Book Budgets – Hanging on to what is yours

Today there was a post on LM_NET from a librarian who lost most of her book budget due to a budget freeze in her district.

Over the years, I have learned how to protect my budget when finances are tight.  My best tips? 

Order virtually all your books from a book jobber such as Baker & Taylor and Follett.

Encumber those funds right away.

How does this help?

It allows me to create a “do not exceed” order that I can submit at my “leisure” because the money has already been encumbered. This means the business office has already set aside the funds, considering that money as already spent.

Here are the steps I follow:

First, I fill out budget requisition forms for book orders to Baker & Taylor (my favorite book jobber).

I typically prepare 3 of this kind of order.  One says: “replacements and updates for outdated books”. The second requisition says: “Non-fiction books to support the curriculum”,  and the third says: “Literature and fiction to support English/Language Arts and Reading”.

Assuming a book budget of $4500, on each of these requisitions I write the following:

Books Not To Exceed $1500

Note to business office: Please do NOT mail in this requisition. Instead, give me the Purchase Order number and I will submit the order electronically.

The requisitions are then sent to the business office in June, along with any other orders we have for supplies or contractual services.

When I receive the PO information in September, I start building my orders at my own pace, submitting the order via the book jobber’s website when I am ready.  Usually the non-fiction orders are sent in October or Nov.,  and the fiction order goes out in February.

By doing this,  I don’t lose my money if there is a budget freeze.  AND – I don’t have to scramble to order everything at once just in case there might be a freeze.

There are SOME things that must be ordered directly from the publisher rather than a jobber – so I do keep a certain amount set aside for those needs. If there is a budget freeze – that is the ONLY money that is vulnerable.

Book Budgets – Hanging on to what is yours

Today there was a post on LM_NET from a librarian who lost most of her book budget due to a budget freeze in her district.

Over the years, I have learned how to protect my budget when finances are tight.

I order virtually all my books from a book jobber such as Baker & Taylor and Follett).

How does this help?

It allows me to create a “do not exceed” order that I can submit at my “leisure” because the money has already been encumbered. This means the business office has already set aside the funds and considers that money as already spent.

Here are the steps I follow:

I fill out a budget requisition for book orders to Baker & Taylor. I typically have 3 a year. One says: “replacements and updates for outdated books”. The second requisition says: “non-fiction books to support the curriculum” and the third says: “Literature and fiction to support English/Language Arts and Reading”. Assuming a book budget of $4500, On each of these requisitions I write the following:

1. Books not to exceed $1500

2. Note to business office: Please do NOT mail in this requisition. Notify me with the Purchase Order number and I will submit the order electronically

I then send these requisitions to the business office in June before the last day of school.

When I recieve the PO information in September, I start building my orders which I submit via the book jobber’s website when I am ready. Usually the non-fiction orders are sent in October or Nov. and the fiction order goes out in February.

This way I don’t lose my money. There are SOME things that must be ordered directly from the publisher rather than a jobber – so I do keep a certain amount set aside for those needs. If there is a budget freeze – that is the ONLY money that is vulnerable.

8 thoughts on “Book Budgets – Hanging on to what is yours

  1. Hi,
    I really like this post as well. Of course, I have some questions.

    We have had budget cuts in our district. Everyone lost 20% of their funding. For me, that equated to one thousand dollars. I am now down to four thousand dollars for both the library and computer budget. We have 530 students. As you can see, this isn’t much, but sadly, it’s the most in the district.

    I am trying to see if your idea would work in my district. We have to close our budget on Aug 31. That means we have to spend all of our budget for the year by then. We get our new budget on Sept 1. I have to leave money in my budget for Battle of the Books titles for the Fall order. We try to get our Battle books from Scholastic Warehouse, but we never know if they will carry the titles. We can use our Book Fair dollars to spend on Battle titles Scholastic offers. The problem is that Scholastic doesn’t seem to carry the titles in a timely fashion for us. We need the titles to launch the Battle program in the fall. We need 3-6 titles of every book–20 titles in all.

    My feeling is that since I left the money in the account, it was thought that I must not have needed it all. I could be wrong, but it just seemed odd. It’s probably just a coincidence since 20% of the Library Media Budget was one thousand dollars. But, if I could get your idea to work for me, I wouldn’t need to worry.

    Do you see your idea working in this budget scenario? If so, I can ask further questions.

    Thanks again for a great post.
    Dana

  2. Our fiscal year is a bit different. It starts in July1 and ends June 30. We have to spend our money usually by March. We would need special permission to spend anything beyond that date. I have always spent mine by Feb. Then I prep some orders in June for the NEXT school year and leave them with the business office to process or encumber in early July, right after the old budget is closed and the new budget is opened. By leaving orders when I leave for the summer, the orders have arrived when I get back to work in September.

    I would think you could do something like this: (Lets suppose you have $4000 as of September 1)

    See if you can leave the orders before you leave for summer vacation, even though they can’t be mailed out on 9-1.

    You first order would be for your “battle of the books” competition. ($1000 total for example)

    With the remaining $3000, you could divide that into 2 or 3 orders to a jobber such as Follett

    You could follow my pattern by sending these 2 or 3 requisitions to the business office, asking them NOT to submit them, but instead notify you with the PO # so you can send the order via computer.

    If you need to keep some money available, you could decide NOT to encumber the whole $3000. Just keep in mind that whatever is not encumbered, might eventually be lost completely.

    Hope this makes sense.

  3. So that’s how you work around a budget freeze! I was wondering because I don’t remember you mentioning anything about your budget being frozen…

    I’m glad to see you’re sharing your wisdom with the blogging community. It’s so helpful to us “newbs” 🙂

  4. I am a soon-to-be MLIS graduate, and just wanted to say I really appreciate you sharing your advice with us newbies!! There is so much to learn that can only come from experience, and it’s great to learn from those who have it!

    Eagerly awaiting more wisdom… =-)

  5. Thank you SO much Deborah. More should be coming some time this weekend. One of my “mentorees” just sent me an interesting question about saving booklists for research projects from year to year.

    NOTE TO OTHER READERS: Please take a look at Deborah’s website. It is AMAZING how she has made use of cutting edge technology to showcase her skills, resume, projects etc. She will really stand out in a crowd when she applies for a position. More on that in a later blog post… If I remember to get to it 🙂

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