Fiscal Period Close

Princeton's Fiscal Year begins annually on July 1 and runs through June 30. After ordering and invoice processing is completed for the fiscal year, a series of Alma utilities are used to close our transactions in the prior fiscal year and create transactions in the new fiscal year. A general overview of these tasks can be found in the Ex Libris Knowledge Center. Table of contents for this page:

1 Rollover process
2 Summary of Rollover Tasks
3 Activities that cannot be performed during rollover

Rollover process

Rollover process is generally defined as the week before the start of the new fiscal period (on July 1). Specific dates are communicated each year through an email to the PULUpdates listserv. Technical tasks include:

Running year-end reports
Final reconciliation of allocations and invoices
Final production rollover tests
Production rollover

Staff will be notified that all work can resume through an email to the PULUpdates listserv.

Summary of Rollover Tasks

For detailed steps followed by the Alma Tech Team, see: Fiscal Period Close Technical

Task Category	Duration (in Days)	Dependencies	Downtime?	Description

Task Category	Duration (in Days)	Dependencies	Downtime?	Description
Rollover test 1	1d		No	This is mainly to refresh the Alma Tech Team on the process of rolling over ledgers and PO Lines
Rollover test 2	1d	Rollover test 1	No	This provides an indication if any lines prior to the last sandbox refresh (in Feb) have errors, and what lines are eligible for rollover.
Rollover test 3	2d	Rollover test 2	No	This allows for more thorough reporting of lines. Through reports, we will be able to detect failed POLs allowing us to identify and resolve problem POLs before the production rollover.
Q4 Soft Close	2d	Rollover test 3	No	Standard quarterly close process
Q4 Soft Close: Internal Invoice Reconciliation	10d	Q4 Soft Close	No	Reconcile Concur transactions and deposit accounts
Final EDI loads	3d		No	Requires 3 days to reconcile electronic invoices
Final invoice processing	2d		No	Resolve as many invoices as possible before deleting unfinished invoices at the end of the fiscal year
Close of current fiscal period	1d	Final invoice processing	Yes	Work touching open PO lines stops and Alma acquisitions functionality is deactivated
Final reconciliation	1d	Close of current fiscal period	Yes	Invoices and allocations in Alma are compared with Prime to correct as many issues in the current fiscal year as possible
Rollover test 4	1d	Close of current fiscal period	Yes	This is to identify any lines expected to roll over that have issues preventing them from being eligible for rollover.
Production rollover	2d	Final reconciliation	Yes	Technical steps of fiscal period close in Alma
Beginning of new fiscal period	1d	Production rollover	No	Re-activating Alma processes related to acquisitions and finance work.
Initial EDI load	2d	Production rollover	No	Catching up on EDI invoices received during downtime
Manual fund allocation loading	33d	Production rollover	No	Ensuring all fund transactions apply to the new fiscal year in Alma, regardless of which fiscal year they occurred in Prime

Activities that cannot be performed during rollover

According to Ex Libris documentation, holdings attached to open PO Lines cannot be modified during rollover. Therefore, the following activities would interfere with the roll over process:

Electronic resources: creating/deleting/activating portfolios attached to open purchase order (PO) lines
Metadata: modifying holdings, location changes attached to open purchase order (PO) lines
Inventory management: receiving items
Acquisitions and Finance: creating/modifying/deleting PO lines, creating/modifying/deleting invoices, receiving items
Work orders: all work order processes on items attached to open PO lines