Collectech
Most newspapers will continue to deliver papers for a certain grace period after a subscription expires, in the hopes that a payment is forthcoming. If a payment does not arrive, the subscription will eventually be stopped and the subscriber will owe for the grace. Because the subscriber did not specifically agree to receive the grace papers, he or she is not legally bound to pay the grace, and it is typically written off by the newspaper. However, by stating up front that delivery will continue past expiration date, a newspaper can, in some states, legally require the grace amount to be paid, and so refer customers owing grace to everyone’s friend, the bill collector.
The Collectech option exports information about subscribers who owe grace to Collectech, a software system used for bill collection. As part of the export a CollectXprt transaction will be created for the subscribers, to prevent them from being exported again and to establish an export history. The export can include subscribers who:
Are active with an expired subscription, if the subscriber received grace papers but has not yet made a payment.
Are perm stopped and owe grace.
Were previously exported and have since paid.
Active, perm stopped and paid subscribers will be exported to separate Collectech files—see Appendix B for the file formats.
To export subscribers to Collectech:
Select Collectech from the Export menu to display the Collectech Export screen.
Select Add and complete the following fields.
| Field | Type | What to enter |
|---|---|---|
PRODUCT | setup | Enter the publication whose subscribers should be exported to Collectech, or enter “*” to multi-select publications. |
EXPORT ACTIVE | yes/no | Indicate whether active subscribers (i.e., subscribers who have expired and are either in their grace period or have been turned over to carrier collect) should be exported. |
PAYMENT LENGTH, PAYMENT TERM | integer (4), predefined | If active subscribers are being exported, enter the payment length and term to use. The value of the length and terms will be found, using the subscriber’s rate code, and exported. If a matching length and term has not been defined, the highest term for the subscriber’s rate code will be used. For example, if “13 week” is entered here and the value of the 13 week term is 25.00 for rate code “regular”, a subscriber with this rate code will have 25.00 exported as the collection amount, even if the subscriber has only spent a few days in grace. |
START DATE, END DATE | date | Enter the date range to use in selecting active subscribers. Only subscriptions that expired within this date range will be included. |
EXPIRE STOPPED | yes/no | Indicate whether perm stopped subscribers who owe grace should be exported. |
REASON CODE | setup | Enter the stop reason code to use in selecting stopped subscribers, or enter “*” to multi-select reason codes. Only subscribers who perm stopped using the reason codes entered here will be included. |
START DATE, END DATE | date | Enter the date range to use in selecting perm stopped subscribers. Only subscriptions that perm stopped within this date range will be included. |
EXPORT PAID | yes/no | Indicate whether subscribers who were previously exported to Collectech (as active or stopped) and have since made a payment should be exported. This allows the Collectech to consider the bill as paid. |
FILE NAME | open (10) | Enter the file name for the Collectech export. The Collectech files will be written to /dti/exchange/cm using this file name, plus the extensions of “active”, “stop” or “paid”, depending on which subscribers are being exported. For example, if the file name is “collect”, the files exported will be “collect.active”, “collect.stop” and/or “collect.paid”. |
Select Continue to export information about active, stopped and paid subscribers to Collectech. When the export is complete, a processing report will display the number of records that were exported to each file.
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