# Creating a manual package

Most packages in Transfers come from a transcript. But sometimes there isn't one — you're encoding a published articulation agreement, evaluating a single course someone called about, or building out a reference package for a partner institution you work with often. For those cases, you create the package by hand.

This page covers when to choose the Manual path and what's different about working in a manually-created package.

***

## When to use the Manual path

Pick Manual when any of the following is true:

* **There's no transcript involved.** Someone called or emailed asking about a specific course, or you're working from a printed articulation agreement.
* **You only need one institution.** The package will be evaluating coursework from exactly one school; there's no transcript with mixed credit to untangle.
* **You're starting from a course list, not a student.** For example, encoding *"every course in Belmont's general-education core, mapped to our equivalents"* as a reference package.

If you have a real transcript, use [Importing a transcript](/working-with-packages/importing-a-transcript.md) instead. Even a partial or messy transcript gives Mapademics more to work with than starting from scratch.

***

## Creating the package

1. Open **Transfer Packages** in the sidebar and click **+ Create Package**.
2. In the dialog, click the **Manual** tab.
3. Fill in:
   * **Package Name** (required) — anything that will help you find this later. Patterns teams use: *Fall 2024 Articulation — Bryan College-Dayton*, *PSY 101 inquiry — anonymous*, *Belmont gen-ed reference*.
   * **Description** (optional) — any context you want to remember about why this package exists.
   * **External ID** (optional) — *"Optional — reference from your registrar / SIS."* Free-form identifier for tying this package back to an upstream record in your own systems. See [External ID](/working-with-packages/the-package-page.md#external-id) for the full story; editable later from the basic-info popover.
   * **Transferring Institution** (required) — search for the sending institution by name.
4. Click **Create Package**.

The package opens immediately on the **Course Equivalencies** tab with an empty course list.

***

## What's different about a manual package

A few things behave differently compared to a transcript-based package.

### Only one institution

A manual package has exactly one transferring institution — the one you picked when you created it. There's no concept of mixed credit from multiple schools, because there's no transcript to detect those from. If you need to evaluate credit from two different schools for the same student, create two manual packages.

### There's no Transcript Review tab

On a manual package the **Transcript Review** tab doesn't appear at all — only **Course Equivalencies** and **Report**. There's no transcript to review, so the tab is hidden entirely.

### Transcript Research may still happen

Even though there's no transcript, Mapademics still needs the transferring institution's catalog to score equivalency candidates. If we don't have it yet, the package will sit in **Transcript Research** stage while we fetch it. You'll see the *Researching X%* progress bar on the package card on the Home page. This is automatic and the same as on transcript-based packages — wait for it to finish, or pick up other work.

### You add the courses yourself

On a transcript-based package, courses come from the transcript. On a manual package, you click **+ Add Courses** at the top right of the **Course Equivalencies** tab and search the transferring institution's catalog. Pick the courses you want to evaluate; they appear in the table.

From there, the workflow is identical to a transcript-based package's Course Matching stage: review the suggested candidates, pin the right one, repeat.

See [Matching course equivalencies](/working-with-packages/course-equivalencies.md).

***

## Next steps

* [Matching course equivalencies](/working-with-packages/course-equivalencies.md)
* [The package page](/working-with-packages/the-package-page.md)
* [How a package flows](/working-with-packages/how-a-package-flows.md)


---

# Agent Instructions: Querying This Documentation

If you need additional information that is not directly available in this page, you can query the documentation dynamically by asking a question.

Perform an HTTP GET request on the current page URL with the `ask` query parameter:

```
GET https://transfers-docs.mapademics.com/working-with-packages/creating-a-manual-package.md?ask=<question>
```

The question should be specific, self-contained, and written in natural language.
The response will contain a direct answer to the question and relevant excerpts and sources from the documentation.

Use this mechanism when the answer is not explicitly present in the current page, you need clarification or additional context, or you want to retrieve related documentation sections.