Bonus Day Adjustment

Subscribers on certain delivery schedules may be offered “bonus days” with their subscriptions. For example, subscribers on a Sunday-only delivery schedule may receive a paper on New Year’s Day, even though it is on a Wednesday. Bonus days are typically free, and Circulation’s bonus day functionality does not charge the subscribers. However, some newspapers do charge for bonus days. Even daily subscribers who normally receive the paper on the bonus day may be charged an extra amount, as the paper might be a special edition. In this situation, the Bonus Day Adjustment utility can be run to create subscriber payment adjustments to charge bonus day subscribers.

There are two methods for charging for bonus days in Circulation:

• Defining premium days. In this method, money for premium days is deducted from subscriber payments and placed in a “wallet”, which is then deducted when the premium day occurs. Newscycle recommends using this method, because a bonus day is charged in advance and does not impact the subscriber’s expire date.

• Using the “traditional” method of adjusting the subscriber’s balance directly. This causes the subscriber’s expire date to be pulled back when a bonus day occurs.

Both methods are described in greater detail below.

Premium Day

When using the premium day method for charging for bonus days, the amount for all bonus days occurring in a subscription period is deducted from the initial subscriber payment and put into a separate wallet for the subscriber. The premium amounts are then deducted from the wallet as the premium days are published and delivered, using negative payment adjustments created by Bonus Day Adjustments and imported by Lockbox Processing.

Note:

Premium days are not charged to subscribers with rates that have marketing terms. Also, rates with a rate type of Balance Forward are not currently supported. Subscribers with these rates will not be billed for premium amounts, and will only receive the premium day paper if it is for a day on their delivery schedule.

Setup for Premium Days

To use the premium day method, you must:

• Answer “Yes” to the Business Rule— Do you bill subscribers in advance for premium days? (Subscriber Billing section), to “Yes”. If you leave this parameter set to “No”, bonus day adjustments are made using the “Traditional” method described below. Another Business Rule in the same section— Should premium day detail be exported in renewals?, determines whether premium day information is included when renewals are exported in the Detailed Export 2 format.

• Set up the bonus days themselves (see Bonus Day Setup).

• Have Include in Bonus Day Adjustment flagged for the subscriber rates that qualify for premium day charges. The field is located on the Rate Code tab in Subscriber Rates setup (in the Rate Setup Wizard, this is the prompt “Should subscribers on this rate be included in the Bonus Day Adjustment selection?”).

• Define a subscriber payment adjustment code that has Update Wallet set to “y”. This code will be used by Lockbox Processing to create payment adjustments when importing a bonus day adjustment batch. The payment adjustments will deduct the subscriber’s wallet rather than the subscriber’s balance. See Sub Payment Adjustment in the Setup Manual for more information about setting up payment adjustment codes.

• Map the payment adjustment code above to the AdjustmentAmount field in the “AdjmntOnly” file map (or what ever Subscriber Lockbox file map you use to import bonus day adjustments).

The premium day charge amounts are predefined in Bonus Day Setup and can be “Additional” (in addition to the subscriber’s copy rate for that day, if they receive the paper) or “Final” (total charge for the bonus day paper) based on the Adjustment Type field. Below is an example of how the adjustment types would charge two subscribers (one who would normally receive the paper on the bonus day, and one who would not).

Charging for Premium Days

Subscribers are charged for premium days when the premium day paper is delivered. If the subscriber received the paper (was not temp stopped, for example), the cost of the premium day will be deducted from their wallet. Charging for premium days is a four-step process:

1. The Bonus Day Adjustment utility is run for the premium day, as described below. This creates an export file of premium day subscribers.

2. The premium day adjustment file is imported via Subscriber Lockbox using a special file format for bonus day adjustments. The format should match the Bonus Day Adjustment export format, which is a fixed length format with two fields: subscription ID and bonus day value.

3. The payment batch containing the premium day adjustments is accepted in Batch Payments. When accepting a batch, the adjustments cannot be modified, and no additional payments can be added. However, individual adjustments can be deleted from the batch.

4. Subscriber Payment Processing is run to process the adjustments in the lockbox batch. This deducts the premium day amount from the wallet using a negative payment adjustment. See Paying for Premium Days for more information about buying premium days.

5. Charging for Premium Days must be done in a timely manner for the most accurate accounting of the subscriber’s wallet balances. Steps 1 - 4 must be run after End Publishing Run on the Premium Day, and before Start Publishing Run on the next publishing day.

Note:

If you are running renewal notices for a future date and a premium day occurs between the current date and the renewal date, you should run the Bonus Day Adjustment utility for the premium date followed by Transaction Processing and Payment Processing for the current date in order to include correct premium amounts in the term calculations.

You can report the charges for a specific premium day by running the Payment Journal for the payment batch created for the bonus day adjustments by Lockbox Processing. Premium day charges will display as negative payment amounts.

If any of the following activities have taken place since the last day of the period, a Historical Unearned or Grace Due should not be run.

• Change in the Premium Day Calendar

• Run any Premium Day processing

Note: If you are using Premium Day or a wallet of any kind, it is time sensitive.

GL Entries for Premium Days

When a premium amount is deducted from a subscriber payment and added to the wallet, it is considered Unearned Revenue, just like the rest of the subscriber’s balance. When the premium day is earned and negative payment adjustments are made, the Debit and Credit GL Account fields specified for the payment adjustment code determine the GL accounts debited and credited. Because this will be a negative payment adjustment, Debit GL Account will typically be Revenue and Credit GL Account will typically be Unearned Revenue.

Traditional Bonus Day Adjustment

With the traditional method for charging for bonus days, the subscriber’s expire date is adjusted when the Bonus Day Adjustment utility is run. Because the expire date is adjusted unpredictably by bonus days, Newscycle recommends using the premium day method described above rather than the traditional method.

When using the traditional method, the bonus amount is specified when running the Bonus Day Adjustment utility. The possible adjustment types are:

• Extra charge—Charge a flat amount in addition to the daily amount already paid by the subscriber. For example, you may charge an extra 0.50 for a Labor Day bonus paper.

• Total charge—Charge a flat amount, minus the amount already paid by the subscriber. For example, a total charge of 2.00 for the bonus day could include a 0.45 normal daily charge plus an additional 1.55 to bring the total charge up to 2.00. Note: This adjustment type applies only to active subscribers who would normally receive that day’s paper.

• Day’s Rate—Charge a previously defined Sunday or weekday rate for the bonus paper. For example, charge the subscriber’s usual Sunday rate for a New Year’s Day bonus paper delivered on Monday.

• Number of Days—Deduct a number of days from the subscription period, rather than just one day. For example, charge subscribers three days for the Christmas paper. The number of days adjustment will be converted to an amount by multiplying the value of the last day of the subscription period by the number of days entered. For example, if the value of the last day is 0.20, and 2 days are entered, the subscriber’s balance will be reduced by 0.40.

The following table shows how subscribers on different delivery schedules could be charged for a Thanksgiving Day bonus paper using the expanded features of this utility.

Prior to running the utility for the first time, you may want to set up a special subscriber payment adjustment code for bonus days; the adjustment code must have Update Expire set to “y” and Cash Adjustment set to “n”. Also note that a Business Rule, For adjustment only payments, what description should display in the transaction window? (Customer Services section), governs the description that appears for subscriber payment adjustments.

The Bonus Day Adjustment option exports a file which is then imported via Subscriber Lockbox Processing to create the payment adjustments. This is the same process used with the premium day method, but when using the traditional method the payment adjustments will adjust the subscriber’s expire date.

Running the Bonus Day Adjustment Utility

Bonus day adjustments are exported by running the Bonus Day Adjustment utility, as described in the procedure below.

To run the Bonus Day Adjustment utility:

1. Select Subscription/Address | Bonus Day Adjustment in Graphical Utilities to display the Bonus Day Adjustments window.

2. Click Add.

   
3. Select the delivery schedules you want to view. To do this, complete the following fields:

   Field	Type	What to enter
   PRODUCT	setup	Enter the publication for which you are creating bonus day adjustments.
   BONUS DAY DATE	date	Enter the date of the bonus day for which you are creating adjustments.
   EXPORT FILE	open (20)	The Bonus Day Adjustment utility will export an ASCII file of bonus day subscribers and adjustment amounts or days. Enter the file name for this file. It will be exported to the /dti/exchange/cm directory. See Bonus Day Adjustment Export Format for the file format.
   INCLUDE ACTIVE SUBSCRIBERS	yes/no	Indicate whether subscribers who would normally receive a paper on the bonus day should be included in the export.
   INCLUDE ACTIVE AUTORENEW SUBSCRIBERS, INCLUDE ACTIVE ONLINE SUBSCRIBERS, INCLUDE ACTIVE MAIL SUBSCRIBERS	yes/no	If including active subscribers, indicate whether auto renew, online, and/or mail subscribers should be included.
   INCLUDE BONUS DAY AUTORENEW SUBSCRIBERS	yes/no	Indicate whether autorenew subscribers who normally would not receive a paper on the bonus day should be included in the export.

4. The delivery schedules meeting the entered criteria are displayed. If using the traditional method for bonus day adjustments, complete the following fields and click the OK button within the field panel or each delivery schedule to which you want to make an adjustment. (You must click OK after entering each adjustment. If you do not click OK, the adjustment will not be made.) If you are using the premium day method, these fields will be inactive and this step can be skipped.

   Field	Type	What to enter
   DELIVERY SCHEDULE	display	The selected delivery schedule is displayed.
   DISTRICT	setup	Enter the district whose routes should have bonus day adjustment that will apply to this delivery schedule, or enter “*” to multi-select districts.
   TYPE OF ADJUSTMENT	predefined	Select the type of bonus day adjustment that will apply to this delivery schedule. The options are Extra Charge, Total Charge, Days Rate, and Number of Days.
   AMOUNT	decimal (8)	If Type Of Adjustment is “Extra Charge,” “Total Charge,” or “Number of Days,” enter the amount that subscribers should be charged for this bonus day. Note: When entering the amount for a “Number of Days” adjustment, enter the total number of days that should be deducted from the subscription period for this bonus day.
   THIS DAYS RATE	predefined	If Type Of Adjustment is “Days Rate,” select the weekday whose rate should be charged for the bonus paper.

5. When you have finished entering adjustments for the affected delivery schedules, click the OK button that applies to the entire window. Then, click Continue to create the export file. The utility will export subscribers who received the bonus day, along with adjustment day or monetary figures, to an ASCII file. Once the export is done, a processing report will list the number of records exported. See Appendix B for the export file format.

6. Select Subscriber Payments | Lockbox Processing in the Accounting module, and import the ASCII file created by the Bonus Day Adjustment utility. The Input File Format should be the file map you created for this purpose. The Input File Name should be the file name specified in Bonus Day Adjustment.

7. Once the lockbox payment adjustments are processed, accept the payment batch in Batch Payments and process them in Payment Processing. The batch will contain negative payment adjustments (either in days or amounts) for the subscribers who received the bonus day paper.