The Basic Concept

Like all computer applications, Circulation takes in information, processes it, and winds up with new and useful information. This input/output model is illustrated below. In the case of Circulation, the input information comes from:

• Setup (where routes, carriers, and many other things are set up)

• Customer and Route Services (where subscription starts, stops, complaints, route draw changes, and other transactions are entered)

• Account and subscriber payments, which are entered into the system

• Postal directories, which are used mostly with mail distribution

Output is in the form of printed documents or files. In Circulation, some of the more important output items are:

• Bundle tops, which allow the newspaper bundles to be loaded and distributed correctly, and tell the carrier about changes on the route

• Truck manifests, which tell the truck drivers which bundles to drop off at which routes

• Mail labels, which allow mail subscriptions to be distributed

• Account (i.e., carrier) bills

• Subscriber renewal notices

• Reports that are useful to managers and other newspaper personnel

• General ledger information, which can be interfaced with your general ledger system

Once Circulation has done its job, the output can be used by accounting and distribution personnel to accurately run the circulation of the newspaper.

To better understand Circulation, read the following sections. They are written from the perspective of a single subscriber—what does Circulation do to ensure that the paper arrives every morning on the doorstep?

Setup

Before the subscriber even orders the paper, a number of things must already be set up in Circulation:

• Some address elements, such as cities and dwelling types, must be set up beforehand. Examples of dwelling types include “household,” “apartment,” and “business.” Before shipping, Circulation presets many address items, such as state, Zip code, and country.

• Circulation differentiates between an address and an occupant (a person living at an address). Some occupant elements must be set up, such as the occupant type. For example, you could have three occupant types: “regular,” “student,” and “senior,” and assign rates based on them.

• General ledger accounts must be identified so that Circulation can export information (such as payments and account draw charges) to the GL.

• Business Rules must be set up. These settings help you tailor Circulation to fit your business.

• Publishers belonging to the Alliance for Audited Media (AAM) submit circulation figures every three months for verification by AAM. Advertisers review these circulation statistics. Circulation creates reports that assist in submitting information to the AAM. For this reason, AAM zones must be defined, as do the columns of the AAM reports. For example, if you wanted to report your youth carriers separately from your adult carriers, you would need to set up columns for both.

• Information about your publication must be entered into the system, including publishing calendars and delivery schedules. For example, your publication might deliver seven days a week, but have a Mon-Fri delivery schedule for subscribers who receive the paper only on weekdays.

• Routes and carriers must be defined, as must trucks, truck sequences, departure orders, drop orders, and drop locations. The Route Distribution section below describes how these items function.

• Routers (route boundaries) might be set up so that new subscribers can automatically be assigned a route.

• Mail label groups (discussed below in the Mail Distribution section) must be set up.

• Subscription rates must be set up, based on subscription type, occupant type, location, and payment type. Rates are set up by linking these “rules” with “rate codes” (amounts and payment lengths). See the example below.

• Account rates must also be set up, based on route, delivery schedule, and many other conditions. Like subscription rating, account rating involves linking rules and rate codes.

• Additional account charges and credits, such as a charge for insurance or a credit for mileage, must also be set up.

• Formats must be set up for the various reports, including the distribution documents (bundle tops, truck manifests, etc.).

• Internal settings may be established, such as security codes.

These items are defined in Setup and are documented in the Circulation Setup Manual.

Customer Service

When ordering a subscription, the customer’s address and name will be found in (or added to) the Circulation database, a subscription will be started, and the customer will be assigned to a route or mail label group, if necessary. If you set up route boundaries for your newspaper, subscribers will automatically be assigned to routes or mail label groups based on their address.

If the subscriber later reports a missing paper, address change, or other issue, a Customer Service associate can handle that as well. Customer Service associates often handle carrier calls (draw changes, shortages, etc.) in addition to subscriber calls.

In the case of a shortage or complaint, the publisher may need to dispatch extra papers. Complaints and shortages tagged for dispatch will appear in the Dispatching module. The dispatchers will work from this module.

All of this information is entered into Circulation through the Customer Service and Route Service modules. Circulation then uses the data to create draws, reports, and accounting records. Activities performed in the Customer Service and Route Service modules are summarized in the following table.

Route Distribution

Once the subscriber has been started (either immediately as a “start and bill” or after a payment has been made), the distribution side of Circulation takes over. Distribution activities are performed in the Publishing module.

Circulation looks on each day a newspaper is published as a “publishing day” with its own “publishing run.” First, the date and publication of the publishing run are defined. Then, all subscriber payments that have been entered since the last publishing day are processed using Subscriber Payment Processing (in the Accounting module). The expire dates of subscribers who made payments are adjusted accordingly. Next, Transaction Processing is performed: Circulation processes all of the starts, stops, draw changes, and other transactions entered in Customer and Route Services. Circulation can now determine which subscribers should receive this newspaper on this date.

Once Circulation knows who should receive the publication, documents are produced to co-ordinate the distribution. These documents can be of two kinds: mail and route. Let’s say that our subscriber lives in town, and so the newspaper will be delivered by route. The following actions will occur:

• Bundle tops will be produced for each carrier, dealer, and rack.

• Bundle tops tell the distribution personnel how many papers to stack in a bundle and how many bundles go to each route. Bundle tops also include the truck on which the bundles should be loaded. Circulation determines this information from the truck sequence, which tells which truck will drop off which routes on a given day.

• Bundle tops are printed in truck departure order so that distribution personnel can load the early departing trucks first. Within each truck, bundle tops are printed in drop order, which allows bundles to be placed onto the truck in the order in which they will be dropped off.

• Once the trucks are loaded, the drivers take over. Drivers use a document called a truck manifest that lists the routes they must drop (i.e., supply), in drop order. The manifest also lists the draw and drop location for each route. When the driver reaches a route’s drop location, he or she finds the bundles for that route (by looking at the bundle tops) and either drops them off for the carrier or dealer, or puts them in the rack.

• For dealers and racks, this is the end of the line. Carrier-delivered papers, however, require one more step. The carrier picks up the bundles at the drop location and examines the bottom of the bundle top—this is where any starts, stops, messages, or other pertinent information will be printed.

• On the first day that our subscriber receives the paper, the carrier will be informed of the new start via the bundle top, and the paper will begin appearing every morning on the doorstep.

Mail Distribution

Let’s say our subscriber moves out of town but still wants to get the paper—he would then become a mail subscriber. Mail distribution can be included in the same publishing run as route distribution, or it can be run on its own. Instead of bundle tops and truck manifests, Circulation prints mail labels that can be applied to the papers for mailing and a postal report (which may be required by the post office).

Mail labels are printed in label group order. A label group is a group of mail subscribers whose papers are distributed together. For example, all subscribers in one label group might be sent to a certain post office or use a certain truck. Label groups can also be used to differentiate between 1st and Periodical class subscribers.

Within each label group, you may choose to print labels in Zip code order, user-defined order, or PostWare presort order. To mail Periodical class, you should use PostWare (a software product that is integrated into Circulation).

After the newspaper has been distributed, the publishing run can be officially ended. Draw records for the run can then be used in AAM reporting, and a new publishing run can start.

Subscriber Accounting

A few days after our subscriber calls Customer Service, he may receive an initial renewal notice (known as an invoice) for the subscription. This notice is printed using the Renewal Notices option in Accounting, and the cost of the subscription is calculated using the subscription rates defined in Setup. When our subscriber makes the payment, it will likely be entered in Batch Payments with all of the other payments received that day or week. When these subscriber payments are processed (using Payment Processing) the expire dates of the paying subscribers are extended.

Shortly before the subscription runs out, another renewal notice will be sent. If our subscriber is late in paying for a new subscription, the publisher may elect to continue delivering papers for a certain period of time, known as a grace period. These papers are not yet paid for, but when the payment does arrive, part of it will be deducted to cover the grace amount. If the subscriber does not make another payment, the delivery will eventually be stopped, and the grace amount will be “written off.” On the other hand, if the subscriber discontinues the subscription with a positive balance, he may receive a refund.

Account - Carrier/Dealer Accounting

Meanwhile, our subscriber’s carrier is being paid for the delivery of the paper every morning. Most newspapers view their carriers as independent contractors, who are charged a wholesale value for the papers and then, in turn, receive the retail amount from the subscriber.

In one arrangement called “office pay,” the newspaper receives subscriber payments. Account rating determines how much carriers should be charged for draw and how much they should be credited for delivery. The newspaper will then send the carrier a check for the difference. Account rates are typically independent from subscriber rates; a newspaper could have a promotional “1/2 off” rate for new office pay subscribers, but the carrier would receive the normal amount for delivery.

Another arrangement between carriers and the publisher is the “carrier collect” method, in which the carrier is actually collecting money from subscribers and paying the newspaper. Circulation determines (through account rating) how much these carriers should be charged for draw; it is up to the carrier to collect the retail amount from the subscribers on the route. In this scenario, subscribers do not have expire dates and do not require renewal notices—the carrier sets the amount and duration of the subscription. Carrier collect invoices can, however, be printed to help the carrier.

Dealers and racks are similar to carrier collect accounts, in that they are billed for their draw but collect money from the customers themselves.

Each carrier, dealer, and rack belongs to a bill source, and this controls when the bills are printed. For example, home delivery carriers might belong to bill source A, and be billed on the second Thursday of each month. Dealers might belong to bill source B, and be billed on the last day of each month.

Bills are printed during an account billing run, in which a publication and bill source are selected and processed. during an account billing run:

• Draw charges are calculated for each account.

• Any returned newspapers or draw adjustments are taken into account. Draw adjustments usually occur when dealers order extra papers after a publishing run has been completed.

• Delivery credits are applied, in the case of office pay carriers.

• Non-draw charges and credits (for example, an insurance charge, or a credit for mileage) are calculated.

After the account billing has processed, invoices can be printed. Accounts that have credits exceeding charges (routes with mostly office pay subscribers) can be interfaced with the newspaper’s Accounts Payable system, which will produce the carrier checks.

Some time after the account bills are sent out, payments will arrive from the accounts who owe money. The payments will be entered in a batch and accepted—typically, all of the account payments received during a day will be in the same payment batch.

Account billing, returns, draw adjustments, and payment options are all accessed in the Accounting module.

The General Ledger

The expenses of the publisher are managed through the general ledger. Circulation does not act as the general ledger itself, but you can send Circulation records to your general ledger software via a text (ASCII) file generated by the Export GL option.

The Circulation processes that have the most effect on the GL are subscriber payments (office pay), account draw charges, and account payments. Because subscribers pay in advance for a subscription, the payment is initially treated as unearned revenue. Later, when the Unearned Revenue report is run, the portion of the subscription that has been delivered (the earned revenue) is transferred to a Subscriber Revenue account. From the point of view of the publisher, the subscription money is now in the hands of the office pay carriers.

During account billing, the money is debited from an account called Delivery Expense (which may or may not be the same account as Subscriber Revenue) and credited to Accounts Receivable. Part of this accounts receivable money is credited to Accounts Payable (office pay carriers are issued checks) and part of it is credited to Account Revenue (account draw charges—the newspaper’s cut).

There are, of course, no carrier collect subscriber payments. The carriers make the payments themselves, and the amount is credited to accounts receivable. It then goes into revenue along with the office pay draw charges.

If we look at what has happened to our subscriber’s check to the paper, it has been assigned to his (office pay) carrier. The publisher has then taken a portion of this for its own revenue and issued a check to the carrier for the remainder.

Reports

While our subscriber is at home happily reading the paper, his name and subscription information will be appearing, along with thousands of other subscribers, on a myriad of Circulation reports. Subscribers who owe grace show up on the Grace Due report, subscribers who have incorrect or unusual rates show up on the Subscription Rate report, and so on.

Some reports, such as the Daily Post Office Report and the AAM Paragraph 3 by Town report, play critical roles in the operation of the Circulation departments. Other reports, such as Churn and Market Penetration reporting, are used as tools with which newspaper personnel can plan how to better run and expand their circulation.

Targeted Marketing

One day, our subscriber might open the door to find something else with the paper—a shopper or a free box of cereal. This is the result of Targeted Marketing, where a publisher mails or has its carriers (or an alternate delivery force) deliver non-publication products to targeted subscribers. Already having the information and personnel necessary, many publishers actively seek out targeted marketing opportunities from local businesses, thereby adding an extra source of income.

Let’s say a local pet store wants a flyer distributed to all dog owners, and they ask you to deliver it for them. In the interest of your carriers, you have always asked each new subscriber whether they have a dog (the demographic question would be defined in Setup). To deliver the flyer, you would go to Targeted Marketing, select all subscribers who answered “yes” to the dog demographic, and print bundle tops, route lists, or other documents necessary for distribution.

Companion Applications

Typically, demographics are not kept by the publisher, but are instead imported into Circulation from an outside source. This can be done using List MatchPlus, which is a companion application developed by Newscycle Solutions. Another companion application, InsertPlus, can be used to manage the inserting process.

Circulation can also interface address, occupant, demographic and subscriber data using Newscycle Advertising, MediaPlus Advertising, and AudienceReach. A companion application called Household Management is required for this integration.