Purchase Orders

We use six different purchase order (PO) types. To determine which type of purchase order to use when creating a new order, consider how the purchase will be paid.

Firm Order – For any publication (monograph or continuation) that is for an order that does not have an ongoing payment. These are one-time purchases that will have a one-time cost.

Continuation- For a subscription that is for consecutive issues of a print journal, series of books, or an e-resource product purchased for a specified period of time without the need to order each item individually. For the purposes of order creation, the terms standing order, continuation, and subscription are interchangeable, no matter the format. The words all mean the same: serial.

Approvals – For blanket purchase agreements of one-time purchases, generated through pre-determined profile criteria. Most PO’s with Approval types are electronically loaded into the system at the time of shipping. Manual creation of approval PO’s are done at the point of receipt by the staff who receive the items. 

Depository – One-time order records for payment of deposit to a vendor. Depository type is NOT to be used for the items received on deposit, only for the initial payment to the vendor.   

Exchange – Exchange PO’s cover firm orders and continuations for items paid for but not added to YUL collections, and items received but not paid for per agreements with YUL exchange partnerships. Purchase orders for items received are committed to the Reconciliation ledger and purchase orders for items sent are committed to the Mixed or Self-Support ledgers. The use of the Exchange PO type is a way to easily identify titles covered under the YUL Exchange Program. 

Gift – As a rule, it is not necessary to create a PO for items that we receive for free. However, you will need to create a PO when the gift includes a shipping cost. For gift purchase orders, the PO may contain a zero line item for the cost of the book and the shipping costs should be listed in the PO Amounts section under “other charges”. Zero dollar value line items are permitted in the GiftExchange ledger.