Once a year members will submit information to Orbis staff to reconcile accounts and reimburse each other for lost and damaged materials. To avoid separate payments from every member to every other member, Orbis staff will calculate the net difference and inform the members how much is owed to which other members.
Members adopt procedures to assure maintaining accurate records throughout the year.
The policy's schedule of procedures allows approximately three months to clear up problems and for patrons to turn in long overdue materials, avoiding final processing and reporting for reimbursement to the owning library. In some libraries, a large proportion of billed items are returned shortly after the patron receives the bill. By allowing four months between the end of the accounting year and the time of reporting to Orbis, items that were billed near the end of February may be returned and sent through a crediting and clearing process at the patron's library. CRL is not an Orbis member library. The Orbis consortium is a member of CRL and has access to borrow materials from the Center.