Introduction to Publishing
The Publishing module is used for the daily distribution of your publication. You will use many Publishing options each day as part of the daily “publishing run”. Two basic activities take place during the run:
Transactions entered in Services, Accounting, and elsewhere will be processed (using Transaction Processing). These include new starts, stops, and moves, to name a few. From this information (and the subscriber payments that were processed using Payment Processing), Circulation can determine which subscribers should receive a paper on this particular day.
Distribution documents can be printed, including bundle tops, truck manifests, and mail labels. These documents are crucial to the distribution of any publication.
You can perform mail and route processing in separate publishing runs. This allows you to perform mail processing much earlier than route processing for the publishing date if you wish, which means Customer Service activity may continue for route-delivered subscribers after mail processing has begun. If the publication has separate edition cutoff times, each edition will have a separate route run. You can also have an “advance” publishing run in order to print bundle tops and other materials for a section of the paper, such as comics, that is delivered beforehand and inserted by the carrier on the delivery day.
You can run Transaction Processing more than once during a publishing run. This enables you to process the bulk of transactions early in your publishing day. When you are ready to create distribution documents, run Transaction Processing for the final time. Once final Transaction Processing has started, transactions can no longer be entered for that publishing day and product unless backdating is allowed (Business Rules determine the number of days a transaction can be backdated). Final Transaction Processing can be undone, however, by running Undo Final Tran Proc.
A publishing run involves eight basic steps (shown below). Within these steps, you carry out various functions in Circulation, some that are mandatory and others that can be performed as needed.
Note: You can set up all publishing run processes in multiple batches or in one executable process as you are processing a live publishing run.
1
Advance Publishing
2
Start Publishing Run
Enter Bundle Info Import Bundle Sizes Edition Override
3
Subscriber Payment Processing (on the Accounting menu) Group Draw Change (in Route Service) Transaction Processing
4
Final Transaction Processing
Daily Draw Worksheet (preliminary) Press Room Report (preliminary)
5
Post Office Report (mandatory only if run includes mail subscribers)
Stacker Interface Bundle Tops Truck Manifest Route Labels Office Pay Status Cards Carrier Collect Cards Previous Delivery Cards Single Copy Receipts
6
District Manager Report
7
End Publishing Run
8
Press Room Entry
If you are distributing one or more sections of the newspaper in advance, do an advance publishing run. When the rest of the paper arrives, the carrier will insert the advance sections into it.
Begin publication day processing by running the Start Publ Run option to specify the product and delivery method (route, mail, or both) to be processed. At this time, you can also define bundle sizes and other delivery information for the run (using Enter Bundle Info and Import Bundle Sizes) and specify an alternate edition to use, if necessary (using Edition Override). Bundle and edition override information can be entered for any future product or date regardless of the publishing run, but must be entered before any distribution documents (bundle tops, etc.) can be produced.
Run Subscriber Payment Processing (on the Accounting menu) to process all subscriber payments and create start (and grace paid) transactions for them. Transactions that affect the draw will then be processed when you run Transaction Processing.
Run Transaction Processing to process all of the transactions that affect distribution. These include stops, starts, and draw changes. Transactions created with Subscriber Payment Processing will also be processed. You can run Transaction Processing more than once if you like. You must, however, perform final Transaction Processing before you move on to step five. After you perform final Transaction Processing, you cannot process more transactions for that publishing run unless you run Undo Final Tran Proc to reopen the run.
If the delivery method for this publication is “route” or “both” (i.e., mail and route delivery), use the options on the DISTRIBUTION menu to:
Print bundle tops and truck manifests
Print the Daily Draw Worksheet
Print status cards, carrier collection cards, route labels and previous delivery cards
Interface distribution information to a stacker machine
If the delivery method for this publication is “mail” or “both” (i.e., both mail and route delivery), select options on the MAIL menu in order to:
Print mail labels
Print the Post Office Report. This is mandatory if there are mail subscribers in this run.
After you have printed bundle tops, etc., you may want to print a report listing the activity on each route. This is the District Manager Report.
When you have completed all processing, use End Publishing Run to update AAM history, prepare the draw for billing, and prepare for the next publishing day.
After the publishing run has ended, you may want to make entries about statistics and details of the run using Press Room Entry.
Use the Publ Run Status option as often as you wish during the publishing run to verify the current stage of the publishing run.
A Note on Editions
Separate publishing runs may be needed for different editions. For example, publishing for the Early edition may need to be completed by 1 a.m., while the final edition publishing may not need to be finished until 4 a.m. To allow Transaction Processing and distribution reports to be done at a later time for later editions, these areas of the publishing run can be set up to function at the edition level. This feature applies to regular publishing runs only; not advance publishing.
If editions will have separate cutoff times on a day of the week, this must be specified by setting the Cutoff By Edition flag to “y” in Publication setup (see Publication in the Setup Manual). Editions must also be flagged as active or inactive on each day of the week—this is done in Specifics | Publication Edition within Publication setup (see the Setup Manual).
If a publication does not have separate edition cutoff times (i.e., Cutoff By Edition is set to “n”), editions will not play a part in the publishing run, other than a route’s edition printing on the bundle tops and other distribution documents. If there are separate cutoff times (i.e., Cutoff By Edition is set to “y”), the publishing run will still be started for the entire publication/delivery type, but Transaction Processing and reports such as bundle tops and the truck manifest will be run for individual editions:
If the delivery method is “route” or “both”, the Start Publ Run option will start separate publishing runs for each edition. If the delivery method is “mail”, only one run will be started (separate edition runs are not supported for mail).
Transaction processing will be run for each edition independently.
The Press Room Report will still be run for the entire publication.
Bundle information will be entered for the entire publication. Bundle sizes can be defined by edition.
The DM report, bundle tops, the truck manifest, route labels, status cards, collection cards, previous delivery labels, and the stacker interface will be also be run on an edition-by-edition basis. Only routes assigned to the specific edition will have bundle tops, status cards, etc. printed for them.
The Daily Draw Worksheet will still be run for the entire publication. The Edition Drawsheet, however, can be run for each edition (see Edition Drawsheet). It contains the same content as the Daily Draw Worksheet but at the edition level.
Publ Run Status displays the status of each edition, if a publishing run has separate edition cutoffs.
End Publ Run must be run for the entire publication. This means that all editions must have completed final Transaction Processing before any of the runs can be ended.
A Note on Publishing Groups
Publishing groups can be used in cases where multiple publications should appear on the same truck manifest and (optionally) bundle tops. Publishing groups differ from combined publications in that the individual publications are still delivered separately—they only appear together on bundle tops and manifests in order to save time and paperwork. Publishing groups are defined in advance (see Publishing Group in the Setup Manual).
Note that when using publishing groups:
Publishing runs for all products in the group should be started at the same time, and the group ID specified in Start Publ Run.
Bundle info is entered for each product in the publishing group separately, but the same truck departure and truck sequence should be used, containing all routes for all products.
When selecting an edition for bundle tops, the truck manifest or the stacker interface, all of the other publishing runs for the same edition may be auto-selected, based on the Business Rule — Should automatic selection of same editions be skipped for publishing group when running bundle, manifest and stacker? (Route Processing section).
When running truck manifests, if all products in the group are selected, all products distributed by a truck will appear on a single manifest list for the truck. If only one product is selected for the truck manifest, only the manifest for that product will be generated.
Bundle tops can be combined (if a route delivers multiple products), print separately sorted by route, or print separately sorted by product (one product’s bundle tops, then the next product’s, etc.). The Combine Bundle field in Publishing Group Run setup determines how bundle tops print. The choices are “Physical” (combined), “Logical” (sort by route) and “None” (sort by product).
Publishing groups do not affect other options in the publishing run (Transaction Process, End Publ Run, etc.), in which the products are selected individually.
A Note on Combos
If you use combos (see About Combos), each component publication will have its own publishing run. Transactions for the combo will be handled at the individual publication level, and be processed by that publication’s Transaction Processing. For example, a payment for the combo will generate multiple payment transactions, once for each component publication.
If a combo contains a component publication that is not published daily, then the non-daily publishing run should be opened and Transaction Processing run should be run daily to keep the component publications in alignment. Subscriber Payment Processing should also be run on the same schedule.
Considerations Outside of the Publishing Run
Circulation has many features that default or validate dates based on the last publishing run for which final Transaction Processing has been run. If there are separate runs for different editions, final Transaction Processing can be complete for one edition but not for another. In this case, Circulation will consider edition when making these validations and defaults. Some features impacted by this are:
Individual draw changes, batch draw changes, and group draw changes. When validating that the draw date has not yet had final Transaction Processing, the route’s edition on that day will be taken into consideration.
Shortages. A shortage can be entered only for days on which final Transaction Processing has been run. Edition will be taken into account when determining this.
Returns and draw adjustments. In order to enter returns or draw adjustments, Transaction Processing must be finalized for all editions through the entry date.
Complaints. A complaint must have an incident date that has had final Transaction Processing completed. The edition delivered by the subscriber’s route will be taken into consideration when validating the incident date.
Other Customer Service transactions. Many subscriber transactions, such as starts and stops, have a Business Rules-determined number of days that they can be backdated. When making backdating calculations, the edition delivered by the subscriber’s route will be taken into account.
Account Billing Selection. When starting a billing run for an entire bill source, Transaction Processing must be finalized for all editions through the last date being billed.
Holiday Draw. In order to run holiday draw, Transaction Processing must be final for all editions on the holiday date.
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