Subscriber Acctg

1. Should “GraceOwed” transactions be created for subscribers who receive papers in their grace period? BCP (Client) It may be desirable to track the number of papers subscribers receive during their grace period so that number may be subtracted from the number of papers the subscriber will receive in the future for the renewal amount remitted. This option determines whether grace owed transactions are created for subscribers who receive papers during their grace period, but for which the newspaper has not been paid. Grace owed transactions are only created when the grace period ends without a payment being received from the subscriber.

If Yes:

• 2. What is the minimum grace receivable amount before a bill should be generated for the receivable amount? BCP (Client) Circulation has a feature to export grace owed information to an ASCII file. The file can be imported into another application and used to create subscriber bills for grace owed amounts. This setting governs the minimum amount of grace that should be included in the file. Subscribers whose grace owed is below this amount will not be included. The default is zero.

3. How many days must pass between grace owed exports before a subscriber can be included in another grace export run? BCP (Client) Grace owed can be exported until is fully written off or paid off. Enter the number of days between grace exports in which a subscriber can be included. The default is zero.

4. What is the maximum variance from the calculated amount that an operator may enter for the refund paid? BCP (Client) A subscription refund may be issued to a subscriber who stops before the end of the subscription term. The calculated refund amount will be based on the number of issues remaining in the subscription term, but the operator may need to manually override the refund amount, as in the case of a “full money back” promotion. You may wish to limit the amount of variance allowed in such situations by establishing a maximum variance amount here. Enter the maximum variance allowed (in dollars) between the calculated amount and the override amount. The default value is 99999.99.

5. What is the number of days a subscriber refund should be maintained as available? BCP (Client) A subscriber that perm stops with a positive balance will have an available refund. However, the subscriber might not ask for a refund, and so a refund may not be entered. After a certain period of time, the newspaper may then write off the available refund. Refunds can be written off automatically using Refund Writeoff. This setting determines how many days an available refund must be kept before it can be written off by Refund Writeoff. For example, if “100” is entered here, an available refund will not be written off automatically until it is 100 days old. The default number of days is 182.

6. What is the number of days a subscriber refund should be maintained as available if over the refund limit? BCP (Client) A refund writeoff limit can be defined in Publication setup. Refund writeoffs for amounts over this limit may be required by state law to go to the state. The newspaper may keep these available refunds in Circulation for a shorter or longer period of time than normal available refunds. This setting determines the number of days an available refund must be in the system before it can be written off, if the refund amount is over the writeoff limit. The default is zero.

7. To which system should refunds be automatically interfaced? B (Client) Note: Each of the refund interfaces requires a separate license fee to use. Contact the Naviga Support Center for more information.

When refunds are processed, Circulation can automatically generate an ASCII file for interfacing with SBS, Dunn and Bradstreet, PeopleSoft, or Compu-Share (all are general ledger software programs that handle refunds).

8. What is the origin code for subscribers when interfacing to the PeopleSoft accounting system? BC (Client) If you use the PeopleSoft3 file format, this setting populates the ORIGIN field in the voucher file when creating subscriber refunds.

9. What is the default file name for cash refunds? BCP (Client) This setting allows you to set the default file name for the cash refund file. The default setting is aprefund.d.

10. Should cash refunds create separate export files by publication? P (Client) Setting this rule to “y” will cause the refund export file created for A/P (aprefund.d or apvendref.d) to be prefixed with the product ID when the refund is issued via Customer Service or when the batch refund process includes a single product. If the selection includes multiple products, the output file will not include the product ID.

11. Should credit card refunds create separate export files by publication? P (Client) Refunds to a credit card are be interfaced to a separate file (ccrefund.d) from regular refunds. This setting determines whether credit card refunds for different publications should be in separate files, or in one file. If this rule is set to “yes”, the file names will be ccrefund.d[publication ID]. For example, publication “Times” would have credit card refunds exported to the ccrefund.dtimes file.

12. In batch refunds, do you use different vendor information for each subscriber? B (Client) When interfacing subscriber refunds to an AP system, you may not bring over unique vendor information for each subscriber. If this rule is set to “no”, you will only be prompted once for vendor information, after the refund batch is accepted. The vendor information entered will be interfaced for all subscribers in the batch.

13. Which reason code should be used when writing off the remaining balance of a refund within batch refund entry? BCP (Client) During batch refund entry, there may be situations in which the amount refunded is less than the available refund amount. This setting determines the reason code that should be used for these refunds.

14. Should customer service refunds create separate refund batches by publication? P (Client) Refunds entered in Customer Service are added to a suspended refund batch, which must then be reviewed and accepted in Batch Refunds. This Business Rule determines if a separate batch will be created for a given publication.

15. What is the default GL account for creating vendors in the MediaPlus refund system? BCP (Client) Enter the default general ledger account for interfacing subscriber refunds to the Accounts Payable system. This default can be used in creating vendor records for subscribers to whom you are issuing refunds. The account number should be a clearing general ledger account. If you do not have Accounts Payable (a legacy Naviga product), you can leave this setting blank.

16. What is the default GL account for grace owed adjustments? BCP (Client) Adjustments may be made to grace owed amounts, for example when subscribers are assigned to different rates. Because revenue accounts can be defined by day of week, and there is no specific day for an adjustment, a separate revenue account, specified here, will be used. This account will also be used for grace owed if no other revenue account can be found (because of incomplete setup, for instance).

17. What is the default GL account for subscriber revenue? BCP (Client) If no other CR GL account can be found (because of incomplete setup, for instance), this account will be used as the GL account for subscriber revenue.

18. What is the default GL account for subscriber discount? BCP (Client) If no other discount account can be found (because of incomplete setup, for instance), this account will be used as the GL account for subscriber discounts.

19. How many days must a payment buy to qualify the subscriber for a promotional item? BCP (Client) Some newspapers offer promotional items such as “frequent reader discount cards”. Based on a minimum payment term, the subscriber will receive the promotional item free of charge. Custom programs have been written to produce frequent reader cards. Define the minimum subscription term in days which a subscriber must pay before qualifying for the promotion.

20. How many months must a payment buy to qualify the subscriber for a promotional item? BCP (Client) Some newspapers offer promotional items such as “frequent reader discount cards”. Based on a minimum payment term, the subscriber will receive the promotional item free of charge. Custom programs have been written to produce frequent reader cards. Define the minimum subscription term in months which a subscriber must pay before qualifying for the promotion.

21. Should a transfer-in auto-start a former subscriber? BCP (Client) When money is transferred to a former subscriber, you may elect to automatically create a start for the former (permanently stopped) subscriber instead of requiring a start to be manually entered for the subscription.

22. When transferring money to a subscription, what is the minimum amount that should be considered a payment? BCP (Client) This business rule allows you to treat transfer-in amounts (including transferred refunds) over a specified threshold as payments. If you do not want to use this feature, leave the default amount of 99999.99.

23. Which address should be used for determining a subscriber’s taxability? BCP (Client) Subscriptions may be taxed, based on city, county, state and country tax laws. This setting controls which address is used when determining a subscription tax—the subscriber’s address or the address of the publication.

If Publication:

• 24. If the subscriber’s taxability is based on the address of the publication, must the subscriber live in the same state? BCP (Client) Some states tax out-of-state newspaper subscriptions, while others do not. If you tax based on the address of the publication, but the subscriber must live in the state to be taxed, set this rule to “yes”.

  Value

  Yes

  A subscriber must live in the same state in order to be taxed.

  No

  Subscribers living in other states may be taxed.

25. How should tips be distributed when the subscription is delivered by multiple accounts? BCP (Client) If more than one carrier delivers a subscription, this setting determines how tips sent by the subscriber with a payment will be divided.

26. Are any of your subscriber rates based on ZIP Code? B (Client) This setting determines whether the subscriber’s Zip code will be used in rating. If you enter “no” here, the Zip Code field in Location Rule Setup will be bypassed.

27. What percent of the daily subscription value is required to buy another day? BCP (Client) If one or more of your publications will have subscription rates broken out by day, you need to specify what percentage of a daily rate is needed to buy an extra day. This is used when payments have odd amounts, or subscriptions are extended because of complaints or other adjustments. The default is 100. For example, a subscriber may mistakenly send in 32.00 to buy a three-month subscription that actually costs 31.95. Once the three months are purchased, 0.05 is left over. Say the subscription stops on a Tuesday and the daily rate for Wednesday is 0.10. If this rule is set to “50” or less, the extra day will be awarded (0.05 is 50% of 0.10). However, if rule is set to anything over 50, the 0.05 will not be enough to purchase an extra day—it will become “unallocated”, and be added to the next payment made by the subscriber.

28. Should the value of expire changes be shown in the Show -> Adjustments query? BCP (Client) Expire changes are alterations to the expiration date of a subscription. For example, a complaint might extend the expire date for 1 day, and a payment might extend it for one month. Restarts, permanent stops, and many other transactions can change the expire date. Expire change transactions can be viewed on the Financial tab in Customer Service. This setting determines whether the value of each expire change should also be displayed. The value will be based on the number of publishing days between the new and old expire dates, and the current rate.

29. Should the Show -> Adjustments query include current grace paid as part of the payment’s adjust and discount amounts? BCP (Client) This setting controls whether current grace paid is shown in the Grace Paid column or the Adjust Amount and Discount columns on the Financial tab.

30. Should renewal subscribers’ credit status be changed when their grace period ends without a payment? BCP (Client) This parameter determines whether subscribers who expire stop without a payment should be assigned a new credit status (the credit status is defined in the Stop Credit Status field in Credit Status Publication setup). This pertains to renewing subscribers only; start and bill subscribers are always switched to the stop credit status.

31. Should grace revenue and discount be recognized while a subscriber is in their grace period? BCP (Client) When a subscriber sends in a payment to purchase a subscription, the newspaper looks at the payment as unearned revenue. As the subscription is delivered, the revenue becomes earned. When a subscriber goes into grace, there is no longer any unearned revenue to be earned, even though the subscription is still being delivered. Most newspapers do not declare earned revenue for papers delivered in a grace period until the subscriber sends another payment—the cost of the grace period is then deducted from the payment and considered earned revenue. If the grace period ends without a payment, a grace owed transaction is created for the cost of the grace period, and the earned revenue is declared, with an offsetting entry made in the Subscriber AR account. Some newspapers, however, have a different accounting practice for grace subscribers—they declare earned revenue for papers delivered in the grace period even if the subscriber is still in grace (i.e. before another payment arrives). This means they will have more accurate earned revenue figures at, for example, the end of a fiscal period. If your newspaper recognizes earned revenue for grace days while subscribers are still in grace, enter “yes”. Otherwise enter “no”. If you enter “yes”, earned revenue for subscribers in grace will be updated when the Grace Due report is run. Grace accrual transactions will be created for these subscribers, which will cause the revenue for delivering the grace days to become earned. The grace accrual is the running total of the grace amount the subscriber has accumulated. A reversing grace accrual transaction is also created with a transaction date of the end date of the report plus one day, which causes it to be picked up in the next fiscal period.

32. What is the total maximum grace days a subscriber may have? BCP (Client) Some newspapers deduct unpaid grace days from a subscriber’s previous subscription from the grace days allowed for a new subscription. For example, say subscriber Jones had 84 days of grace owed from previous subscriptions, and the maximum grace days were 90. If Jones starts again she will only be allowed 6 grace days with this subscription, even though her credit status allows her 30 grace days. The default is zero days.

33. Is balance forward subscriber billing allowed? BCP (Client) This Business Rule enables a subscription billing option that creates a balance forward bill, which includes any balance due from previous months, charges and credits since the last bill date, and the charge for the next billing period. When entering a start or billing change transaction, users will indicate that balance-forward billing is to be used.

If Yes:

• 34. How many days past the expiration date before a balance forward bill is no longer produced? BCP (Client) If you use balance-forward billing, enter a number of days. When this threshold is reached, balance-forward bills will no longer be produced for the subscriber, and the subscriber is considered carrier collect. The default is 9999.

35. Will Postalsoft Presort be used to sort mailed balance forward bills? BCP (Client) You may use Postalsoft’s Presort software to sort your balance forward bills according to the latest USPS regulations, which could result in mailing discounts.

If Yes:

• 36. What is the name of the job file to use for balance forward bills? BCP (Client) In order to sort mailed renewal notices in Presort, you must set up a “job file”, which contains information about the sorting (see the Postware and Label Studio documentation for more information). You specify the name of the job file(s) here—you may have a different one for each publication, or one for the entire business or company. When running balance forward bills, you may multi-select products that use the same job file, but you must print bills for products with different job files separately. We recommend that you make the job file ID different from your product IDs, so as not to come into conflict with job files used with mail labels.

37. Should the optional endorsement line, produced Postalsoft Presort, be printed on the balance forward bills? BCP The “endorsement line” contains PO route information and can print on the balance forward bills. This line is necessary for receiving presort discounts. We recommend that you have this set to “yes”.

38. How many days do you wish to retain Postalsoft data and work files for balance forward bills? BCP (Client) If you are sorting your balance forward bills through Postalsoft Presort, specify the number of days sort information should be kept. The default is 7 days.

39. Which demographic is used to define a subscription length level? BCP (Client) This setting is used with subscription-length pricing. It identifies the demographic ID that will be used to store the subscriber’s subscription length. “Low integer” values are set within the demographic to indicate a range of days.

40. Which demographic is used to define the date of a change to subscription length level? BCP (Client) This setting is used with subscription-length pricing. The demographic identified here stores the date at which the subscriber’s subscription-length level was last updated.

41. How many days can a subscriber be permanently stopped without impacting their subscription length level? BCP (Client) This setting is used with subscription-length pricing. It defines the maximum number of days, by product, that a subscriber may be permanently stopped before excluding that period for subscription-length determination. For example, if you enter “90” here, and a subscriber has a permanently stopped period of 90 days or more, the next start date after that period will be used to determine the active subscription length. Temporarily stopped subscribers are considered active.

42. Which demographic is used to define the expiration date of a subscription length level lock? BCP (Client) This setting is used with subscription-length pricing and subscription-length lock. This will be a subscription “date” demographic that is used to store the date through which the subscription level will be locked.

43. How many days should be added to the system date to define the default subscription length level lock period? BCP (Client) This setting is used with subscription-length pricing and subscription-length lock. If no answer exists to the demographic defined above, this value will be the default when entering the demographic answer (“today” plus the number of days entered here).

44. Should the Tax Export export refund amounts with a negative sign? BCP (Client) This setting controls whether refund amounts are exported with a minus symbol (-).

45. What is the default name for the subscriber refund vendor balance file? BCP (Client) The vendor file is exported with refunds. The default file name is “apvendref.d.”

46. Should declined CC refunds for subscribers on digital-only addresses be moved to a new batch instead of cash? Default Value: No This setting controls the refund created against Digital Address Subscribers. If the value is set to Yes, then a new Suspended Batch ID is created and assigned to the pending refund transaction.