Creating an Accession
The end-to-end walkthrough for creating a new accession. The wizard is six steps — most of them are quick.
Before you start
- Have your files ready (on your computer or accessible via the browser).
- Have a one-line description in mind ("Correspondence and manuscripts from the Shaftesbury Estate, 1956–1967"). Optional but materially improves AI accuracy.
- Check the Items this month card on your Dashboard — make sure you have quota remaining.
Step 1 — Describe Collection
Click New Accession in the top bar. The first step is Describe Your Collection.
Things on this screen:
- Accession number (pre-filled). The platform suggests the next number in your organisation's sequence (e.g. "2026/001" for yearly numbering, or "ACC-042" for continuous numbering). You can clear it or edit it for back-cataloguing — manual numbers don't advance the automatic counter. Configure your numbering format in Settings → Numbering.
- Description (optional textarea). Anything you write here is passed to the AI as orientation. Put down what the collection actually is — period, provenance, subject matter. As you type, the platform shows fund suggestions below the description — quick proposals for where this accession might belong in your hierarchy. These are instant AI-free suggestions based on your existing fund metadata; click one to auto-assign it, or ignore them and assign manually later.
- What's in your accession? — pick a collection type:
- Mixed — several types, let the AI auto-detect each file (this is pre-selected by default)
- Documents — letters, reports, manuscripts, scans
- Photographs — prints, negatives, digital photos
- Artefacts & Objects — physical objects photographed for the record
- Audio — oral histories, recordings, interviews
- Video — film, video tape transfers, born-digital video
Mixed is recommended for accessions with multiple file types — the AI auto-detects each file's category, ensuring that photos-of-text get OCR, for example. If you pick a single type, per-file auto-categorisation is skipped (though you can still override any file individually in Step 3).
The collapsible Professional archival context drawer lets you set archival metadata that applies to the whole batch:
- Repository name — your institution's name (used in exports and finding aids)
- Finding-aid notes — internal notes about this accession (visible to archivists, not to the public)
- Rights statement — rights and restrictions (e.g. "Public Domain", "Copyright Restricted", "In Copyright") that apply to all items unless overridden per-item
- Acquisition method — how the material came in: Donation, Deposit, Bequest, Purchase, Transfer, or Unknown
- Donor / provenance — the person or institution the material came from
Click Next.
Step 2 — Upload Files
Drag from your file manager, or click Browse files. Uploads run in parallel and the page tells you what's done, in flight, and waiting.
Limits by plan:
| Plan | Files per accession | Max file size (doc / image / audio / video) |
|---|---|---|
| Community | 10 | 10 MB / 10 MB / — / — |
| Professional | 25 | 50 MB / 500 MB / 500 MB / 2 GB |
| Team | 75 | 50 MB / 500 MB / 500 MB / 2 GB |
| Enterprise | Unlimited | Unlimited |
See Uploading Files for supported formats per category.
Files on the Community (free) plan are automatically deleted after 28 days. Upgrade to keep your archive permanently.
Step 3 — Review Classifications
Once processing finishes, every item gets a metadata record. The review screen lets you check and correct what the AI inferred.
What you can do here:
- Switch between list and table view (icons at top left)
- Filter by All or Flagged — see only what needs attention
- Expand a row to view and edit every field in that item's schema
- Accept by category — bulk-approve one category at a time
- Play audio and video inline (the speaker / play icon on media rows)
See Reviewing Classifications for the detail.
Step 4 — Custom Fields
If your organisation has defined extra fields in Settings → Data Model (donor reference, internal accession number, box location, anything else), the wizard surfaces them here so you can fill them in once. Skip if there's nothing relevant.
Step 5 — Processing
Background processing runs OCR, transcription, classification, and authority resolution. You can close the tab; you'll see the in-progress accession on your Dashboard and can come back to it.
For mixed accessions on Professional+, a video item counts as 3 items against your monthly quota.
Step 6 — Results & Export
You're done. The accession status flips to Complete and the Results page shows:
- A preview of the catalogue record
- Quick-export buttons — PDF Report, BagIt, EAD3 XML, AtoM CSV, ArchivesSpace CSV, Archivematica CSV, plus the Other formats drawer
You can re-export at any time from the accession page.
What to do next
- Link a depositor. On the accession page, find the Depositor panel and click Link or create a depositor to record who this material came from. See Creating and linking depositors.
- Assign it to a Fond. On the accession page, click the Unassigned dropdown under the title to place the accession in your archival hierarchy. See Assigning accessions.
- Review linked authorities. Switch to the Authorities tab to verify subjects, people, places, and organisations resolved to the right LCSH / FAST / Getty / VIAF / GeoNames records (Professional+ plans).
- Run Collection Analysis. Under the Analysis tab, click Analyse Collection for a top-down summary and proposed arrangement (Professional+ plans).