When to Use Accounting Options

Account (carrier/dealer) and subscriber accounting lifecycles are described below.

Account (Carrier/Dealer) Accounting Procedure

In order to print account invoices and enter account payments, you must:

• Enter any papers returned or draw adjustments made for the account. Also, enter any miscellaneous charges (for rubber bands, for instance) or credits for the account. This is an ongoing process; the account bill for a period will reflect all of the returns, adjustments and charges dated in that period.

• Before you start a billing run, make sure there are no suspended account payment batches by printing the Batch Audit Journal. Also, check the Publishing Run Status to make sure the last day’s run is completed, and print the Summary Age Analysis.

• Calculate any interest and bond charges.

• Select the bill sources or individual carriers you want to bill (for example, home delivery carriers).

• Process the billing. Draw charges and delivery credits are automatically calculated by Circulation and added to the returns, draw adjustments, miscellaneous charges, etc. Recurring charges are also calculated automatically.

• Print the Billing Journal to check the billing. If corrections need to be made, undo and process the billing again.

• Print invoices and, if desired, deposit slips for the accounts.

• When all errors have been corrected for the billing run, and the invoices have been run, close the billing.

• After the bills are sent out, payments will be received from the accounts either by cash, check, credit card (payment entry), or direct deposit into a bank account (lockbox processing). These payments must be entered into Circulation and then transferred to the general ledger.

• If some payments are not applied to an invoice during payment entry, you must apply the unapplied amount to an invoice or balance later (if Business Rules allow).

• Accounts with office pay credits in excess of their draw charges must be paid. You can do this by direct deposit, interfacing with accounts payable software, or printing out the Credit Journal and manually entering the credits in accounts payable.

Accounting Procedure for Subscribers

In order to print subscriber renewals and enter subscriber payments, you must:

• Print renewals for subscribers. You can also e-mail renewals, or export renewal information to a file so that the renewal notices can be generated outside of Circulation.

• Enter payments when they arrive. Process auto payments for auto renew subscribers, and do lockbox processing for subscribers who make payments directly into a bank account.

• Print the Batch Audit Journal to make sure there are no suspended batches, and the Payment Journal to check for errors in the payments.

• Process the payments.

• Some customers may be entitled to refunds. If so, enter them in batch refunds and print the Refund Journal. You can do refunds independently of subscriber payments.

• Some subscribers who have a credit to their account may stop delivery and not claim their refund; other subscribers may have delivery stopped while in grace. Both refunds and grace can to be written off for these subscribers, if desired.