EFTS: It’s All That and a Bag of Chips!

References: 1. https://efts.uchc.edu/efts/Common/index.aspx

2. Lewis, Jacqueline. The DOCLINE Electronic Funds Transfer System (EFTS). Journal of Interlibrary Loan, Document Delivery & Electronic Reserve 17(3) 2007.

EFTS: All That and a Bag of Chips or The Best Thing Since Sliced Bread

Stephanie Griffin, Michael Campbell, Melanie Norton Interlibrary Loan and Document Delivery Department

Health Sciences Library - University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC

Invoicing other libraries:

Using the ILLiad Client and the ILLiad Billing Manager, we looked at the number of invoices sent to other libraries, 2002-2007.

2002: 582 (Library was under renovation)2003: 15242004: 33362005: 11722006: 15762007: 1254 (Jan-Aug)

How jobs have changed:

Before:Administrative Assistant, printed, verified, mailed or scanned invoices. Time: About 40 hours a month.

Now:Administrative Assistant is taking on additional administrative jobs.

The Interlibrary Loan Borrowing Specialist now generates the monthly EFTS report as well as the invoices. Time: About 8 hours a month.

It’s a Piece of Cake!

• No charge from EFTS for Borrowing transactions.• A small 3% fee on Lending transactions, which

is a lot less than sending out invoices.• No waiting for invoices to arrive.• No lost paper invoices.• If an EFTS library mistakenly gets an invoice, the charges can be manually billed through EFTS in a matter of a minute.

• In the time it takes to fold one invoice and put in into an envelope to mail, we can begin and complete our entire EFTS billing. It

is fast, PAPERLESS and environmentally friendly.

• EFTS membership increases every month resulting in decrease check cutting, postage, and processing fees.

•EFTS saves everyone paper, time and MONEY! Is using EFTS to pay for and to bill for

Docline transactions financially worth it? We looked at 5 years (2002-2007) worth of invoicing statistics, job duties and workflow. The first year evaluated (2002) is prior to using EFTS and the last 4 years will include EFTS transactions. We also looked at job descriptions and how they have changed.

EFTS is similar to OCLC’s IFM.• No invoices are sent.• No checks are mailed. • Funds are transferred from one library’s

account to another. • For academic medical libraries, refunds

are often given due to the large amount of lending as opposed to borrowing.

INTRODUCTION

EFTS: Lending and Borrowing CONCLUSIONSElectronic Fund Transfer System (EFTS) was developed and implemented on a regional basis in 1996 at the University of Connecticut Health Center in Farmington. In August 2007, there were 1,191 EFTS participants from all 50 states, Canada and Mexico1. In June 2003, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Health Sciences Library started using EFTS at the encouragement of the National Library of Medicine and the Medical Library Association. There is a 3% fee on each transaction which is one of the reasons UNC-HSL was hesitant to join.

ABSTRACT

HSL Payments by Check

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Invoices from other libraries:

Since we joined EFTS, there has been a significant decrease in the number of invoices we receive from other libraries. This saves staff time and approximately $30.00 per check processed2.

2002: 563 invoices processed2003: 515 invoices processed2004: 258 invoices processed2005: 127 Invoices processed2006: 68 invoices processed2007: 40 invoices processed (Jan-August)

Using the ILLiad Billing Manager and EFTS statistics, we looked at the number of libraries we billed through EFTS, 2002-2007. (EFTS bills per transaction, but for our purposes we are looking at the number of libraries billed instead of the transactions).

2002: 02003: 80 (partial year)2004: 298 (first full year)2005: 4092006: 4182007: 409 (Jan-Aug)

From 2004 to 2006 there was an increase of EFTS billing of 40%.

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