Vendor Exchange Rates (Hannah King) ANN ERCELAWN 20 Oct 1993 03:06 UTC
Date: 19 Oct 1993 17:45:21 -0500 From: Hannah King <KINGH@SNYSYRV1.BITNET> Subject: Continuing saga of the exchange rate mystery I am hoping that my collegues can explain away some of my headaches with paying serials invoices. I think I am driving my vendors crazy, and I want to make sure that I'm not doing so unreasonably. I am adding subscription rate and publisher data to our in-house database and I am confronting problems in finding the correct price for a title. If my cover price, which is what we are using and comparing to our invoiced price, is in foreign currency, I need the exchange rate to figure out the publishers actual price. The exchange rate depends on the date of the order according to publishers I spoke to last year. This year I am being told that the exchange rate assessed is the one in effect at the time my order is paid. Vendors are unable to tell me exactly when they paid my order. (Of course, I argue that the exchange rate in effect at the time I order should be the exchange rate used to calculate the subscription price.) Can the rest of you tell me how you calculate the correct price of titles that have a fluctuating exchange rate? And how many demand that their vendors identify the exchange rate used at the time orders are placed? How many accept the premise that the exchange rate should be based on whenever the vendors send in payment? Hypothetically, even if a publisher stated that they had no record of either order or check, if a vendor said they sent the check and the publisher must have lost it, we would be charged the rate in effect at the time the publisher was actually paid. The basic question is: how can we verify we are being charged the correct price for titles priced in foreign currency if we can only verify the price in foreign currency? If we cannot verify the accuracy of the exchange rates, how can we verify the accuracy of our invoices? Today, if one of the state auditors comes to audit my close to a half million dollar expenditure on serials, and asks me how I know I being charged the correct price, all I can say is: my vendor said so and I trust my vendors. I really don't feel real comfortable looking naive. Hannah King SUNY HSC Library at Syracuse kingh@snysyrv1 kingh@vax.cs.hscsyr.edu