The Utilities menu contains a variety of options that support the other areas of Circulation. The mass rerouting and address hygiene utilities, the purge programs, and the View/Print Utility are only a few of the options available.

It should be noted that many of these utilities are powerful programs that can significantly change or delete data in the Circulation system. You should use caution when running them.

Most Utilities options are run from Circulation’s older character interface. Some, however, have been ported to the new Graphical Utilities module.

This section guides the user through the menu options that are available under the Account menu.

This section guides the user through the menu options that are available under the Audience menu.

The Utilities menu contains options for maintaining system resources and history, producing custom programs and reports, and performing various setup activities.

Topics covered in this section are as listed below:

The Draw Export feature allows account draw figures for a given date range to be exported to an ASCII file in the /dti/exchange/cm directory (see Appendix B for the file format). The file will contain a single cumulative draw figure for the account. For example, if the draw export was run for 10/01 - 10/07, the total draw for each account within that seven-day period would be exported.

To run the draw export:

• Select Draw Export from the Account menu to display the Account Draw Export Utility screen.
• Select Add and complete the following fields.

  Field

  Type

  What to enter

  PRODUCT

  setup

  Enter the publication for which you are exporting draw.

  START DATE, END DATE

  date

  Enter the date range for which to export draw. The total draw for this date range will be exported for each account.

  ROUTE TYPE

  setup

  Enter the route type for which to select accounts, or enter “*” to multi-select route types. Only accounts with routes of this route type will be selected.

  FILE NAME

  open (20)

  Enter a name for the ASCII file. The file will be exported to /dti/exchange/cm.

• Select Continue to export the draw figures. After processing is completed, a report will list the number of records exported and any errors that occurred during the process.

About AAM Percentages

AAM reporting is done by Town of 25 and Zip code. Because home delivery routes may cross AAM zone, Town of 25 or Zip code boundaries, it is necessary to know what percentage of a route’s draw lies in each area. The percentages are set up with the route (see Distribution Point in the Setup Manual), and when the publishing run ends (or returns or adjustments are entered) the percentages are used to update AAM history. The AAM reports are based on this history.

For example, let’s say route 12 was 75% in Zip code 55107 and 25% in Zip code 55110. On a given day, the publishing run calculated a draw of 80 for this route. The draw would be broken down for AAM history: 60 would be allocated to Zip code 55107, and the remaining 20 to Zip code 55110.

As time passes and circulation patterns (and route boundaries) change, these percentages lose their accuracy—perhaps after a while only 50% of route 12’s subscribers live in Zip code 55107. But the same percentages are still being used for AAM reports, so 55107 figures are inflated, while 55110 figures are deflated.

You can use Compare/Update AAM % to update Town of 25 and Zip code percentages so that they reflect the current circulation. The utility will look at all subscribers on a route and, based on address information, recalculate the percentages. A report listing the new percentages is created as part of the process, and you have the option to run the utility just as a report (with no updating).

Updating AAM Percentages

You should update AAM percentages once a month, or whenever there is a change (such as mass rerouting) that could affect the percentages. For performance reasons, AAM percentages are not updated automatically with the publishing run. Also, you may elect to print the report only in order to review the changes that will be made before updating the percentages. Always print a copy of this report for AAM audit purposes.

To update Town of 25 and/or Zip code percentages for routes:

• Select Compare/Update AAM% from the Account menu to display the Compare AAM Percent Report screen.

• Select Add and complete the following fields.

• Select Continue to update percentages and produce the report.

Example—Compare AAM Percent Report

Use this utility to automatically change the amounts you charge or credit accounts for specific recurring charges. If you charge accounts different amounts for a specific charge (such as bond deposit), you must run the utility separately for each amount.

To change recurring charges:

• Select Change Recur Charge from the Account menu to display the Recurring Charges Change Report screen.
• Select Add and complete the following fields.

  Field

  Type

  What to enter

  PRODUCT

  setup

  Enter the product for which to change recurring charges (enter “*” to multi-select products).

  CHARGE CODE

  setup

  Enter the charge/credit code to change.

  LAST DATE

  date

  Enter the last date that the old charge amount is valid.

  OLD AMOUNT,

  NEW AMOUNT

  decimal (10)

  If this is a flat charge, enter the old and new amounts of the charge code. Only accounts who are charged OLD AMOUNT for the charge code will be changed to NEW AMOUNT.

  OLD PERCENT,

  NEW PERCENT

  decimal (6)

  If this is a percent charge, enter the old and new percents for the charge. The same rules apply as for flat charges.

• Select Continue to change the charge amount and produce the Change Recur Charge Report, which lists all accounts whose recurring charge amounts were changed.

Example—Change Recur Charge Report

Rate Check is a useful tool for querying or troubleshooting your account rating structure; it displays all of the rules and rule-rate links for which an account qualifies, in the correct hierarchy.

To check an account’s rate:

• Select Rate Check from the Account menu to display the Account Rate Check screen.

• Complete the following fields.

• Select Continue to complete the rate query. The Account Rate Check report is displayed, listing each rate for which the account qualifies. All of the rules and the rule-rate link for the rate are displayed. The first rate displayed will be the highest in the hierarchy, the next one the next highest, and so on.

Example—Account Rate Check report

Draw figures by census tract can be used in both Targeted Marketing and InsertPlus. A route may cross census tract boundaries; the percentage of a route’s draw that lies within a particular census tract may be set up with the route, and periodically updated using this utility.

Update Census Tract % looks at the census tract entered for each subscriber on a route and recalculates the census tract percentages to reflect current circulation. A report listing the old and new percentages is created by the process.

To update census tract percentages:

• Select Update Census Tract% from the Account menu to display the Census Tract % Report screen.

• Select Add and enter the product for which census tract percentages should be recalculated (enter “*” to multi-select products).

• Select Continue to update percentages and produce the report.

Example—Update Census Tract % Report

The number of households on each home delivery route includes both subscribers and non-subscribers; this figure is used in InsertPlus. Initially, the number of households is entered into the system when the route is set up. This number may grow inaccurate in time due to changed route boundaries or other causes.

Use Update # Households to recalculate the number of households on a route based on the number of addresses in the database assigned to the route. A report listing the old and new household figures is created in the process, and you may run the utility for the report only.

To update the number of households:

• Select Update # Households from the Account menu to display the Household Count Report screen.

• Select Add and complete the following fields.

• Select Continue to update households and produce the report.

Example—Update # Households Report

The Holiday Edition option can be used on dates (such as holidays) when you will have different editions than are normally run on that day of the week. Changes in holiday editions are typically accompanied by changes in holiday draw.

For example, let’s say on Thursday you print only two editions (“City” and “Country”). This Thursday is a holiday, however, and you want to replace Thursday’s editions with the editions normally used on Sunday (“Early”, “Morning”, and “Final”). When this utility is run each route will use its Sunday edition on Thursday—the Sunday editions will print on the bundle tops, allowing personnel to correctly distribute “Early”, “Morning”, and “Final” editions to the right routes.

To switch editions for a holiday:

• Select Holiday Edition from the Account menu to display the Holiday Edition screen.
• Select Add and complete the following fields.

  Field

  Type

  What to enter

  PUBLICATION

  setup

  Enter the publication for which to make edition changes.

  PUBLISH DATE

  date

  Enter the publishing date on which you wish to make edition changes. This is the date of the holiday.

  REPLACE DATE

  date

  Enter the date whose editions should replace the publish date editions. For example, if you want to replace Thursday’s edition with Sunday’s, enter Thursday’s date in PUBLISH DATE, above, and last Sunday’s date here.

• Select Accept to change the editions. After the changes have been made, the main menu will appear.

You can use this utility to quickly enter adjustments to account balances (usually done when transferring balances from an old system).

To adjust account balances:

• Select Balances from the Account menu to display the Balances screen.
• Enter the company and bill source for the accounts being adjusted, and the current date and the ending date of each aging period in the old circulation system.

• When you have entered this information, more data entry fields appear so you can enter balance information for each account. The following table shows what to enter.

• When you have entered the balances for all of your accounts, press F4 to exit to the main menu.

This section guides the user through the menu options that are available under the Subscription/Address menu.

About Address Correction

Address correction software can be used to “cleanse” your addresses (verifying that the address line, city, state, and Zip code are correct) as well as standardize the entire address line, city and state (based on your country’s postal data and rules).

Some of the benefits provided by address correction are listed below:

• Corrects and standardizes address, city and state data.

• Assigns Zip/Postal codes (Zip code, Zip+4, carrier route) that can provide additional pre-sort discounts for mailing.

• Allows you to comply with the new, stricter rules on OCR (optical character recognition) readability.

• Allows your customer service operators to verify address information on-line when entering a new start.

• Makes addresses more deliverable.

• Creates a higher percentage of address “matches” when you use List MatchPlus software.

• For US addresses, Quadient populates eLot (Enhanced Line of Travel), DPV (Delivery Point Validation), and LACS (Locatable Address Conversion System) codes used by the USPS. Quadient will also return the DPV NO STATS setting (used for dwellings for which there is no DPV information, such as those that are vacant or being built), if the Business Rule— For US addresses, should the DPV NO STATS directory be used? is set to “Yes”.

• For US addresses, Quadient uses SuiteLink to fill in the suite number for incomplete business addresses (see SuiteLink).

Different address correction software products that have been integrated with Circulation. Quadient utilizes US Postal Service (USPS) directories to cleanse and standardize US addresses in the Circulation database. Another vendor, QAS, is generally used for Australian and Canadian addresses. Two older products, Address Correction and Encoding (ACE) and CACE, the Canadian counterpart to ACE, are no longer supported. Business Rules determine the address correction software used and configuration parameters for each software product. See Address Cleansing in the Setup manual for more information.

There are two ways in which address correction software can be used for address hygiene. Batch Address Hygiene, documented below, enables you to cleanse and standardize all addresses in one or more Zip codes at one time.

The other way to perform address hygiene is when a single address is added or modified in Customer Service or iServices Subscriber. If the new or modified address does not exactly match the address in the USPS or Canada Post directories, and Business Rules are set to allow cleansing, a window will open asking you which address to keep. This is known as online address hygiene, and is described in the Customer Service chapter (see Adding an Address).

In addition, Circulation has a batch hygiene utility for the Circulation router, which will cleanse addresses used to define the router address ranges (see Router Addr Hygiene).

Running Batch Address Hygiene

If your addresses are mostly in the US and you use Quadient for address correction, Batch Address Hygiene can be run to cleanse all addresses in one or more Zip codes. This option might be used when an updated directory is available, or when a group of addresses is added to Circulation (through List MatchPlus). It is a good idea to run Batch Address Hygiene at least once without updating the address database; the reports can then be studied and action taken on individual addresses you would rather not cleanse.

The process of cleansing and standardizing a batch of addresses is automatic—all addresses that have the Cleanse Address field checked (flagged when adding the address) will be included. Addresses with Cleanse Address unchecked will not be processed in Batch Address Hygiene. It is therefore possible to separate out irregular addresses that you do not wish to process.

After the processing is completed several reports are created to document the hygiene process. Some of these reports can also be generated without updating the Circulation address database.

To run Batch Address Hygiene:

1. Select Batch Addr Hygiene from the Utilities | Subscription/Address menu to display the Address Hygiene Batch Processing Report screen. When using Quadient, the screen lists the Quadient directory date. This is the date of the postal directories being used by Quadient. You can check this date periodically and, when a directory update occurs, run Batch Address Hygiene for your addresses.
2. Select Add and enter information in the fields described in the table below.

   Field

   Type

   What to enter

   ALL ZIPS

   yes/no

   Indicate whether addresses in all Zip codes should be processed.

   ZIP CODE

   setup

   UPDATE

   yes/no

   Indicate whether the Circulation address database should be updated. Enter “n” here if you are just running the utility for the reports.

   REROUTE ADDRESSES

   yes/no

   If you are using Quadient and the addresses will be updated, indicate whether Batch Address Hygiene should automatically reroute addresses for home delivery routes. If you choose to reroute, the subscription will remain on its current route, but the route assigned to the address itself may change. Note that both addresses and subscriptions are assigned routes. The subscription route is used for delivering publications. The address route is used for Targeted Marketing delivery and defaults as the subscription route when there is a new subscription.

   CREATE FORM 3553

   yes/no

   If the address will be updated, indicate whether a PS Form 3553 should be generated for all addresses being cleansed. This form is submitted to the post office to establish the number of your addresses with Zip+4, carrier route information, etc.

   LIST NAME

   open (19)

   If you are generating a form 3553, enter a list name. This name appears on the form and is for reference.

   CREATE AAS REPORT LIST NAME

   yes/no open (19)

   These fields are for CACE, which is no longer supported. The fields will be skipped.

   DATE RANGE

   yes/no

   Indicate whether batch address hygiene should cleanse only addresses entered within a certain date range.

   PERIOD START DATE, PERIOD END DATE

   date

   If DATE RANGE is set to “y”, enter the date range for address cleansing. Only addresses entered within this date range will be cleansed.

   REPORT ALL DETAIL

   yes/no

   Indicate whether every address should be listed in the Assigned Addresses Report (one of the reports created by Batch Address Hygiene).

   NTH’ING FACTOR

   integer (4)

   If you entered “n” in the previous field, indicate the nth’ing factor to use for displaying addresses in the Assigned Addresses Report. For instance, if you want every tenth address to be displayed, enter “10”; if you want every hundredth address to be displayed, enter “100”.

3. Select Continue to begin cleansing addresses. When using Quadient, during processing the screen will display the number of addresses that have been uploaded for cleansing. In addition, an e-mail is sent by Quadient to the e-mail address specified in the Business Rules when the address cleansing process starts and completes.
4. After processing is complete, the Summary Statistics Report will appear. The standard viewing and printing options are available for this report. The other reports are saved to spool and can be viewed via the View/Print Utility (see View/Print). These reports are described below.

Entering Multiple Zip Codes

If you want to process addresses for only one ZIP Code, you can enter that ZIP in the ZIP Code field described in the table above. If you want to process multiple ZIPs, enter a “*” in the ZIP Code field, and the ZIP Code Selection screen will appear.

Select Add and enter each Zip code that should be included, one at a time. As a shortcut, you can enter incomplete Zip codes; all Zip codes beginning with those numbers will be included. For example, in the screen below “55” is entered—all Zip codes that begin with “55” will be processed.

When all Zip codes have been entered, press F4 and then Exit to return to the Address Hygiene Batch Processing Report.

Batch Address Hygiene Reports

Up to five reports are created during Batch Address Hygiene processing, as listed below. When addresses are not updated, only the Assigned Address Report, the Unassigned Address Report, and the Summary Statistics report are created.

• The Assigned Address Report lists addresses that were changed in address hygiene; both the new and old form of the address appear. A status code is also listed which tells which elements of the address were standardized (see Quadient status codes). Addresses where the core address elements remained unchanged will not be listed on this report, and if an nth’ing factor was used, only a fraction of the changed addresses will be listed. The core elements of an address are: the house number, house number modifier, prefix, street name, street type, suffix, unit type, unit, city, state, and Zip code.

• The Unassigned Addresses Report lists addresses that address correction was not able to confidently match to any address in the postal directories. An error code is listed with each address, explaining why the address could not be assigned (ssee Quadient status codes). Note that the report contains an LAC (Locatable Address Correction) setting, under the STREET NAME column. A “Y” in LACS CODE indicates that the US address (usually a rural route) needs to be converted to a standard street address (also referred to as “911 conversion”). Address correction does not have the capacity to make the change.

• The Update Audit Report is created only if the Circulation database was updated by Batch Address Hygiene. This report lists updated addresses that contained missing or incorrect elements, such as a missing Town of 25. An “FYI” column provides information about possible inconsistencies with the address.

• The Summary Statistics Report summarizes the Batch Address Hygiene process, listing the total addresses read, assigned and unassigned, among other things. This is the only report that is displayed after Batch Address Hygiene processing; the other reports are saved in files and must be viewed with the View/Print utility.

• The PS form 3553 can be submitted to the USPS as proof that addresses have been cleansed using CASS-certified software (necessary for automated discounts). The form 3553 may be recreated bi-monthly, after new postal directories are installed. Any time large numbers of addresses are added or modified within the database (for example, via List MatchPlus), Batch Address Hygiene should again be run on all addresses and a new form 3553 (or AAS report) created. When using Quadient, the report under the normal directory will just contain text indicating the name and location of the pdf version of the report downloaded from Quadient, which will be saved under the pdf directory. When running batch address hygiene and creating the form 3553, addresses in the database meeting the following conditions will show up in the “total addresses” count, but not in the “coded addresses” count on the 3553 (i.e., your percentages will be lowered):

  • Address is locked by another user.

  • The address does not have “US” or “CA” as the country name.

  • The address country is blank and publication country in Business Rules is not “US” or “CA”.

  • The address “cleanse” flag is set to “no”.

  • The address is a special address (military or foreign).

The table below shows the default file names used to save the reports.

Every time you run Batch Address Hygiene and use the default settings, the new reports will replace the reports previously saved. If you wish to keep a particular report saved with the default name, change its file name by selecting Utilities | System | View/Print.

An example of each of the reports can be found below.

Example—Assigned Address Report

Example—Unassigned Addresses Report

Example—Update Audit Report

Example—Summary Statistics Report

Example—USPS Form 3553

Quadient Error Codes

Change codes returned by Quadient appear on the Assigned Addresses report in the STATUS field, with an “S” prefix. Likewise, error codes returned by Quadient appear in the ERROR column on the Unassigned Addresses report, with an “E” prefix. These codes can be looked up from Quadient’s website, using this URL:

http://support.satorisoftware.com/developer-center/satori-infuse/default.html#api-reference/batch-processing-web/multi-service/fields/address-correction-code.html

Click the link labeled "known values" to view the codes.

SuiteLink

SuiteLink is a USPS database of business addresses that is utilized by Quadient during address cleansing. The purpose of SuiteLink is to append suite information to, or correct invalid suite information for, business addresses, based on the ZIP+4.

The SuiteLink codes returned by Quadient on the Batch Address Hygiene report include:

• A—SuiteLink match - secondary information exists and was assigned to this record as a result of SuiteLink processing.

• 00—SuiteLink no match - lookup was attempted but no matching record could be found.

• blank—A SuiteLink lookup was not attempted because either (1) the address was not a high-rise default according to CASS, or (2) the address did not contain a firm.

In order to use SuiteLink, the name of the business must be in the Last Name field in the Occupant record, or else in the Other Name field when the Other Name Usage field is set to “Firm”. If the firm name passed to Quadient is blank or the address does not DPV-confirm, SuiteLink will not be called.

Newspapers that own multiple publications may have a situation where, due to delivery or market considerations, subscribers of one pub need to be shifted to another pub. Obviously, making such a switch is a time-consuming process. However, by using this option, Product Change, you can save time and minimize data entry mistakes.

Product Change switches active or temp stopped subscribers from one publication (the “from” product) to another (the “to” product), based on delivery schedule, billing method, and route/district. A different delivery schedule and billing method can be specified for the “to” product, and the appropriate transactions are created to accomplish the switch. Both route and mail delivered subscribers can be shifted to the new publication.

Transactions Created by Product Change

Several different transactions may be created by Product Change, including starts, stops, and transfers. The following table describes the transactions and the role they play in the publication switch.

Special Considerations for Product Change

Before running Product Change, please take the following considerations into account:

• Because Product Change uses the router to determine the new route for each subscriber, you must have the router defined for the “to” product.

• The router does not need to be defined for mail subscribers. If the subscriber’s label group exists for the “to” publication, they will be assigned this label group, otherwise the label group will be determined by the subscriber’s Zip Code using Zip Label Group setup.

• Subscribers with future non-monetary transactions (for example, a delivery schedule change, billing change, or stop and restart with donation) will not be switched; instead, they will be written to an exception report. Subscribers with payments or available refunds will be switched, and the payment or refund will be taken into consideration in the transfer in transaction created for the “to” product.

• Subscribers currently in grace will be switched, but the grace amounts will not be transferred to the “to” product. Instead, the subscribers will be written to the exception report, and the grace amounts must be manually handled (if necessary).

• The subscriber’s rate will be transferred with the subscriber, unless the rate is not valid with the “to” publication. In that case, the subscriber will be rerated.

• If you have the billing method for the “to” publication set to office pay, but a route does not allow office pay subscribers, these subscribers will become carrier collect.

• If a subscriber already has an active or temp stopped subscription on the “to” publication, Product Change will only change the delivery schedule, based on the Product Change Setup option.

• Publishing runs for both the “to” and “from” products must be closed before this utility is run.

Running Product Change

To switch subscribers from one publication to another:

• If you have occupants that subscribe to both publications, you will need to specify how their delivery schedule should be changed in Product Change Setup.

• Select Product Change from the Subscription/Address menu.
• Select Add and complete the following fields. We recommend that before you do the actual product change, you run this option with Report Only set to “y” so that the exception report can be viewed for possible problems.

• Select Continue to begin processing. Subscribers of the “from” product assigned to the delivery schedule, billing method and routes, districts or label groups entered will be switched to the “to” product. As part of the process, the Product Change Utility report will be created, detailing the subscribers who had their publication switched by the process. The standard view/print options are available.

• Run Rerouting for the “to” product.

The Product Change Utility Report

The Product Change Utility report lists successful product changes, processing errors, and other information about the process. The report has seven distinct reporting areas:

• Successful Change. Lists subscriptions that were carrier collect in the “from” publication and are now carrier collect in the “to” publication.

• Transfer. Lists subscriptions that were office pay in the “from” publication and are now office pay in the “to” publication (Transfer Out and Transfer In transactions will be created for these subscribers).

• Transfer Grace. This is the same scenario as “Transfer”, but the subscriber was in grace in the “from” publication. No Transfer transactions will be created, and the grace amount must be manually entered.

• Grace. Lists subscriptions that were office pay in the “from” publication and in grace and are now carrier collect in the “to” publication. The grace amount will have to be handled manually.

• Refund Due. Lists subscriptions that were office pay in the “from” publication (and had a balance) and are now carrier collect in the “to” publication. An Available Refund transaction will be created when stop transaction is processed. The refunds must be entered manually.

• Pending Transaction. Lists subscribers that had pending transactions and were therefore not processed.

• Processing Error. Lists subscribers that were not processed because of some error (other than a pending transaction).

Example—Product Change Utility Report

This option allows you to change an account’s bill source. For example, you might change an account from weekly to monthly billing because he or she has turned 18. Because accounts are organized in the system by company and bill source, Change Bill Source will also move all payments, open items, and other records for the account to the new bill source.

To change the bill source for a account:

• Select Change Bill Source from the Account menu to display the Change Bill Source screen.

• Select Add and complete the following fields.

• Select Accept to process the bill source change. You can then change another bill source or select Exit to exit to the main menu.

About Audience Integration

Newscycle Circulation and Newscycle Audience can share occupant and address data, giving Audience a richer dataset for targeted content serving and ad serving on the newspaper website, as well as campaign generation.

Circulation occupant, address and subscription data can be loaded into Audience as source data via an API, and Audience can then send back selected profiles in a flat file, which can be imported via ListMatch and used to target profiles for campaigns in Circulation. For example, profiles for frequent website readers can be imported into Circulation via LM and targeted for a campaign to sell digital subscriptions.

Audience will use the occupant ID as a unique key for storing information about the occupant, including e-mail address, addresses, and subscription info. Once interfaced, occupants can be included in target profiles, allowing certain ads and content to be displayed on the publication website when the occupant logs in. Occupants can also be selected for marketing campaigns.

Initially, you may have your existing Circulation address/occupants loaded into Audience via a flat file, with the assistance of NEWSCYLE Professional Services. In addition, if you store demographic information in Circulation and would like to interface that data to Audience, if the demographic answers have an answer type of “Character” and the Map to Audience field in Demographic setup is set to “y” (see Demographic in the Setup Manual). After the initial load and setup is complete, you can update Audience with new or modified address/occupant information using an incremental sync.

Circulation data can be sent to the Audience API via the Audience Sync option.

Running Audience Sync

The Audience Sync option is used to export occupant, address, subscription, and demographic information from Circulation in a form that can be imported into Newscycle Audience. It can also be used to update incremental changes to occupant, address, subscription, and demographic information to Audience, either directly via a web service call or via export/import as done with the full export.

The file will be named audgenome.xml and be exported to /pbs/exchange/cm/. See Appendix B for the XML format and output examples.

The host name, URL, class path and WSDL used to communicate with the Audience web service are defined by Business Rules in the Audience section of Household Management. Business Rules also control the batch size of the web service call, whether passwords are interfaced, whether only subscribers are interfaced and, if so, which publications they are interfaced for, whether only one profile should be sent per occupant, and other settings pertaining to Audience Sync.

To run the Audience Sync utility:

• Select Audience Sync from the Audience menu in Graphical Utilities. The Audience Sync screen displays.

• Click the Add button and enter the following fields.

• Select Accept to perform the audience sync.

This option is typically used on holidays where the draw is significantly higher or lower than usual; it transfers or combines draws from another day to the holiday. Holiday draw can be run for either home delivery or single copy routes, and for actual or advance draw.

For home delivery routes, you can:

• Replace draw (draw for the replace day entirely replaces draw for the holiday).

• Take the maximum (the draw for each delivery schedule is compared for the two days and the maximum draw used).

While for single copy routes, you may:

• Replace draw (draw for the replace day entirely replaces draw for the holiday).

• Combine draw (draw for the replace day and holiday will be combined).

• Take the maximum (the larger of the two draws will be used).

If you are running Holiday Draw for actual draw, you must run it after transactions have been processed for the final time for the holiday, but before bundle tops, manifests, etc. have been printed. Similarly, for advance draw, you must run this utility after the holiday’s advance run has been started but before any advance run documents have been printed.

To adjust draw for a holiday:

• Select Holiday Draw from the Account menu to display the Holiday Draw screen.
• Select Add and complete the following fields.

  Field

  Type

  What to enter

  PRODUCT

  setup

  Enter the product for which to transfer draw.

  DRAW TYPE

  predefined

  Indicate whether holiday draw should be run for actual draw or advance draw. Advance draw is used in advance publishing, while actual draw is used in the regular publishing run.

  PUBLISH DATE

  date

  The last publishing date for which transaction processing has been run is displayed. This will be the day to which draw will be transferred (i.e., the holiday). This option does not check against Circulation’s Holiday Calendar. Therefore, be sure to double check your holiday dates. These dates should be verified a month prior to the actual holiday.

  REPLACE DATE

  date

  Enter the date from which to transfer draw.

  SINGLE COPY METHOD

  predefined

  Enter the method to use to replace the draw on the publish date for single copy outlets: none, replace (use Replace Date draw totals), combine (add draw totals) or maximum (use larger draw total).

  ROUTE METHOD

  predefined

  Enter the method used to replace the draw on the publish date for routes: none, replace (use Replace Date draw totals), maximum (use the larger draw total within each delivery schedule), or combine (copy the draw from all delivery schedules from the Replace Date that are not present on the publishing date).

• Select Accept to adjust the draw. Circulation will take the draw for each route on the replace date and replace, compare or combine it with the route draw on the holiday. If there is no corresponding replace day route, it will simply add the holiday route with its draw to the holiday draw. You should then print your bundle tops and carry out the rest of the publishing run.

An Example of Holiday Draw

As an example of how Holiday Draw would work, let us look at the draw for a typical home delivery route, route 09, using the following information:

So, on a typical week, the draw is 65 Monday-Friday, 45 on Saturday, and 60 on Sunday.

But on Monday, May 23rd (the holiday), we will use the draw for the following Sunday. If we were to use a Route Method of replace, the holiday draw would be 60 (45 on the Mon-Sun schedule, and 15 on the Sun schedule). But, for this example, we use a Route Method of maximum, and the holiday draw is 80:

So, on Monday the 23rd, Holmes would deliver 80 papers rather than 65. The extra 15 newspapers will be rated using the Sunday rate code specified for their rate—this means that the rate assigned to Holmes should have an amount and charge code specified for Sunday, even though Holmes does not deliver the route on Sunday.

The Reset Audience Sync option resets the run control record used by the Audience Sync utility in case the process is interrupted.

To reset the Audience Sync utility:

• Select Reset Audience Sync from the Audience menu in Graphical Utilities. The Reset Audience Sync screen displays.
• Click the Add button and set the last sync date and time.

• Click OK and then Continue to reset the run control record. A processing report will display with information about the reset (original and changed Last Sync Date and Last Sync Time).

You might, for various reasons, want to assign an account a new ID—for example, change a carrier, Jones, from “4B2” to “4B27”. Account IDs can be changed with this utility.

To change an account ID:

• Select Change Account ID from the Account menu to display the Change Account ID screen.

• Enter the old ID of the account you wish to change. Then enter the new account ID.

• The Message field will indicate when the account ID change has been processed. Change other account IDs, or press F4 to exit to the main menu.

The Rate Change utility facilitates across-the-board changes to account rates. You can use it, for example, to add 0.05 to the draw charge for all routes in the “City” AAM zone. The utility will change the value of rate codes, which are selected by one or more parameters, including:

Using the account rule/rate links, this utility finds all rate codes that meet the entered criteria. For example, if route 07 is entered as the only parameter, the utility will find all rule-rate links for which route 07 qualifies—those with a Route Rule with a route of “07” or “*”. To extend this example, if delivery schedule “DO” were entered along with route 07, only rule/rate links that had both a qualifying Route Rule and qualifying Delivery Rule would be selected.

Once rate codes are picked, the utility will determine if the rate code appears in any other rule/rate links. If the rate code appears in a rule/rate link that the selection parameters do not qualify for, the rate code will not be changed; instead it will be listed in the processing report that is displayed after the rate change is complete.

To run the Rate Change utility:

• Select Rate Change from the Account menu to display the Account Rate Change Utility screen.
• Select Add and complete the following fields. It is a good idea to run the utility once with Update set to “n”, verify that the correct rate codes are being selected, and then run it again with Update set to “y”.

  Field

  Type

  What to enter

  EFFECTIVE DATE

  date

  Enter the date on which the rate change should take place. Account draw on or after this date will be rated with the new rate.

  PRODUCT

  setup

  Enter the publication for which you are changing account rates.

  DISTRICT,

  ROUTE,

  AAM ZONE,

  DELIVERY SCHEDULE,

  ROUTE TYPE,

  ROUTE RATE CLASS,

  ACCOUNT TYPE,

  ACCOUNT RATE CLASS,

  DRAW TYPE, RATE CODE

  setup

  In these fields, enter your parameters for selecting rate codes. You can enter a single entity in a field, enter “*” to multi-select entities, or leave blank. Note that Rate Code refers to the account’s rate code (i.e., you will be picking rate codes directly). If multiple entities are entered, an account rating rule will qualify if it matches any of the entities or is “*”. If a field is left blank, it will qualify for all account rating rules.

  CHARGE TYPE

  predefined

  Indicate whether charge rate codes, credit rate codes, or both charge and credit rate codes should be changed.

  UPDATE

  yes/no

  Indicate whether rates should be changed. If you enter “n” here, no rate change will be created, but the utility will report which rate codes were selected and if any rate codes had conflicts.

  UPDATE TYPE

  predefined

  If Update is set to “y”, the New Rate window will open with these additional fields. Indicate whether to adjust or replace the rate codes selected.

  UPDATE AMOUNT

  decimal (9)

  Enter the rate change amount. If Update Type is “adjust”, the existing rate will be adjusted by this amount (enter “-” to adjust a rate down). If Update Type = “replace”, this will be the new rate. The wholesale rate (what the account is charged or credited) and retail rate (what account taxes are based on) may both be changed.

• Once the rate change amount is entered, select Continue to change the rates. If a rate code is to be changed, the utility will end-date the old rate code record and create a new rate code record with a start date equal to the effective date. After the rate changes are made, a processing report will display the rate codes that were changed and any rate codes that were not changed due to conflicts (i.e., some rule/rate links using the rate code were valid while others were not valid).

The Change Credit Status utility can be run in situations where you would like to change the credit status for all former subscribers on certain routes. This may be useful for promotions or for “rehabilitating” stopped subscribers with bad credit statuses. You may optionally generate tasks as part of this process.

To run this utility:

• Select Change Credit Status from the Subscription/Address menu to display the Change Credit Status screen.

• Select Add and complete the following fields.

• Select Accept to change the credit statuses.

About Duplicate Addresses

Circulation enables you to enter more than one occupant for the same address—several coworkers in one office, for example. Sometimes, however, the same address is mistakenly entered twice. Select Duplicate Address Edit to compare duplicate addresses and decide which addresses, if any, should be removed.

Business Rules determine whether Circulation accepts a duplicate address and whether a warning appears.

Editing Duplicate Addresses

To help you execute your decisions more quickly on screen, duplicate addresses are printed in the Duplicate Address Report the same as they appear when you select Dupl Address Edit.

Use the following procedure to edit duplicate addresses:

• Select Dupl Address Edit from the Subscription/Address menu to display the Duplicate Address Edit screen.

• Select Add. In Starting Address, enter the ID of the first address to check for duplicates. (When an address is brought into the Circulation database, either by operator entry or via conversion from an old data system, Circulation assigns it a unique numeric ID.) Also indicate whether the report should include only exact matches (exact matches must match on all of the items listed in the above table).

• Select Continue to begin the edit process. Circulation will check the database for duplicates of the first address (from Starting Address). It will then check for duplicates of the next address, moving up by address ID. If there is more than one duplicate for an address, the address will be paired with the best match. This means you may have to run Duplicate Address Edit more than once to find all duplicate addresses.

• Circulation will display the first duplicate address match.

• You will have four options with this set of duplicate addresses:

  • Keep address 1 (enter “1”)

  • Keep address 2 (enter “2”)

  • Keep both addresses (enter “n”)

  • Quit the edit process (enter “q”)

  If both addresses have occupants, you will have the same options available for editing the occupants (except for Quit). If you delete one address but keep both occupants, the occupants will be listed together under the remaining address. Subscription information is never deleted, just reassigned to the retained occupant/address.

• Continue with the edit until all addresses have been reviewed or you are ready to quit. A report will appear, listing information about the addresses you edited (the standard viewing and printing options are available).

Example—Duplicate Address Edit Report

The Circulation router is defined as a collection of address ranges. Each address range consists of two addresses—the “to” address and the “from” address. Addresses that fall in between the “to” and “from” addresses are defaulted to the specified route (see Router Utility for more information on the router).

When addresses are cleansed, it may happen that they no longer have the address elements (Zip code, street name, etc.) that fit the router. For example, if the router assigned addresses in the range of 300 Main St and 500 Main St to route 6, and 430 Main St was cleansed to 430 West Main St, the router would no longer assign it to route 6.

To prevent this from happening, the router addresses themselves can be cleansed with Router Address Hygiene. This utility cleanses both the “to” and “from” addresses, just as Batch Address Hygiene, and then compares the “to” and “from” addresses to make sure their address elements match (except for house number—the “to” and “from” addresses will, of course, have different house numbers). For example, with the router addresses mentioned above we might have:

In this case, the router addresses would not be updated, because the “to” and “from” address elements do not match. The four outcomes of Router Address Hygiene are listed below. Each outcome will print either on the Assigned Addresses Report or the Unassigned Addresses Report produced by the process.

To run the Router Address Hygiene utility:

• Select Router Address Hygiene from the Utilities | Subscription/Address menu to display the Router Address Hygiene Processing Report screen.
• Select Add and enter information in the fields described in the table below.

  Field

  Type

  What to enter

  SELECT BY

  predefined

  Indicate whether to update router segments defined by city, Zip Code, or both.

  ALL ZIPS

  yes/no

  If cleansing ZIP Code segments, indicate whether all ZIP Codes should be cleansed.

  ZIP CODE

  setup

  ALL CITIES

  yes/no

  If cleansing city segments, indicate whether all cities should be cleansed.

  CITY, COUNTY, STATE, COUNTRY

  setup

  If you entered “n” in the previous field, enter the city, county, state and country that should be cleansed. Enter “*” in City to multi-select cities.

  UPDATE

  yes/no

  Indicate whether router addresses should be updated. We recommend that you first run this utility without updating addresses, and study the reports produced.

  REPORT ALL DETAIL

  yes/no

  Indicate whether every address should be listed in the Assigned Addresses Report (one of the reports created).

  NTH’ING FACTOR

  integer (4)

  If you entered “n” in the previous field, indicate the nth’ing factor to use for displaying addresses in the Assigned Addresses Report. For instance, if you want every tenth address to be displayed, enter “10”.

  REQUIRE DUAL ASSIGNMENT

  yes/no

  Enter “y” if a router record should be assigned only when both the from and to addresses are assigned. Otherwise enter “n”.

• Select Continue to begin processing. Router Address Hygiene will compare the ZIP Code, street name, street type, prefix and suffix of the router address to postal directories and cleanse the address if necessary. If the router address has no ZIP Code, Router Address Hygiene will instead use the city, county, state and country for comparison. If a cleansed address has a street type, city, county, or state not set up in Circulation, Circulation will add it to the database.

• Three reports are produced by the process: the Assigned Address Report (the default spool name begins RTRHYB1), The Unassigned Address Report (RTRHYB2), and the Summary Statistics Report (RTRHYB3). See Batch Address Hygiene Reports for more information on the reports. These reports can be viewed and printed from the View/Print Utility.

Example—Assigned Address Report (Router Hygiene)

Example—Unassigned Address Report (Router Hygiene)

Example—Summary Statistics Report(Router Hygiene)

When running the Product Change option to shift subscribers from one publication to another, some or all of your subscribers of the “from” publication might also have an active or temp stopped subscription with the “to” publication. In this case, no starts or stops will be created. However, the delivery schedule can be changed for the “to” publication. To do this, you specify the delivery schedule with this option, Product Change Setup.

To set up the Product Change utility:

• Select Product Change Setup from the Subscription/Address menu to display the Product Change Delivery Schedule Setup screen.

• Select Add and enter the delivery schedules for the “from” and “to” products, and the delivery schedule that subscribers should be changed to. For example, in the screen above, all of the subscribers to publication GZ who have delivery schedule DO (daily only) and also have a subscription to publication DM with delivery schedule DO, will have their DM delivery schedule changed from DO to DS (daily and Sunday).

• Select Accept to enter the product setup into the database.

• Enter other delivery schedules for the “to” and “from” products. You should enter records for each possible delivery schedule for the “to” publication. For example, if you are switching publication GZ subscribers with a delivery schedule of DO to publication DM, you might set up the following records for the DM delivery schedules:

This utility allows you to import a file of subscribers or to extend grace periods for all subscribers in grace within a certain date range (only non-combo subscribers who are currently in grace can be extended using this option). You can extend grace a specified number of days, or have all grace end at a specified date.

To extend grace days:

• Select Extend Grace Days from the Subscription/Address menu to display the Extend Grace Days screen.

• Select Add and complete the following fields.

• Select Accept to process the grace extends.

This option allows you to delete individual subscriptions, for example in the case where duplicate subscriptions were entered in error. Circulation will only allow you to delete a subscription if:

• The subscription is permanently stopped.

• All subscription activity for the subscription has been processed.

• All financial activity including payments, NSFs, canceled payments and unearned revenue is at least 180 days old, based on the last publishing date.

To delete a subscription:

• Select Subscription Purge from the Subscription/Address menu to display the Subscription Purge screen.

• Select Add and enter the account number of the subscription that should be deleted. Or, enter “*” and add multiple subscriptions on the Account List Maintenance screen.

• Select Continue to delete the subscription and all subscription activity. A report will appear, listing the account number that was deleted—the standard viewing and printing options are available.

Circulation can create a report listing all duplicate addresses in the Circulation database. Using the report, you can locate problem addresses, and run Duplicate Address Edit more efficiently. The criteria for determining duplicate addresses is the same in both functions (see the table on Dupl Address Edit).

To create this report:

• Select Duplicate Address Report from the Subscription/Address menu to display the Duplicate Address Report screen.

• Select Add and enter the ID of the first address number you want included in the report in Starting Address. Also indicate whether the report should include only exact matches.

• Select Continue to process the report.

Example—Duplicate Address Report

Dupl Address Purge

Duplicate Address Purge allows you to remove all duplicate addresses after a specified address number, at one time. The address with the lowest address number is retained, and occupant and subscription information associated with duplicate addresses is automatically assigned to the remaining address. If duplicate occupants are encountered (i.e., first name, last name, and phone are a perfect match), the oldest occupant record is kept.

To qualify as duplicate addresses, two addresses must have the same:

• Zip

• Street

• House #

• House Modifier (for example, “a” in 401a Portland Ave”)

• Street Prefix (“North” in “36 North Portland Ave”)

• Street Suffix (“North” in “36 Portland Ave North”)

• Street Type (“Ave” in “36 Portland Ave”)

• Unit #

To purge duplicate addresses:

• Select Dupl Address Purge from the Subscription/Address menu to display the Duplicate Address Purge screen.
• Select Add. In Starting Address, enter the ID of the address where purging should begin (addresses with a lower ID number will be skipped). Also indicate whether the report should include only exact matches (exact matches must match on all of the items listed on Dupl Address Edit).

• Select Continue to begin purging duplicate addresses. In this process, Circulation automatically reassigns all information associated with each address in a set of duplicates to the one retained address. For example, if the addresses whose IDs are 45, 2615, and 10045 are duplicates, only address 45 is retained in the database and all information associated with addresses 2615 and 10045 is assigned to address 45.

• As part of the purge process, the Duplicate Address Purge report will be created.

Example—Duplicate Address Purge Report

Address demographics are usually answered for subscribers individually in Customer Service (for example, during a new start), or are imported via List MatchPlus. This utility, however, allows you to set the answer of an address demographic for a whole range of addresses, or change answers if they have already been assigned. You can run the utility for a range of street numbers, and entire street, or even an entire Zip code.

For example, you might have an address demographic called “Deliver TM”, which is used to select addresses for your TM products. You are expanding your alternate delivery routes, and now all addresses in Zip code 55107 can receive TM products. You can run this utility for Zip code 55107, and all addresses within that Zip code will have their “Deliver TM” answers changed from “no” to “yes”.

To run the Address Demographics utility:

• Select Address Demographics from the Subscription/Address menu to display the Update Address Demographics screen.

• Select Add and complete the following fields.

• Select Continue to run the utility. If a selected address already has the demographic answered, the answer will be changed; if the demographic is not answered, the answer will be added. When the process is finished, a report will appear, either listing the addresses changed or giving the total number of addresses changed (the summary version).

Newspapers sometimes offer bonus days to subscribers not on a 7-day delivery schedule. Bonus days are special days (typically holidays) on which the subscriber will receive the paper, even though it is not a normal delivery day for them. For example, if New Year’s Day falls on a Monday, the newspaper might still offer to deliver a special edition to subscribers with weekend-only delivery schedules. In this case, Monday, January 1st would be marked as a “holiday bonus” day.

Bonus days can be easy to managed and track in Circulation. The bonus day feature works as follows:

• Using this option, bonus days are defined separately for each delivery schedule. Newscycle recommends defining bonus days for at least as far in the future as your longest subscription term. For example, if your longest term is 1 year, you should define premium days for at least the next year (and ideally for the next two years).

• Run the to create the bonus day transactions for existing subscribers.

• When a start or billing change is entered, the subscriber can be flagged to receive bonus days, or not. Flagging a subscriber to receive bonus days will cause a bonus day transaction to be created for each bonus day for which the subscriber qualifies. Mail and third party subscribers are not eligible for bonus days. Hybrid subscribers are eligible only on bonus days that are route-delivered. Online subscribers are eligible for bonus days only if Valid for Online is set to “y” in Bonus Days setup (described below).

• You may wish to run the Bonus Day Delivery utility the day before each scheduled bonus day to update bonus day transactions with the most current route information and add bonus day transactions for subscribers who qualify, but do not already have them.

• Bonus day transactions will be processed by Transaction Processing. If bonus day transactions are processed after the bonus day, a suspended draw adjustment batch will be created for the transactions. Business Rules determine the draw adjust code used with the batch. The batch must be accepted in Route Adjust.

• The Route Delivery List can include bonus day papers to be delivered on the run date. Bonus day messages can also be printed on the bundle tops, depending on the bonus day reason code and Business Rules. A bonus day message will be printed if a subscriber has a bonus day transaction for that day.

• Subscribers can optionally be charged a premium for the bonus day using the . This can apply both to subscribers who would not normally receive the paper on the delivery day, and subscribers who would receive the paper but are being charged a premium amount for a special edition delivered on the bonus day.

• Special account rates can be set up to charge and credit home delivery carriers for bonus day papers.

• Bonus days affect the account GL. Subscriber GL accounts are affected only if Bonus Day Adjustment is run.

To define bonus days for a delivery schedule:

1. Select Bonus Day Setup from the Subscription/Address menu in Graphical Utilities to display the Bonus Day screen.
2. Click the Add icon and complete the following fields.

   Field

   Type

   What to enter

3. Click OK to enter the bonus day information into the database.

4. To create bonus day transactions for the bonus day, run the .

Due to changes in your router, your bonus day setup, or for other reasons, you may want to update bonus day transactions for all subscribers and create new transactions for the correct days and routes. This is the purpose of the Bonus Day Delivery utility. See for more information about bonus days in general.

When a subscriber is flagged for bonus day papers as part of a new start or billing change, a bonus day transaction is created. Separate transactions are created for each bonus day, and the transactions include the delivery route valid for that delivery date (based on the router). If the subscriber permanently stops or changes delivery schedules, the bonus day transactions are removed automatically. In addition, deleting a start transaction that is flagged for bonus days will also delete the bonus day transaction.

When this utility is run, Circulation creates bonus day transactions for all subscribers who should receive a bonus paper on the specified bonus day. If a bonus day transaction already exists for a subscriber for that bonus day, a new bonus day transaction will overwrite the old one. Also, the delivery schedule can be set up to specifically include opt-out subscribers. bonus day transactions will not be created for temp-stopped subscribers.

To run the Bonus Day Delivery utility:

• Select Bonus Day Delivery from the Subscription/Address menu in Graphical Utilities to display the Bonus Day Delivery screen.
• Click Add and complete the following fields.

  Field

  Type

  What to enter
• Click OK and then Continue to run the utility.

• Once processing is completed, a processing report will display any errors that occurred. The standard view/print options are available.

The bonus days set up for one year can be copied to another year, using the Copy Bonus Day Setup utility. This includes premium days as well as free bonus days.

Copy Bonus Day Setup

• Select Copy Bonus Day Setup from the Subscription/Address menu in the Utilities module. The Copy Bonus Day Setup screen displays.
• Click the Add button and enter the criteria for copying bonus days.

  Field

  Type

  What to enter
• Click OK and Continue to run the utility. The bonus days will be copied to the “To” year and a processing report will display, listing the bonus dates copied (if run in Edit mode, the bonus days will not be copied, but the processing report will list the days eligible to be copied).

This utility is used to select a group of subscribers and change their delivery schedules. For example, you may want to force all weekend-only subscribers to a Fri-Sun schedule. The delivery schedule change will not change the expiration dates of these subscriptions. Rating information will be recalculated to allow these subscribers to receive more papers within the same period.

After running this utility, a report will be displayed that shows all accounts that met the criteria entered on this screen.

To run the Delivery Schedule Change utility:

• Select Deliv Sched Change from the Utilities | Subscription/Address menu in Graphical Utilities to display the Delivery Schedule Change screen.
• Select Add and complete the following fields.

  Field

  Type

  What to enter
• Select OK and then Continue to change the delivery schedules.

Use Batch Transactions to accept, reject, or suspend batches created using other processes.

Note: Currently, this option can be used only for batches created with the Stop Utility.

To run this utility:

• Select Subscription/Address | Batch Transactions in Graphical Utilities to display the Batch Transaction Utility window.

• In the Batch field, select the batch you want to view. The following information will be displayed:

  • The process that created the batch (i.e., Stop Utility).

  • The user who created the batch.

  • The total number of transactions in the batch.

At this point, you can:

• Delete transactions from the batch. To delete a transaction, select the Delete checkbox and click Delete Selected. You also have the option of selecting and unselecting all transactions at once.

• Accept the batch by clicking Accept.

• Reject and remove the batch by clicking Reject.

• Suspend the batch for future review by clicking Suspend.

This utility extends all active non-combo subscriptions by route for a user-defined number of days.

To run this utility:

• Select Extend Expire Dates from the Utilities | Subscription/Address menu in Graphical Utilities to display the Extend Expire Dates screen.

• Select Add and complete the following fields.

• Select OK and Continue to update the expire dates.

Subscription-length pricing allows you to define rates for subscribers based on their subscription length (the number of days they have been active subscribers). For example, you may wish to give all year-long subscribers a better rate than new subscribers or gradually reduce subscription rates incrementally at 6-month, 1-year, and 2-year breakpoints. Or, you may wish to gradually transition your long-term subscribers to your highest rates.

Subscription-length pricing stores subscription length information as subscription demographics. The subscription rule in rate setup (and links in Rate Links) defines the subscription-length pricing rates. Several Business Rules in the Subscriber Accounting section control various aspects of subscription-level pricing.

This utility updates subscription lengths and creates billing changes to update rates for subscribers who have crossed over to the next subscription level. For all office-pay subscribers (including promo, reduced, and normal rates), this utility will add, change, or remove subscription-length levels based on the length of service. For subscribers on “normal” rates, it will also create billing changes to update the rates where appropriate.

To run this utility:

• Select Subscription/Address | Sub Length Pricing in Graphical Utilities to display the Subscription Length Pricing window.
• Click Add and complete the following fields.

  Field

  Type

  What to enter
• Click OK and then Continue to run the utility.

ACS (Address Change Service) is a USPS program that provides businesses with information relating to their undeliverable mail. As part of this program, a participant can be sent a file with undeliverable customers. This includes both customers who have had a change of address (“COAs”), and customers living at invalid addresses (“nixies”).

If your newspaper is part of this program, you can use this option to import the ACS undeliverable file provided to you by the USPS into Circulation, creating temporary stops for subscribers that have moved or who live at undeliverable addresses. In order to qualify for an undeliverable file, your mail labels must have the subscription ID print in the ACS Keyline position (this can be done with Label Designer). The subscription ID of undeliverable subscribers is then passed back in the ACS file. More information about the ACS program can be found by contacting the USPS.

The ACS Update will:

• Import the ACS undeliverable file and match the subscription ID with a subscription in Circulation.

• Create a temporary stop for all subscribers matched, unless a future temporary stop has already been entered.

• Update a demographic specified by the user.

• Print any errors to a processing report.

To import an ACS undeliverable file:

• Select ACS Update from the Subscription/Address menu to display the Address Change Service Report/Update screen.
• Select Add and complete the following fields.

  Field

  Type

  What to enter
• Select Continue to import the ACS file. After processing is completed, a report will list the number of records imported and other information about the process (for example, subscribers who already had future temp stops will be listed).

The Stop Utility allows you to generate a list of subscribers and create a batch of permanent or temporary stop transactions for some or all of them. For example, you may want to generate a list of subscribers who have been temp stopped for 30 or more days due to nonpayment, and stop them permanently.

To run this utility:

• Select Subscription/Address | Stop Utility in Graphical Utilities to display the Stop Utility window.
• Click Add and complete the following fields.

  Field

  Type

  What to enter
• Click OK and then Continue to produce the report and/or create the stop transactions.

• If you created transactions, you must accept the batch using the Batch Transaction Utility (below).

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.

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.

• 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.

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.

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.

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:
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.
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.

This section guides the user through the menu options that are available under the System menu.

This section guides the user through the menu options that are available under the Setup menu.

This section guides the user through the menu options that are available under the Tools menu.

Use this feature to automate the execution of certain options. For example, you can set up some publishing run processes in one batch, or run a group of reports. Most options that produce output can be included in batches (e.g., reports, account billing, the publishing run). Options that input data into the system (such as Services and Setup options, payment entry options, or Press Room Entry) cannot be included in batches.

One aim of batch processing is to reduce the time spent entering parameters for Circulation’s processing options. For example, parameters must be entered for multiple options during the publishing run (starting the run, printing bundle tops, the DM report, etc.). Since the publishing run will generally be processed with the same parameters every day, these parameters can be saved as part of a batch and run automatically.

Another advantage to batch processing is that it reduces the chance for errors due to incorrect parameters being entered. Also, it can allow a sequence of events, such as an account billing run, to proceed without needing operator intervention. A newspaper could have its account billing run set up as a batch process, and instruct a night operator to run the process before leaving at midnight. The account billing run could then process when there was no other activity on the system.

How to Operate Batch Processing

To set up and run batch processing:

1. Save the parameters for each option to be included in the batch by selecting Save from the option’s strip menu (see Save and Find). You may set up fields that should be prompted for when the option is run, and these prompts will appear (in alphabetical order) before you run your batch.

   • During the Save, be sure to check the settings in the View & Print Options Window—these settings will be used by the batch when processing the report. You will want to have either View or Save set to “y”. In File Name, you may want to change the file name extension to “<N>” (current day of month) “<D>” (current week day) or “<M>” (current month). For example if your file name is “RTL” and the batch is run on the Wednesday June 5th, the extensions would result in the following file names:

     • RLT.<N> would result in RLT.05

     • RLT.<D> would result in RLT.WED

     • RLT.<M> would result in RLT.JUN

2. Use Batch Setup to assemble the saved parameters for the options you want to include into a batch.

3. Enter the View/Print Utility and select Run to run the batch. Or, run the batch from a UNIX prompt (see Running a Batch from a Command Line).

Setting Up a Batch

After parameters for each option to be included in the batch have been saved, the batch can be set up using this option.

To set up a batch:

• Select Batch Setup from the System menu to display the Batch Setup screen.

• Select Add and complete the following fields.

• Select Specifics to add individual options to this batch (see below).

• Select Accept to complete the batch setup. The batch is now ready to run. Note that you cannot Accept this record until you define a batch input record by selecting Specifics.

Specifics, Batch Input

After a batch has been set up, specify the options that should belong to the batch with this specific. Each option must have a previously saved file containing field parameters for that option.

To use this option:

• Select Specifics | Batch Setup from the Batch Setup screen to display the Batch Input Setup screen.

• Select Add and complete the following fields.

• Select Accept to accept the file. You can now add other saved files to the batch, or press F4 and select Exit to return to the Batch Setup screen.

Running a Batch from a Command Line

You may find it more convenient to run a batch from a command line or job scheduling software than from the View/Print Utility. To run a batch in this manner, you simply enter a batch print command at the UNIX prompt or in the job scheduler. The format for the batch print command is:

<app> -b -B /tmp/batch.log -p viewprint/initbatch -P “<batchname>”

The parameters are as follows:

• <app> is the application name. In most cases it will be “cm”.

• -b tells the program to skip the display of the startup banner.

• -B puts the process into background mode and sends the regular output to the file /tmp/batch.log.

• -p specifies the program to run, in this case viewprint/initbatch

• -P specifies the name of the batch

An example of the command might be:

cm -b -B /tmp/batch.log -p viewprint/initbatch -P “AAMDaily”

This would run the batch “AAMDaily”. In addition to the batch name, parameters for set fields can also be specified in the “-P” command. For example, if batch “AAMDaily” includes the Daily AAM and AAM History reports, and you have set up the batch to prompt for Start Date and End Date in both reports, you could specify them by expanding the “-P” command like this:

-P “AAMDaily:STARTDATE=01/15/2001,ENDDATE=01/31/2001”

This option is used to accept all suspended batches of subscriber payments that are not currently in use.

Imported and system-generated batches (such as Customer Services payment batches) will only be auto-accepted if the Business Rule— Should batches that are imported or created by the system be accepted automatically? is set to “Yes.” If these batches can be auto-applied, one-time bank draft batches from Customer Services will only be applied if another Business Rule— Should payment batches containing one-time bank draft payments be auto accepted?, is set to “Yes.”

To accept all suspended batches:

• Select Subscription/Address | Auto Accept Batches in Graphical Utilities to display the Auto Accept Batches window. Currently, only subscriber payment batches can be accepted automatically, and the Batch Type field cannot be modified.

• Click Add.

• Click OK to accept all open batches.

Select Check Date & Time from the System menu to display date and time information. Press Enter to exit to the main menu.

There are two methods to control the viewing and printing of reports that you create in Circulation, as shown below.

Viewing and printing reports:

• Select View/Print from the System menu to display the View/Print Utility screen.

• Strip menu options on this screen are described in the following table.

The Process Log is a record of all report inputs, warnings and errors that develop while running jobs. You may want to delete log files that are older than a certain date, in order to save disk space.

To purge the process log:

• Select Purge Process Log from the System menu in Graphical Utilities to display the Purge Process Log screen.
• Enter the cutoff date and log type.

  Field

  Type

  What to enter

  CUTOFF DATE

  date

  Enter the cutoff date. Only processes that occurred on or before this date are purged. Choose a cutoff date 30-45 days prior to the current date. Process log information should be retained for at least 30 days for error tracking purposes.

  LOG TYPE

  predefined

  Indicate what should be included in the report: info (general information about processes started and completed, etc.), warning (minor errors which do not affect data integrity), error (a more significant problem which may affect data integrity), or fatal (an error which causes some or all processing activity or printing to cease or be skipped). Enter “*” to multi-select log types.

• Click OK and then Continue to begin the purge.

Select Check Disk Space from the System menu to display disk space information. Press Enter to exit to the main menu.

Select Who’s Logged In from the System menu to display a list of users logged into your system.

If there is more information than can display on one screen, press Enter to scroll down. Press Enter (or F4 and Enter) to exit to the main menu.

The Process Log contains two kinds of information:

• Inputs and processing messages from any process that produces a report. This includes transaction and account bill processing, for example, as well as all of the options on the Reports menu.

• Error messages from transactions. Most of these transactions are entered in Services. If a transaction does not produce an error, it will not be entered in the Process Log.

To produce this report:

• Select Process Log Report from the System menu in Graphical Utilities to display the Process Log List screen.
• Click Add and complete the following fields.

  Field

  Type

  What to enter

  START DATE END DATE

  date

  Enter the date range to cover in the report.

  ALL LOG CLASSES LOG CLASS

  yes/no predefined

  To include all messages in the Process Log, check All Log Classes. Or, select the log class to include: Indicate whether the report should include info messages, warnings (minor errors that do not affect data integrity), more significant errors, or fatal errors.

  ALL USERS USER NAME

  yes/no open (60)

  Select the user(s) whose processes would be included in the report, or check All Users to include log messages from processes run by all users.

  ALL TITLES TITLE

  yes/no predefined

  Enter the title of the report area under which these messages were produced, or check All Titles to include all reports. Click the lookup icon to the right of the Title field to display a list of report titles. Customer Service transactions are valid but they are not included in the lookup.

  FUNCTION LIST

  predefined

  Enter the function (such as “transfer in” or “validate truck name”) to include in the report. We recommend that you enter an asterisk (*) to include all functions.

  TTY LIST

  open (60)

  Enter the terminal ID to include in the report (enter “*” to include all). Your terminal ID will default.

• Select OK and then Continue to produce the report.

Example—Process Log Report

When writing a custom program or using Results (where you create ad hoc reports), it is useful to have a list of all files where a certain field is referenced. Use Find Fields to produce this list.

To use this option:

• Select Find Fields from the System menu to display the Find Fields Report screen.

• Select Add and enter a text string for which you want to search. You can press F2 to select from a list of exact field names.

• Select Continue to produce the list. The list can be viewed and printed like other reports.

This option is useful when setup must be changed for a large number of routes. For example, say that the Sunday edition for all routes in a certain district must be changed from “Early” to “Final”. Instead of modifying route setup for each route individually, you can run Bulk Route Changes and change all the routes at once. The setup information that can be updated with this tool includes:

• District

• Edition

• Depot

• Service Area

• Delivery Schedule

• Insert Group (InsertPlus sites only)

• Route Class

• Route Name

• Allow Office Pay Flag

• Allow Carrier Collect Flag

To run the utility:

• Select Bulk Route Changes from the Setup menu.
• Select Add and complete the following fields.

  Field

  Type

  What to enter

  PRODUCT

  setup

  Enter the product to which these routes belong.

  ROUTE OPTION

  predefined

  Indicate whether bulk changes are being made to home delivery routes, single copy routes, or both.

  SELECTION TYPE

  predefined

  Indicate whether this utility should change routes in a particular district, zone, region, or area, or an individual route.

  SELECTION VALUE

  setup

  Enter a particular district, zone, region, area or route (depending on the selection type entered above) for which to run the utility, or enter “*” to multi-select.

  EFFECTIVE DATE

  date

  Enter the date on which the setup changes should take effect.

  DISTRICT SERVICE AREA DELIVERY SCHEDULE INSERT GROUP ROUTE CLASS ROUTE NAME SINGLE COPY LOCATION ALLOW OFFICE PAY ALLOW CARRIER COLLECT EDITION (SUN - SAT) DEPOT (SUN-SAT) DEPOT DROP ORDER

  setup setup setup setup setup open (25) open (30) yes/no yes/no setup setup integer (8)

  For each setup item that should be changed, enter the new value. If an item should not be changed, leave it blank. For example, if you only want to change the Sunday edition from “Early” to “Final”, enter “Final” in the first EDITION field and leave all other fields blank.

• Select Continue to make the route setup changes. For each route, the utility will look for an existing record with the values entered here; if it cannot find a record with these values, it will end date the old record and create a new record using the Effective Date field as the start date.

  The exceptions are delivery schedule and route name. A new delivery schedule record is created for the route if one does not already exist; however no other delivery schedule records are modified. In the case of route name, the existing record is changed to reflect the new name. After the route changes have been made, the Bulk Route Changes report will appear, listing all of the records that have been created or changed.

The performance analysis tools can be used by system administrators and others to determine the users and processes that are affecting system performance. These tools are primarily database tools; they display the total number of reads, writes, and accesses to a database either by user or by database table. There are two basic types of tools:

• Reports. The Table Statistics Report, Index Statistics Report, and User Statistics Report list the number of reads, writes, and accesses to a table, index, or by a user since the database was started.

• Interactive Tools. The User Statistics and Table Statistics interactive tools display the number of reads, writes, and accesses to a database within a time period (for example, the last 10 seconds), by user or table.

These tools are based on Progress VSTs (Virtual System Tables—see your Progress documentation for more information on VSTs). The tools can help you analyze system performance issues. For example, if subscriber payment processing is taking an unusually long time, you could run the Table Stats tool to see how many records are being written while it processes, and what tables are involved.

Reports

There are three reports that can be run to analyze system performance:

• The User Statistics Report lists the number of reads, writes, and accesses to one or more databases by the current sessions. Each session’s user name is listed, and the sessions are listed in order of total number of accesses (with the highest users at the top of the report). The report can be run in detail mode (each database broken out separately) or in summary mode (only one line for all databases).

• The Table Statistics Report lists the number of reads, writes, creates and deletes that have been made to each table in one or more databases since the database was started. The report can list tables alphabetical by table name, or in order of reads (with the tables with the most reads at the top of the report).

• The Index Statistics Report lists the number of reads, writes, creates and deletes that have been made to each index in one or more databases since the database was started. The report can list tables alphabetical by index name, or in order of reads.

All of the reports have the standard view/print options.

Example—User Statistics Report

Example—Table Statistics Report

Example—Index Statistics Report

Interactive Tools

The interactive tools give a snapshot of what is going on in the system between regular time intervals. There are two interactive tools. The User Statistics tool displays the reads, writes, and accesses for the top users within a given period of time. The Table Statistics tools displays the same thing, but for tables rather than users.

When running either of these tools you must define:

• Whether users should be sorted in order of the number of database writes, reads, or accesses. With tables, the sorting can be in reads, updates, creates or deletes.

• The number of users (or tables) displayed.

• Whether to update the display and, if so, the time interval (in seconds) at which the display is updated.

• Whether the number should be the number of reads, writes and accesses since the tool was started (cumulative) or since the display was last updated.

Once started, the tool will display the top users or tables. If run with Repeat = “y”, the screen will update every fifteen seconds (or whatever time period you entered in Every).

To exit from the interactive tools, press F4.

Circulation stores a great deal of detailed information—such as subscriber transactions, route draw detail and service messages—that may be purged from the system after a certain time period, in order to conserve disk space. How long history should be kept varies with the type of detail. For example AAM history should be kept as required by the Audit Bureau of Circulation, depending on your audit cycle.

Detailed information can be purged from the History Purge menu. The same standard process is used in all purges, as described below.

Process to Purge History

To purge detailed information after a certain period of time has elapsed:

• Select the appropriate option from the History Purge menu. For example, to delete AAM circulation data, select AAM Histories. Each of these options is described below.
• Select Add and enter the purge fields. The fields will differ from option to option, but there will always be a Cutoff Date field. Detail information that was created on or before the date you enter here will be deleted from the system.

• Select Continue to begin the purge.

• A Processing Status window will display the number of records purged as it proceeds. When the purge is completed, you may be prompted to press the space bar.

AAM Histories

You can purge historical AAM circulation figures with this option. Circulation is retained for AAM zone, AAM Zip code, and AAM Town on a daily basis. This information is used for AAM reporting, so be sure that you will not need to run AAM reports for any dates before the cutoff date. The fields for this purge are described below.

Addr/Occu/Subs Audit

This option enables you to purge audit trail records of address, occupant and subscription modifications, deletions and additions made on or before a specified cutoff date. The data, of course, will remain in the database—only the audit trail records will be deleted.

Charges

This option allows you to purge records of charges (except those for the current year or later) and credits incurred by accounts before a specified cutoff date. Purging charge records will not change account balances. The fields for this purge are described below.