Processing Firm Orders (MARC)

To process firm orders electronically, your organization creates and processes a firm order shipment. The firm order shipment is a file of bibliographic and order record data in MARC format, including order record numbers, that describe the monographs you want to purchase.

For information on EDIFACT invoicing, see Processing Firm Orders (EDIFACT).

Creating Firm Order Shipments

The shipment is created jointly by you and the vendor:

1. Create bibliographic and order records in your database for monographs that you want to purchase:
   
   1. Select Data Exchange from the Function list.
   2. Import a file of records for a firm order. Create a review file during import.

   Bibliographic records and order records with a STATUS of 'o' are created. The EPRICE is encumbered.

2. Send the review file (with order record numbers) to the vendor.
3. The vendor creates a file with invoice data (and possibly item data) linked to the order record numbers, and posts it to a server that you can access. This is the shipment.

Processing Firm Order Shipments

When you retrieve and process the shipment, the system:

• overlays and updates the records in your database
• creates and posts invoices

The system searches retrieved shipments for MARC 935 fields and matches their contents to order record numbers that exist in your database.

When it finds a match, the system:

• overlays the bibliographic record
• adds the order to an invoice

If no match is found, the system adds a stub entry to the invoice; this entry does not have an order record number associated with it and has an action of "Skip". The system does not:

• overlay any bibliographic records
• create a new bibliographic record
• create an order record

To retrieve and process a shipment:

1. Retrieve one or more firm order shipments by using either:
   • FTP
   • Browse
2. Load the firm order records in the shipment.

The system matches records on order record number. The bibliographic records are overlaid, order records are updated, and invoices are created.

3. Process the invoice.

Overlaying the Bibliographic Record for Firm Orders

For firm orders, your organization can have Innovative set up the firm order MARC record load table to overlay the bibliographic record based on the encoding level of the existing and incoming records. Your organization can protect fields in the existing record based on the field group tag and on the MARC tag and indicators.

For approvals, a bibliographic record most likely does not exist on the system. If the system finds a bibliographic record with a matching 001 field, it overlays it. The system creates a bibliographic record if necessary.