Sub Payment Adjustment

Subscription payment adjustment codes are used for non-subscription related money. An example of an adjustment is a payment from a subscriber which includes money for a “frequent reader card” (providing discounts at local merchants). The payment for the “frequent reader card” does not relate to the subscription or adjust the subscription term, so it is entered with an adjustment code.

Adjustment codes may also be used with non-payment adjustments to subscriptions. For example, if a customer complains that the paper was not delivered all week, you could extend the expire date by a week. This would not involve a payment but would affect the subscription, so you would use an adjust code.

More examples of how different subscriber payment adjustment codes should be set up are given on Payment Adjustment Examples. See the User Manual for more information about how adjustments are entered.

To set up a subscriber payment adjustment code:

1. In character Circulation, select Sub Payment Adjust from the General Ledger menu to display the Sub Adjust Code Setup screen.

   
2. Select Add and complete the following fields.

   Field	Type	What to enter
   SUBSCRIPTION ADJUST CODE	open (8)	Enter a subscription adjustment code, such as “cup”.
   DESCRIPTION	open (30)	Enter a description of this adjustment code.
   UPDATE WALLET	yes/no	Indicate if this adjustment code is used to update the subscriber’s premium day wallet. Note that adjustment codes that update the wallet can only be used for importing adjustments for premium days via Subscriber Lockbox Processing, and cannot be selected when entering manual payment adjustments. See the User Manual for more information.
   UPDATE EXPIRE	yes/no	Indicate if this adjustment code should update the subscriber’s expiration date.
   CASH ADJUSTMENT	yes/no	Indicate if this adjustment code is a cash adjustment (such as a check for an umbrella).
   REFUNDABLE	yes/no	Non-cash adjustments may or may not be refundable. For example, if a subscriber receives a 1.00 non-cash adjustment because of poor service, then stops and asks for a refund, the newspaper may not want to include the 1.00 in the refund. If Cash Adjustment is set to “n”, indicate whether this subscription adjust code is refundable.
   INCLUDE TAX ON REFUND	yes/no	When a subscription payment adjustment is made with an adjustment code for which this field is set to “yes,” the tax amount for the adjustment will be included in the Balance fields in Customer Service. When the subscription is perm stopped, the tax amount will be included in the refund amount.
   DEBIT GL ACCOUNT	setup	Enter the general ledger account to which the adjustment should be debited.
   CREDIT GL ACCOUNT	setup	Enter the general ledger account to which the adjustment should be credited. The general ledger account numbers must have been previously defined. See Chart of Accounts for details.
   PRINT ON RENEWAL	yes/no	Indicate if this adjustment should be printed with the expire change detail on the subscriber renewal notice. This is applicable only if your renewal notice format is “export” (as defined in Business Rules).
   RENEWAL DESCRIPTION	open (30)	If the adjustment will be printed on the renewal notice, enter a description that should appear with it on the notice.
   IS TAXABLE?	yes/no	Indicate whether the adjustment code is to be taxed. The default value is set to n(o).
   ENTER ON WEB, WEB DESCRIPTION, WEB DETAILS URL	yes/no open (30) unlimited	If Enter on Web is “y”, Web Description and Web Details URL open for entry. These fields are currently not used, but will be utilized in iServices in a future release.

3. If the Print on Renewal settings for this subscription adjustment code differ among publications, select Specifics | Sub Payment Adjust Info and enter Print on Renewal settings and descriptions for specific publications. Note: If you are going to add this specific, then you must add it for each product for which the subscription adjust code is valid. If no Specifics records are added, then the subscription adjustment code is automatically valid for all products.

4. Select Accept to enter the code into the database.

5. Set up more subscriber adjustment codes, or press F4 and select Exit to return to the Setup menu.

Payment Adjustment Examples

Below are the most common scenarios in which subscriber payment adjustment that are used.

Merchandise/Donations

Money is accepted as a donation or to buy a merchandise item from the newspaper.

• Update Expire = n, since it is not purchasing days on the subscription

• Cash Adjustment = y, since it is actual cash in hand.

• Refundable = y, because it is money you could potentially give back to the customer for a return or if they demanded it back for poor service.

• Debit GL is left blank here. Because it is cash, the GL that will be debited will be the one used in Bank setup, based on the bank used when entering the subscriber payment adjustment.

• Credit GL should be the account used to track the merchandise or donations.

Make Good, Adjusting Subscriber Accounts, Advertising Correction or Balance Adjustment

There is a need to change the balance/expire date on an account (increase or decrease) due to some incorrect activity or non-standard complaint.

• Update Expire = y, as the subscription expire date is being adjusted.

• Cash Adjustment = n, as there has been no cash received.

• Refundable = y, because you are adjusting the subscriber’s balance.

• Debit GL should be a payment adjustment reversal account.

• Credit GL should always be the unearned revenue GL account, because you are impacting liability.

Note: If you enter the subscriber payment adjustment as a negative dollar amount, the system will automatically reverse the flow of the GL to debit unearned revenue and credit the reversal account.

Non-refundable adjustments

There are circumstances when you may want to adjust the subscriber's expire date, but have not received a payment and therefore would not want to impact unearned revenue (liability).

• Update Expire = y, as the subscription expire date is being adjusted.

• Cash Adjustment = n, as there has been no cash received for the adjustment.

• Refundable = n, as a payment has not been received for the subscription.

• Credit GL should be the earned revenue GL account.

• Debit GL is once again a reversal account. When an adjustment is entered, the money is directly shifted between earned revenue GL and the reversal account (or vice-versa when doing a negative adjustment).

Note: Payment adjustments that are non-refundable cannot have unallocated amounts. Therefore if this type of adjustment extends the subscriber’s expire date and there is a certain amount left over that is not enough to buy another day, that amount is not added to the subscriber’s unallocated and does not show up in the subscriber’s balance.