would have a negative financial implication for your accounting department/university.

I advise that you do NOT attempt getting your subscriptions to coincide with your fiscal year.  For one thing, some publishers simply will not allow it.  Some insist that your order begin with the first issue of a volume.  And so many volumes begin at the start of the calendar year.
(One exception is many education-related journals and magazines, which often begin volumes at the start of the school year, in Aug. or Sep.)

I predict that claiming missing issues would also be a problem if you order split volumes during the year.

In short, you need to do whatever you can to get your accounting department to make an exception for you!

Good luck!

Katy G.

Katy Ginanni
E-Access and Serials Librarian
Coates Library, Trinity University
San Antonio, TX 78212-7200
210-999-7613 ph.
210-999-8182 fax
katy.ginanni@trinity.edu
"We need magic, and bliss, and power, myth, and celebration and religion in our lives, and music is a good way to encapsulate a lot of it."
--Jerome John Garcia, 8/1/42-8/9/95

-----Original Message-----
From: SERIALST: Serials in Libraries Discussion Forum [mailto:SERIALST@list.uvm.edu] On Behalf Of Teri Koch
Sent: Tuesday, August 26, 2008 8:57 AM
To: SERIALST@LIST.UVM.EDU
Subject: [SERIALST] subscriptions: fiscal year vs. calendar year accounting issues

Hello,

I am writing to find out how other institutions assign costs for journal and/or database subscriptions for accounting purposes.  Most of our journal subscriptions are on a calendar year basis, but our fiscal year runs June 1-May 31.  Just recently our Accounting Department has decided to begin splitting the charges between fiscal years.  That is, the cost for a calendar year subscription would be assigned 5/12ths (Jan-May) to one fiscal year; and the other 7/12ths
(June-Dec) to the next fiscal year. This is going to require that we keep two sets of books for each title/database, one for the current fiscal year, and one the upcoming fiscal year.  This seems like a nightmarish amount of paperwork/trouble.

How do other institutions handle subscriptions for accounting purposes?  I suppose one alternative is to attempt to get all subscriptions to coincide with our fiscal year.  Do others do that?

Any insights into how your institutions handle this and/or advice would be appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

Regards--

Teri Koch
Collection Development Librarian
Drake University
Cowles Library
2725 University Ave.
Des Moines, IA  50311

teri.koch@drake.edu  (e-mail)