Dear Wade,
I had to go back to my copy of the New Museum Registration Methods because I did not remember any mention that you should delay the accessioning process until after a Deed of Gift comes back signed by the donor.  I cannot find this advice and I don't know if you are looking at an older version of Museum Registration Methods that advises this.
We always accession and catalog our artifacts before sending out the Deed of Gift.  This is after it has received approval from both the collections committee (internal) and the acquisitions committee (includes other than staff).  We then use the accession and catalog information to print out the Deed of Gift from our database.
So- I think that the way that Past Perfect is set up is the proper way to carry out this process.
By the way- a Deed of Gift is not really legally necessary.  The three things that must occur for a legal transfer of property are:
1) offer from the donor
2) acceptance by the Museum
3) the physical transfer of the property
Deeds of Gift just document this transaction in a clean and standardized way.
Sincerely,
David Ryan
Registrar
Colorado Springs Museum
www.cspm.org

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