As collections manager and de facto head of TMS in my institution, I'm the one who creates and manipulates all records (with some edits from curators and the registrar in certain areas).

When an object is going to the Collections Advisory Committee, I create a "pre-entry" record (I think this is a term we picked up from our old database, SKINsoft/S-Museum) with the next in our sequence of pre-entry numbers, "TCRXXXX". Generally, if it's going to CAC, there's already been some level of approval - it's an artwork that has already been purchased, or that a curator intends us to accept, or a historical artifact that I'm going to advocate for because it will benefit our collection. (I am the first line of defense with the public and I will often decline on the phone or by email to the initial offer if it's obviously not going to be for us.) Once it's accepted and the deed of gift has been signed and returned, the registrar assigns an accession number, moving the TCR number to an alternate number field for record-keeping purposes. If an object goes to the meeting and get declined, the prefix is changed to "DTCR" (D for declined).

If there are just a few objects, I'll usually create a record for each to save time later, numbering them "TCRXXXX(01)" and so on. This way I can start cataloguing early, and if we do decide to decline one or some of them, they're already separated in the database.

If there are many or I'm low on time, I might do one record for the batch. If there's a long time between acceptance and assignment of a number and I want to get started cataloguing, I might separate them out into individual pre-entry records, but I'm more likely to wait until the number has been assigned and set, and then copy that initial record to create the new ones. If some of the large batch gets declined, we split the main record into .01 and .02 so that one can be accessioned and the other made a DTCR.