Question: Electronic transfer of shipping-cost information

["William H. Walters" <whwalters@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Hello.  I would be grateful for any assistance with the problem noted below. 
(It's a long message, but I have been unable to solve this problem using any of
the documentation supplied by Innopac, and I strongly suspect that there have
been other libraries in our same situation.)

I am wondering if any III users charge shipping costs to a separate shipping
fund AND transmit payment information electronically from Innopac to an outside
accounting system.

Here at St. Lawrence we are implementing a plan to electronically transfer our
payment information (including shipping-cost information) from Innopac to FRS. 
Unfortunately, we have not used Innopac to track shipping costs in the past.  We
would like our shipping payments to be charged to a separate shipping fund, if
possible.

As I see it, there are two options:

(1) Use the shipping-cost line supplied by Innopac when paying invoices.  (This
pro-rates the shipping cost among all the items appearing on the invoice.  It
charges shipping to the regular acquisitions accounts, which is NOT what we want
to do at St. Lawrence.)

(2) Enter shipping payments as y-records.  (This charges shipping to a separate
account, which is what we want.  Unfortunately, y-record information is not
exported by Innopac when we use the Output Payment History to Disk function to
export payment records to FRS.  I see no way to transfer y-record information
from Innopac to FRS.)
 
(3) Enter shipping payments as x-records.  (I believe this charges shipping to a
separate account, which is what we want.  According to the Innopac
documentation, x-record information should appear as a separate line when we
Output Payment History to Disk -- when we export payment information to FRS.  In
practice, however, the x-record information doesn't appear in that file.)

Any assistance would be GREATLY appreciated!

Bill Walters

-- 
William H. Walters, Ph.D.
Collection Development Coordinator
and Acquisitions Librarian
St. Lawrence University
Canton, NY 13617
(315) 229-5331 phone
(315) 229-7447 fax