On certain occasions such as holidays, a publication may have special editions, or routes might deliver different editions than they normally would. For example, if the newspaper is closed on Christmas, a route might deliver edition “Early”, dropped off the night before, rather than edition “Late” on Christmas day.

Circulation allows you to change the editions delivered by routes based on alternate edition models. These models are set up in advance (see the Setup Manual) and indicate the edition each route should deliver when the model is used. You can have several different alternate edition models—for example, an “Xmas” model, an “election” model, and a “snow day” model. Alternate edition models are used only with routes; editions delivered to mail subscribers (which is determined by their label group) cannot be changed in this manner.

Use Edition Override to override the editions for a regular or advanced publishing run.

To override editions:

• Select Edition Override from the Publishing menu to display the Edition Override Setup window. This option is available only if you have alternate edition models set up.

• Click the Add Edition Override Setup button ().
• Complete the following fields and click OK to add the override.

  Field

  Type

  What to enter

  PRODUCT

  setup

  Enter the product whose editions will be overridden.

  RUN TYPE

  predefined

  Indicate whether the edition override will be for the regular (actual) publishing run, or for the advance publishing run.

  RUN DATE

  date

  Enter the publishing date on which the edition override will occur.

  PAPER SECTION

  setup

  If you are entering an edition override for an advance publishing run, you can specify a section to which the override applies, or enter “*” to include all sections. Advance processing bundle tops, stacker, and truck manifests will use the alternate edition model only when run for the sections indicated here.

  EDITION MODEL

  setup

  Specify the edition model that should be used for this product on this publishing date. Each route will receive the edition defined for it under this model.

This option allows you to list the editions that are valid for a given publication, day of the week, departure, and truck sequence. If an edition lists exists for a day of the week, the following options will be limited to these editions:

• Stacker Interface

• Truck Manifest

• Bundle Tops

• Route Labels

• Status/Collection Cards

• Previous Delivery Labels

• Single Copy Receipts

To add an edition list:

• Select Edition List Setup from the Publishing menu to display the Edition List Inclusion Setup window.

• Click the Add Distribution Info button ().

• Complete the following fields and click OK to add the edition list.

Messages (aka, notifications) can be distributed to accounts using a variety of methods. In addition to the usual bundle tops, messages can be exported to files and distributed via e-mail, FTP, telephone, or the Web. This option uses file mapping, and a “Carrier Mail Export” file map must be created before the notification methods can be defined using Carrier Message Rule (see Carrier Message Rule). Once the notification methods are defined, and a file map has been created, carrier messages can be exported using this option.

To run the export:

• Select Carrier Mail Export from the Publishing menu to display the Carrier Mail Export window.

• Click the Add icon in the icon bar ().
• Complete the following fields.

  Fields

  Type

  What to enter
• Click Add Another if you want to perform an additional export at this time. If not, click OK and then Continue to export carrier messages. The export file will be created in the /dti/exchange/cm directory.

The Publishing module is used for the daily distribution of your publication. You will use many Publishing options each day as part of the daily “publishing run”. Two basic activities take place during the run:

• Transactions entered in Services, Accounting, and elsewhere will be processed (using Transaction Processing). These include new starts, stops, and moves, to name a few. From this information (and the subscriber payments that were processed using Payment Processing), Circulation can determine which subscribers should receive a paper on this particular day.

• Distribution documents can be printed, including bundle tops, truck manifests, and mail labels. These documents are crucial to the distribution of any publication.

You can perform mail and route processing in separate publishing runs. This allows you to perform mail processing much earlier than route processing for the publishing date if you wish, which means Customer Service activity may continue for route-delivered subscribers after mail processing has begun. If the publication has separate edition cutoff times, each edition will have a separate route run. You can also have an “advance” publishing run in order to print bundle tops and other materials for a section of the paper, such as comics, that is delivered beforehand and inserted by the carrier on the delivery day.

You can run Transaction Processing more than once during a publishing run. This enables you to process the bulk of transactions early in your publishing day. When you are ready to create distribution documents, run Transaction Processing for the final time. Once final Transaction Processing has started, transactions can no longer be entered for that publishing day and product unless backdating is allowed (Business Rules determine the number of days a transaction can be backdated). Final Transaction Processing can be undone, however, by running Undo Final Tran Proc.

A publishing run involves eight basic steps (shown below). Within these steps, you carry out various functions in Circulation, some that are mandatory and others that can be performed as needed.

1. If you are distributing one or more sections of the newspaper in advance, do an advance publishing run. When the rest of the paper arrives, the carrier will insert the advance sections into it.

2. Begin publication day processing by running the Start Publ Run option to specify the product and delivery method (route, mail, or both) to be processed. At this time, you can also define bundle sizes and other delivery information for the run (using Enter Bundle Info and Import Bundle Sizes) and specify an alternate edition to use, if necessary (using Edition Override). Bundle and edition override information can be entered for any future product or date regardless of the publishing run, but must be entered before any distribution documents (bundle tops, etc.) can be produced.

3. Run Subscriber Payment Processing (on the Accounting menu) to process all subscriber payments and create start (and grace paid) transactions for them. Transactions that affect the draw will then be processed when you run Transaction Processing.

4. Run Transaction Processing to process all of the transactions that affect distribution. These include stops, starts, and draw changes. Transactions created with Subscriber Payment Processing will also be processed. You can run Transaction Processing more than once if you like. You must, however, perform final Transaction Processing before you move on to step five. After you perform final Transaction Processing, you cannot process more transactions for that publishing run unless you run Undo Final Tran Proc to reopen the run.

5. If the delivery method for this publication is “route” or “both” (i.e., mail and route delivery), use the options on the DISTRIBUTION menu to:

   • Print bundle tops and truck manifests

   • Print the Daily Draw Worksheet

   • Print status cards, carrier collection cards, route labels and previous delivery cards

   • Interface distribution information to a stacker machine

   If the delivery method for this publication is “mail” or “both” (i.e., both mail and route delivery), select options on the MAIL menu in order to:

   • Print mail labels

   • Print the Post Office Report. This is mandatory if there are mail subscribers in this run.

6. After you have printed bundle tops, etc., you may want to print a report listing the activity on each route. This is the District Manager Report.

7. When you have completed all processing, use End Publishing Run to update AAM history, prepare the draw for billing, and prepare for the next publishing day.

8. After the publishing run has ended, you may want to make entries about statistics and details of the run using Press Room Entry.

Use the Publ Run Status option as often as you wish during the publishing run to verify the current stage of the publishing run.

A Note on Editions

Separate publishing runs may be needed for different editions. For example, publishing for the Early edition may need to be completed by 1 a.m., while the final edition publishing may not need to be finished until 4 a.m. To allow Transaction Processing and distribution reports to be done at a later time for later editions, these areas of the publishing run can be set up to function at the edition level. This feature applies to regular publishing runs only; not advance publishing.

If editions will have separate cutoff times on a day of the week, this must be specified by setting the Cutoff By Edition flag to “y” in Publication setup (see Publication in the Setup Manual). Editions must also be flagged as active or inactive on each day of the week—this is done in Specifics | Publication Edition within Publication setup (see the Setup Manual).

If a publication does not have separate edition cutoff times (i.e., Cutoff By Edition is set to “n”), editions will not play a part in the publishing run, other than a route’s edition printing on the bundle tops and other distribution documents. If there are separate cutoff times (i.e., Cutoff By Edition is set to “y”), the publishing run will still be started for the entire publication/delivery type, but Transaction Processing and reports such as bundle tops and the truck manifest will be run for individual editions:

• If the delivery method is “route” or “both”, the Start Publ Run option will start separate publishing runs for each edition. If the delivery method is “mail”, only one run will be started (separate edition runs are not supported for mail).

• Transaction processing will be run for each edition independently.

• The Press Room Report will still be run for the entire publication.

• Bundle information will be entered for the entire publication. Bundle sizes can be defined by edition.

• The DM report, bundle tops, the truck manifest, route labels, status cards, collection cards, previous delivery labels, and the stacker interface will be also be run on an edition-by-edition basis. Only routes assigned to the specific edition will have bundle tops, status cards, etc. printed for them.

• Publ Run Status displays the status of each edition, if a publishing run has separate edition cutoffs.

• End Publ Run must be run for the entire publication. This means that all editions must have completed final Transaction Processing before any of the runs can be ended.

A Note on Publishing Groups

Publishing groups can be used in cases where multiple publications should appear on the same truck manifest and (optionally) bundle tops. Publishing groups differ from combined publications in that the individual publications are still delivered separately—they only appear together on bundle tops and manifests in order to save time and paperwork. Publishing groups are defined in advance (see Publishing Group in the Setup Manual).

Note that when using publishing groups:

• Publishing runs for all products in the group should be started at the same time, and the group ID specified in Start Publ Run.

• Bundle info is entered for each product in the publishing group separately, but the same truck departure and truck sequence should be used, containing all routes for all products.

• When selecting an edition for bundle tops, the truck manifest or the stacker interface, all of the other publishing runs for the same edition may be auto-selected, based on the Business Rule — Should automatic selection of same editions be skipped for publishing group when running bundle, manifest and stacker? (Route Processing section).

• When running truck manifests, if all products in the group are selected, all products distributed by a truck will appear on a single manifest list for the truck. If only one product is selected for the truck manifest, only the manifest for that product will be generated.

• Bundle tops can be combined (if a route delivers multiple products), print separately sorted by route, or print separately sorted by product (one product’s bundle tops, then the next product’s, etc.). The Combine Bundle field in Publishing Group Run setup determines how bundle tops print. The choices are “Physical” (combined), “Logical” (sort by route) and “None” (sort by product).

• Publishing groups do not affect other options in the publishing run (Transaction Process, End Publ Run, etc.), in which the products are selected individually.

A Note on Combos

If a combo contains a component publication that is not published daily, then the non-daily publishing run should be opened and Transaction Processing run should be run daily to keep the component publications in alignment. Subscriber Payment Processing should also be run on the same schedule.

Considerations Outside of the Publishing Run

Circulation has many features that default or validate dates based on the last publishing run for which final Transaction Processing has been run. If there are separate runs for different editions, final Transaction Processing can be complete for one edition but not for another. In this case, Circulation will consider edition when making these validations and defaults. Some features impacted by this are:

• Individual draw changes, batch draw changes, and group draw changes. When validating that the draw date has not yet had final Transaction Processing, the route’s edition on that day will be taken into consideration.

• Shortages. A shortage can be entered only for days on which final Transaction Processing has been run. Edition will be taken into account when determining this.

• Returns and draw adjustments. In order to enter returns or draw adjustments, Transaction Processing must be finalized for all editions through the entry date.

• Complaints. A complaint must have an incident date that has had final Transaction Processing completed. The edition delivered by the subscriber’s route will be taken into consideration when validating the incident date.

• Other Customer Service transactions. Many subscriber transactions, such as starts and stops, have a Business Rules-determined number of days that they can be backdated. When making backdating calculations, the edition delivered by the subscriber’s route will be taken into account.

• Account Billing Selection. When starting a billing run for an entire bill source, Transaction Processing must be finalized for all editions through the last date being billed.

• Holiday Draw. In order to run holiday draw, Transaction Processing must be final for all editions on the holiday date.

The Publishing module includes options for processing pending subscriber and route transactions as well as generating the documents (such as bundle tops) required to distribute the product.

Topics covered in this section are as listed below:

1. Introduction to Publishing

2. Edition Override

3. Multi-Pack Override

4. Edition List Setup

5. Import Bundle Sizes

6. Carrier Mail Export

7. Set Sub-Product Draw

8. Start Publishing Run

9. Press Room Report

10. Transaction Processing

11. Undo Final Tran Proc

12. Distribution Menu

    1. Daily Draw Worksheet

    2. Edition Drawsheet

    3. Enter Bundle Info

    4. Stacker Interface

    5. Bundle Tops

    6. Truck Manifest

    7. Route Labels

    8. Status/Collect Cards

    9. Prev. Delivery Labels

    10. Adv Reconciliation

    11. Single Copy Receipts

13. Mail Menu

    1. Print Labels

    2. Daily PO Report

    3. Finnish Post Export

14. DM Report

15. End Publ Run

16. Press Room Entry

17. Press Room Audit

18. Resupply Documents

19. Publishing Run Status

20. Advance Processing

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

To start a publishing run, you must specify the product (or publishing group) and delivery method (route, mail, or both) that will be processed in the run. Circulation assigns the publishing date according to the calendar that was set up for the product (for information about defining calendars, see Publishing Calendar in the Setup Manual).

It is assumed in this discussion that processing will be done for each product’s publishing day in calendar date order. For example, if a product publishes seven days a week, and the last publishing day was the 3rd, the next publishing day will automatically be the 4th.

Circulation has certain rules that govern publishing days:

1. To start a publishing run, the previous publishing run must be ended for the product and delivery method (see End Publ Run).

2. You can have more than one product in an active publishing run at the same time. Transactions for the two products are processed independently, and all reports are run separately.

3. You must specify a delivery method for the product (mail, route, or both). This enables you to process mail transactions separately from route transactions and can help speed the flow of the publishing run.

4. You cannot set up successive publishing days for the same product and delivery method in the same publishing run. For example, the Star route deliveries for Friday cannot be in an active publishing run at the same time as the Star route deliveries for Saturday.

5. You cannot enter transactions for dates that have been through final Transaction Processing (unless the requested date falls within the allowed backdating period designated by Business Rules).

6. You can process both mail and route delivered transactions for a product together, provided the next publishing day is the same for both. If it is not, you can still do route and mail publishing runs at the same time, but they must be entered as separate items and processed separately.

7. If processing route-delivered transactions separately from mail, you can have separate publishing runs for different editions (see A Note on Editions).

8. When starting a publishing run for a publishing group, if publications that are part of a publishing group have already been started, they will be included when running bundle tops, truck manifests, and other options for the publishing group.

As an example of how you would plan publishing runs, suppose your afternoon newspaper, the Tribune, publishes Monday through Saturday, but a reduced staff works in the Circulation department on Saturday. To do all route and mail processing during the period Monday through Friday for the Monday through Saturday publishing cycle, you could set up publishing runs as follows:

You may wish to process mail transactions on a different schedule from route transactions, so that mail subscription processing can be completed and mailing labels can be printed to meet an earlier deadline. For example, if you must produce mailing labels the day before delivery day, you could set up the following schedule of publishing runs. This example also includes a sister product (the Star) that publishes only on Sunday.

Note that you could process route transactions for the Star at any convenient point, but once you have closed the publishing run containing the route transactions for next Sunday’s Star, you can no longer process route transactions for that publication. Given the above schedule, associates could not accept mail transactions (unless they were backdated) for that Sunday’s Star after publishing run #9 has been closed on Thursday. They could, however, continue to process route transactions for the next Sunday’s Star until publishing run #12 closes on Friday.

To start a publishing run:

• Select Start Publ Run from the Publishing menu to display the Start Publ Run window.
• Complete the following fields.

  Field

  Type

  What to enter

  GROUP

  setup

  If applicable, select the publishing group whose run should be started. If you enter a publishing group, the publishing run will be started for all products defined in that group.

  PRODUCT

  setup

  Enter the product whose publishing run should be started.

  DELIVERY METHOD

  predefined

  Specify the delivery method: mail, route, or both.

  PRODUCT NAME, PUBLISHING DATE

  display

  Circulation displays the product name and its next unprocessed publishing date for the delivery method you specify in the previous field.

• When you have entered all of product/delivery method combinations, click OK.

• Click Continue to begin the publishing run(s).

If other publishing runs have been started, they will be displayed, but you will not be allowed to modify or delete them.

About Previous Delivery

Some newspapers offer a previous day’s paper to new subscribers. For example, if a subscriber wants to start on a Thursday, the associate may offer the previous Sunday’s paper for free. The subscriber gets the bonus of an extra paper, and the newspaper is able to count some of its leftover Sunday papers as paid circulation. Previous delivery is available for route-delivered subscriptions only (not mail).

Before you can use the previous delivery feature, you must define the previous day (such as Sunday), and at least one day on which previous copies of a publication can be delivered (in Publication setup—see Publication in the Setup Manual).The Prev Delivery field can then be set to “y” during a new start (if there are no “exceptions”—see below). A “Previous Delivery” message will appear on the carrier’s bundle top on the delivery date, and cards for each previous delivery can also be printed, using this option.

In addition to new starts, subscribers with a restart and delivery schedule change may also be eligible for previous deliveries. Business Rules in the Customer Services section govern this.

Exceptions

Your newspaper may limit the previous delivery offer to subscribers with certain rates or on certain routes. You define these limitations in Circulation by indicating who should not be offered previous delivery. Exceptions to previous delivery can be made based on:

• Route type

• Route

• Carrier

• Subscriber rate code

Route type, route, and carrier exceptions are entered on the Prev Deliv Exception window (see Prev Deliv Exception in the Setup Manual). Subscriber rate code exceptions are defined with the rate codes (see Subscription Rates in the Setup Manual). If a new start, restart or delivery schedule change subscriber has a rate, route, or carrier that is excepted, the Prev Delivery field will not be open (i.e., the previous delivery cannot be offered).

When Are Previous Papers Delivered?

When a new start, restart or delivery schedule change marked for previous delivery is entered, the delivery date for the previous delivery is immediately determined. This delivery date can be ascertained by viewing the Previous Delivery transaction that is created.

The delivery date for the previous paper depends on how you answer the Business Rule— Which date should previous deliveries be based on?, in the Route Processing section. This can be set to “entry date” or “start date”.

If the Business Rule is set to “entry date”, the previous paper will be delivered on the date the transaction is entered (unless Transaction Processing has already been completed, in which case it will be the next publishing day). If the question is set to “start date”, the previous paper will be delivered on the start date of the subscription, with the first regular paper. However, if the start date is not a valid previous delivery day, the “entry date” method will be used.

To illustrate when and how delivery dates are determined, let’s look at an example. Say the Star is set up for previous delivery as follows:

Let’s also say the Times is set up the same way, but Business Rules for the Times is set to base the previous delivery date on the start date, while with the Star it is based on the entry date. Now, assume that on Thursday, January 6, we have the following starts (and transactions processing is not yet complete for 1/6):

Circulation would determine the following dates for delivery of the previous paper:

• Ella. The Sunday, January 2 paper will be delivered on Friday, January 7.

• Bob. The Sunday, January 16 paper will be delivered on Tuesday, January 18. Note that if Bob had started on the 19th (a Wednesday, which is not a valid delivery day), the “entry date” method would be used instead, and he would receive the January 2 paper on the 6th.

• Cara. The Sunday, January 2 paper will be delivered on Thursday, January 6.

• Greg. He will also get a Sunday, January 2 paper delivered on Thursday, Jan 6.

AAM Considerations

Previous delivery papers can count toward paid circulation as long as the previous paper’s publishing date is within six days of the delivery date. For example, if the previous delivery day is a Sunday, and on Sunday January 2nd we have 40 papers that are subsequently delivered later in the week, 40 copies will be added to the paid circulation for January 2nd.

Draw Adjustments

Previous deliveries create adjustments to route draw. So, if a route has two previous deliveries of the Sunday, January 2nd paper on the following Wednesday, and three on Thursday, the route’s draw for January 2nd will be adjusted by +5.

Transaction Processing will create a suspended batch of draw adjustments using the draw adjust code entered in Business Rules (Which draw adjust code should be used when updating draw for previous paper deliveries? in the Account Finance section). The draw adjust code should use a charge code that is a charge (not credit), and have Charge Account set to “n” and Adjust AAM History set to “y”.

Targeted Marketing

If you credit carriers for the delivery of previous delivery papers, you will need to set up a TM product for previous delivery. You can then credit the delivery carrier with TM credits by setting up a carrier credit rate for the TM product.

To align previous delivery with a TM product, you must answer the Business Rule— Which TM product should be used to credit/charge accounts for previous paper deliveries?, in the Account Finance section. When the previous delivery draw adjustment batch is accepted, Circulation will create TM draw for the product on the delivery date of the previous delivery. You can also print TM bundle tops and other documents for the previous delivery product, which may be helpful to personnel who must ship the correct number of previous deliveries to each route. It might also be useful to have the TM product printed with the publication in the publishing run.

Printing Previous Delivery Labels

One label will be printed for each subscriber who should receive a previous paper on the current publishing date. Previous delivery labels use the Business Rules settings in the Mail Processing section to determine formatting, such as the number of labels across one page and the width of the label.

To print previous delivery labels:

1. Select Prev Delivery Labels from the Distribution menu to display the Previous Delivery Route Labels window.

2. Choose the product, edition, departure sequence and truck sequence for which you want to print bundle tops by selecting the appropriate Process checkbox. Note that edition will be “*” unless you have separate publishing runs at the edition level.

3. The Print Route Name and Print District Name checkboxes appear near the bottom of the window. This is where you indicate whether the route name and/or the district name should be printed on the label in addition to the route and district IDs.

4. If you want a separate route label file for each route, select the Additional Reports by Route checkbox.

5. Click Continue to produce the cards.

Example—Previous Delivery Label

There may be situations in which you want to override multi-pack setup for specific trucks and/or routes. For example, product “DM” and product “GZ” final editions may usually be combined into a multi-pack, but there may be specific routes or trucks for which you don’t want combined bundles. By excluding these routes or trucks using this option, separate bundle tops will be produced for each product/route combination, and multi-pack indicators will not be printed on the truck manifest. The remaining routes or trucks, however, will continue to have their bundles combined. To learn more about multi-packs, see Multi Pack in the Setup Manual.

To override multi-pack setup:

• Select Multi-Pack Override from the Publishing menu to display the Multi-Pack Override window.

• Click the Add Multi-Pack Override Setup button ().

• Complete the following fields and click OK to add the override.

The Import Bundle Sizes option allows you to import bundle sizes based on insert mix combinations. It also allows you to import insert combination information for each route, so that the combinations can be printed on bundle tops. In order to use this option, you must have InsertPlus and have a mix created or imported (if using the Standard format, mixes can be created using this option). See the InsertPlus User Manual for more information about mixes and mix combinations. Running this interface will take the place of entering bundle size information using Enter Bundle Info.

Bundle size information can be imported for both regular and advance publishing runs. Circulation determines whether it is a regular or advance run based on the Section field in the import file. If the field is blank, bundle size records are created for the regular run. If a section is given, bundle size records are created for that section’s advance run.

To run the interface:

• Place your interface file in the /dti/exchange/cm directory. The file can have any name, but must be in the format described in Appendix B.

• Select Import Bundle Sizes from the Publishing menu to display the Import Bundle Sizes window.

• Click Add.

• Complete the following fields.

• Click OK and then Continue to begin the interface. After the interface has completed, a report will be displayed that lists the number of records created and updated. You can then print your bundle tops, truck manifest, and other distribution documents.

Once you have started a publishing run, you may want to print a report listing draw totals for the products, editions, delivery methods, and current publishing dates of the run. This information can be found in the Press Room Report. The report lists draw totals by distribution type (carrier, rack, etc.), edition, delivery method and product.

The report is either preliminary or final depending on whether you have done Transaction Processing for the final time for the specified products and publishing dates. The final report contains the actual number of papers the press room should use in preparing for its print run, while the preliminary report is only an estimate. You can print either a preliminary or final version of the report as many times as you wish.

To print the report:

• Select Press Room Report from the Publishing menu to display the Press Room Report window.
• Choose the product and delivery method(s) to include in the report by selecting the appropriate Process checkbox.

• Click Continue to process the report.

Example—Press Room Report

This option allows you to generate draw for a sub-product (publication or TM product) based on a future draw date of its parent product. For example, you may have a need to generate draw for a sub-product on Wednesday, using the parent product’s Saturday draw.

To use this option:

• Select Set Sub-Product Draw from the Publishing menu to display the Set Sub Product Draw window.

• Click Add and Select the Sub-Product for which you want to generate draw.

  1. The Run Date is the next publishing date, based on either the Publishing calendar (for publications) or the TM calendar (for TM products). This date cannot be changed; it must be the next publishing date. Pending draw will be created for this day, based on the draw as well as any pending transactions.

  2. The product will be filled in automatically from the Deliverable record.

• Select the draw date on which you want to base the run date’s draw.

• Click OK, and then click Continue to generate the draw.

If final Transaction Processing has been performed, no further Transaction Processing can be done for that product and date. However, if something unexpected, such as a late batch of draw changes, must be processed for that day, the run can be reopened for Transaction Processing using this option. Undo Final Tran Proc does not undo any processing—it simply resets publication records so that the publishing run is reopened for Transaction Processing.

To undo final Transaction Processing for a publishing run:

• Select Undo Final Tran Proc from the Publishing menu to display the Undo Final Processing window.
• Choose the product/delivery method/edition(s) you would like to undo by selecting the Process checkbox.

• Click Continue to reopen the publishing run for Transaction Processing. When complete, a processing report will appear.

Most newspapers print bundle tops to attach to the bundles of papers they distribute to carriers. The bundle top information allows distribution personnel to count and load the bundles correctly and informs the carriers of any changes on their routes. Bundle tops are the primary means of communicating to carriers any delivery pattern changes, starts, stops, messages, complaints, and compliments about their work. You enter bundle information using this option, and then print the bundle tops using the Bundle Tops option.

You can enter distribution information for products and dates that are not in the current publishing run. Business Rules determine whether the truck sequence can be changed using this option. Business Rules also determine whether minimum bundle sizes can be used, as well as the default entries in the Print Key Bundles Only checkbox and the Separate Option field.

To enter bundle information:

1. Select Enter Bundle Info from the Distribution menu to display the Distribution Information window.

2. Click the Add Distribution Info icon ().
3. Enter distribution information in the Product through Truck Sequence fields (described below).

4. Click Next and complete the remaining fields.

   Fields

   Type

   What to enter

5. Enter stacker information, bundle sizes, and messages for this run (see below).

6. Click OK to accept the bundle information.

Entering Stacker Information

After you have completed the above fields, you can enter stacker information on the Stacker tab.

To add stacker information, click the Modify Stacker button on the Stacker tab, complete the fields described below, and click OK.

Entering Bundle Sizes

Bundle sizes are defined on the Bundle Size tab. To begin entering bundle sizes, click Add and enter the standard, maximum, and minimum bundle sizes for each bundle size option. The “standard” you specify here is the standard size of your bundles. There will most likely be an odd-sized bundle among the standards, known as the key. The key will not be over the size specified as “maximum”. If the key is under the “minimum” size, the key bundle will be considered a “hand tie” and can be printed separately from the other bundle tops depending on Business Rules.

• Bundle Size Option is taken from the main window.

• Details allows you to enter a specific AAM zone, delivery method, truck, etc., depending on the bundle size option specified.

• Standard is the standard bundle size.

• Maximum is the maximum size of key bundles.

• Minimum is the minimum size of key bundles, below which a bundle will be considered a hand-tie bundle.

• Max Stack Bundle is used for stacker interfaces. It is the maximum size of a stack of newspapers coming off the stacker.

• # Stacks/Bundle is the number of stacks coming off the stacker that comprise one bundle.

Entering Messages

If you want to enter a message for all carriers or carriers of a specific draw type, click the Messages tab. Then, click Modify Messages and type the text in the appropriate field. Click OK when you have finished.

Copy Distribution Info Range

The "Copy Distribution Info Range" option can be used to copy, update, or delete multiple records depending on the date range passed for selected weekdays in the specified range.

To use this feature:

1. Select the required Distribution Information from the Advance Distribution Information table and click on Copy Distribution Info Range button.
2. A pop-up window will be displayed to add, update, or delete records depending on the date range passed for selected weekdays in the specified range.

Transactions entered in Customer Service and Route Service are processed using Transaction Processing. You can run Transaction Processing as many times as you like; for example, you can process the majority of your transactions at night, and do the last-minute transactions in the morning. However, if you indicate that this is the final Transaction Processing, you will not be able to run Transaction Processing again for that product and delivery method on that date. Once final Transaction Processing is complete, the transactions cannot be modified or deleted.

Transaction Processing will process only the transactions that have the same date as the publishing run. In other words, if it is 10/5 and you enter a transaction dated 10/7, that transaction will not be processed until the run for 10/7.

Even though more transactions may be entered and errors may be corrected, an individual transaction is processed only once. Once processed, a transaction cannot be modified or deleted.

Additionally, operations connected with the transaction are performed when the transactions are processed. For example, the following things are done (among others) if a transaction requires it:

• Messages are generated for carrier bundle tops.

• Subscriber status is changed.

• Carrier draw is increased or decreased.

• Expiration dates are adjusted.

• Billing methods are adjusted.

If errors occur during Transaction Processing, as shown on the Transaction Processing Error report that is generated, they must be corrected before the transactions causing the errors can be processed. You must then reprocess these transactions by running Transaction Processing again. If you processed transactions for the final time, the corrections will not take effect until the next Transaction Processing run.

To perform Transaction Processing:

• Select Tran Processing from the Publishing menu to display the Transaction Processing window.
• Select the product/delivery method/edition(s) you would like to process by selecting the appropriate checkbox: either Process or Final Processing. We recommend selecting Process first so you can correct any errors before final processing. Once final Transaction Processing is done, the publishing run can still be reopened for Transaction Processing by running Undo Final Tran Proc (see the next section).

• Click Continue to begin processing transactions. An error report will appear when processing is complete. It lists any errors that occurred during Transaction Processing. Progress messages on the report are preceded by two asterisks (**). All other messages are generated by Transaction Processing. Transaction Processing may, optionally, generate an alternate report that contains only certain types of messages (for example, only error messages) based the Business Rule— Which messages should display on processing reports? This alternate report may be more useful for troubleshooting purposes.

What Is Processed

The transactions processed by Transaction Processing are shown in following table, in the order in which they are processed. Transaction Processing also creates Expire Alert transactions, as governed by Business Rules. Expire Alerts appear on bundle tops and other reports.

Example—Transaction Processing Error Report

A publication may have a separate publishing run for each edition (see ). In this situation, a version of the Daily Draw Worksheet can be run for each edition—known as the Edition Daily Draw Worksheet. This report has the same format as the Daily Draw Worksheet but is at the edition level.

To produce the Edition Daily Draw Worksheet:

• Select Edition Drawsheet from the Distribution menu to display the Edition Daily Draw Worksheet window.

• Choose the product/delivery method/edition(s) for which you would like to run the report by selecting the Process checkbox.

• Click Continue to process the report. It will have the same format as the Daily Draw Worksheet, but the edition is displayed in the heading.

The truck manifest is a document produced during the publishing run that lists the drops on each truck. Drops may consist of routes, relay truck drops, or individual subscribers (“throwoffs”). The truck manifest shows how many bundles and papers go to each drop and in what order those drops will be made. This is used to help distribution personnel load trucks and the truck driver to keep track of the drops and number of bundles and papers for each drop on the truck. In addition, the truck manifest has the following features:

• It is subtotalled by truck with grand totals by product.

• A summary page that lists totals for the entire manifest is included at the end.

• All routes that are bulked on the truck into one bundle top are listed separately, with a notation that the route is part of the truck bulk bundles.

• All routes where the total draw is less than the minimum bundle size (“hand-tie” bundles) are flagged with the label defined in Business Rules.

• If advance sections have been distributed for the publishing date, advance updraws or section detail can print with each drop on the manifest.

• If an additional product (such as a TM product) is included with the publication on this publishing run, the product may also be printed on the truck manifest, indicating how many copies should be distributed to each route.

Business Rules in the Route Processing section determine, among other things, whether editions and TM products are printed on the truck manifest, the print order of the manifest (ascending or descending truck order), whether a blank column is included for recording the returns picked up by the driver, and the label that should appear on hand-tie bundles (so they can be identified among regular bundles).

Business Rules also govern whether truck manifest data is exported to an ASCII file (which allows you to import the manifest into word processing software and format it as you like). If so, the ASCII file will be exported to the /dti/exchange/cm directory and be named manifest<processid>, where <processid> is the system ID of the process that generated the file. The advance truck manifest will be named advmanifest<processid>. See Appendix B in the User Manual for the format of the export file.

Before printing bundle tops, you must first enter bundle size information (see ).

To create the truck manifest:

• Select Truck Manifest from the Distribution menu to display the Truck Manifest window.

• Click Continue to produce the manifest.

Example—Truck Manifest

Route labels may be required in order to deliver products to some locations, such as office buildings, nursing homes, hospitals, and schools. The labels contain the subscriber names and addresses.

Route Setup determines whether labels print for subscribers. The following table lists the possibilities.

Business Rules determine whether route labels are printed in truck-route-delivery sequence order, or truck-route-subscription ID order. If route labels are printed in delivery sequence order, the delivery (walk) sequence can be set up using Route Delivery Sequence. Route labels also use the mail label Business Rules settings (Mail Processing section) to determine formatting, such as the number of labels across one page and the width of the route label.

To print route labels:

• Select Route Labels from the Distribution menu to display the Route Labels window.

• If you want a separate route label file for each route, select the Additional Reports by Route checkbox.

• Click Continue to produce the labels. For printing instructions, see the section on printing below.

Printing Forms

• Disable the print queue and load the label forms into the printer.

• Configure the printer so that it cannot be interrupted by other print jobs.

When this has been done, press the spacebar to perform the forms alignment test, which checks for proper alignment of paper stock in the printer. The product name and date are printed during the test. When the number of test alignment forms specified in Alignments (in Report Configuration) have printed, form printing begins.

Note that the printer will be tied up for less time under the following conditions:

• You specify that the print job is to be spooled to disk rather than printed immediately by entering “B” for background in When in the View & Print Options window.

• Adequate disk space is available for a spooled file.

Once the forms have printed, a message that the printer is about to be released so that other jobs may print is displayed. Remove the special forms and reload the printer with normal paper.

Stacker machines are used by newspapers to stack papers into bundles for distribution to routes. Standard bundle sizes are entered in Circulation, and this information can be transferred to some stackers automatically.

The Stacker Interface option produces an ASCII file containing information necessary to the operation of the stacker. Circulation writes the ASCII file to in the directory /dti/exchange/cm, using the file name entered in Enter Bundle Info (see ). Business Rules define the type of stacker for which the interface file is created. If you do not use the stacker interface, this question must be set to “None”.

Supported formats include: Ferag, Hall, iDab, Kansa, Muller Martini, Quip, Winlincs, and (using file mapping) Wamac. Another format may be defined for your site using a file map with a Usage of “Stacker” (see in the Setup Manual for more information).

To create the ASCII file:

1. Select Stacker Interface from the Distribution menu to display the Stacker Interface window.
2. Choose the product and edition for which you want to create the ASCII file by selecting the appropriate Process checkbox. Note that edition will be “*” unless you have separate publishing runs at the edition level (see for details).

3. Click Continue to process and create the file. See Appendix B for the file format.

The ASCII file can then be transferred to the stacker machine.

Status Cards

Office pay status cards serve to remind carriers not to collect from subscribers who are office pay. A card is printed for an office pay, paid complimentary, or unpaid complimentary subscriber if the subscriber:

• Has just started

• Has had other transaction activity that changed the expiration date

• Has moved to a different address

• Has been assigned to a different route

• Is being serviced via a changed delivery schedule

Card dimensions are defined in the Reports section of Business Rules. Because Circulation will print the product, route, delivery schedule, expire date, name, address, and telephone number, the minimum size of the status card is 9 lines (or 1½ inches). If a subscription is delivered by multiple routes, a card will be printed for each route that delivers it.

To print status cards for all office pay subscribers, go to .

Collection Cards

Carrier collection cards alert carriers to new carrier collect subscribers. Cards are printed for carrier collect subscribers who started or switched to carrier collect within the date range entered. If a subscription is delivered by multiple routes, a card is printed for each route that delivers it.

To print collection cards for all collect subscribers, use . Card dimensions are defined in Business Rules under the section “Reports”.

You can print these cards as often as you wish.

To print them:

1. Select Status/Collect Cards from the Distribution menu to display the Status and Collection Cards Processing window.
2. Select the appropriate checkbox for the product, edition, departure sequence and truck sequence for which to print status cards. Note that edition will be “*” unless you have separate publishing runs at the edition level (see for details).

3. Click Modify Criteria.

4. Complete the following fields.

   Fields

   Type

   What to enter

5. Click OK and then Continue to produce the cards. See for information about how to load forms and configure your printer for this task.

Example—Office Pay Status Card

Example—Collection Card

The Daily Draw worksheet can be used as a tool in assessing short term draw. For example, you could print the estimated draw for five days following your publishing date, and use these figures when estimating inserts and other supplies. You can also use the report to quickly scan the current draws for each route.

When the Daily Draw Worksheet prints the future draw, it uses draw figures from the same day of the previous week. For example, if your publishing day was a Wednesday and the Daily Draw Worksheet listed Thursday’s estimated draw, it would use the draw figures from the previous Thursday. Note that the future draw estimates do not take unprocessed future transactions into account.

Business Rules determine whether sorting should be done by AAM column or district and how many days in the past and future should be included. Business Rules also determine whether routes that deliver both publications in a combined publication should be reported as a single line item. If so, the sorting will be by route rather than district and no AAM percentages will be displayed.

This report can be run as many times as you wish.

To create the Daily Draw Worksheet:

1. Select Daily Draw Worksheet from the Distribution menu to display the Daily Draw Worksheet window.
2. Choose the product/delivery method/edition(s) for which you would like to run the report by selecting the Process checkbox.

3. Click Continue to process the report.

Example—Daily Draw Worksheet

The bundle top can include the following items (an asterisk* indicates items controlled by the Business Rules):

The start, stop, restart, and vacation pack messages include the subscriber name and address, delivery schedule, billing method, number of copies, and expiration date. Also included are general messages entered using Enter Bundle Info (see ).

Returns, complaints, etc. that were entered before the publishing run (and have not previously been printed) will be printed on the bundle tops. Messages can be printed on several consecutive days, but after the first day, a “reminder” heading will accompany them. Invoices can be flagged to print on bundle tops for a publishing run using the Invoices On Bundle option in Accounting.

Business Rules determine whether:

• The expire date prints with subscriber transaction messages.

• The restart date is printed when printing stop messages.

• Bundle tops should always be printed on the same side of the paper.

• Bundle top messages should be printed on the same page as the other information.

• The truck, standard bundle size and number of standards are displayed in large print.

• A banner page is printed for each truck.

Business Rules also determine:

• The number of starts a route must have on the next publishing day before future start messages are printed.

• The day on which complaints, reminder messages, and repeat messages should be printed.

• The print order for the bundle tops (ascending truck, descending truck, descending drop, edition or depot).

• Whether bundle tops for relay trucks are printed in drop order or after the other bundles on the parent truck. Also, if relay bundles are bulked, whether relay parent bundle tops should reflect the combined actual draw of the relays or the bulked draw.

Bundle Top Sorting

Sorting for bundle tops is chiefly controlled by the departure sequence and truck sequence, which can be ascending or descending, based on Business Rules. The table below is an example of the order in which bundle tops might be printed. The numbers in the right column represent routes, each of which will have one or more bundle tops printed (depending on whether they were set up to be printed for standard bundles or only keys). Notice that bundle tops for hand-tie bundles and bulk bundles are printed at the end. Truck bulk bundles (which list all bulked routes on the truck) are identified with a “B”.

About Key and Bulk Bundle Tops

A key bundle top is used for the bundle containing the odd number of papers. For example, if a route has 50 papers and the standard bundle size is 20, the route would have two bundles of 20 and one key of 10. Typically, route messages are printed only on the key bundle tops.

Some trucks have bulk bundle tops for some or all routes. This means that the papers are bulked together rather than in individual bundles. If a route has messages, they are printed on a special bundle top for the route known as a bulk key.

When a route is added to a truck sequence, it can be flagged as bulk. The Print Key Bundle Only flag is also set (which indicates whether standard and key bundle tops, or only key bundle tops, should be printed). There is also a Print Key Bundles Only field in Enter Bundle Info, which can be set to “route”, “always” or “never”. If “never” is selected, both key and standard bundles will be printed. The Print Option field in Truck Departure setup determines whether keys or standards are printed first. The following table lists the bundle tops will be printed for a route based on the bulk and Print Key Only settings.

Printing Bundle Tops

To print bundle tops:

• Select Bundle Tops from the Distribution menu to display the Bundle Tops window.

• Click Continue to print the bundle tops.

Example—Bundle Top

The Daily PO Report is used by the post office to facilitate mail delivery. In fact, your post office may accept the Daily PO report in lieu of U.S. form 3541.

If you use PostWare for mail sorting, you do not need to use this option—a 3541 is created automatically when you create mail labels using the Print Labels option. As with other PostWare reports, you must use the View/Print utility to view and print the 3541s. A separate PO report will be printed for each entry point (i.e., some newspapers distribute mailings from multiple post offices).

When creating the 3541, PostWare uses the weight and other information about the paper entered with . If you have not entered this press room history for the publishing date, PostWare will use the first future press room record for the same day of the week. So, if you enter a week’s worth of average press room information for the year 2008, PostWare will use this information for the 3541—and it may be accurate enough to submit to your post office. However, after entering press room information for a day, you may want to print the for an “official” 3541 that you can give to the post office.

If you do not use PostWare, separate reports are provided for each label group, and a summary report is also provided for each product and all label groups. If your local postal authority allows it, you can attach this report to the postal form in lieu of the form.

If most of your addresses are in Canada (and if you have indicated this in Business Rules), a Canadian post office report is printed instead of a U.S. post office report.

To create the Daily PO Report:

1. Select Daily PO Report from the Mail menu to display the Post Office Report window.
2. Choose the product for which you want to create the PO report by selecting the appropriate Process checkbox.

3. Click Continue to produce the mail labels.

Example—Daily PO Report

Mail labels enable you to distribute the newspaper to mail customers. Use this option to print the labels for products in the publishing run.

Circulation uses a mail sorting product called PostWare (by Postalsoft) to sort mail labels in Periodical class order (unless you sort by Zip code or define your own sorting in mail setup—see Label Group in the Setup Manual). The labels will print in Periodical class order, grouped depending upon how your PostWare files are set up. Addresses that do not qualify for Periodical class (for example, if you do not have the Zip + 4 or delivery point for an address) will be printed separately; these papers will have to be mailed at the higher 1st class rate. If you are using PostWare, additional reports may be produced when you create mail labels.

Another Postalsoft product, Label Studio, can be used to design mail labels. This can include placing an Intelligent Mail bar code (IMb) on mail labels, which is a USPS requirement for Full-Service Intelligent Mail discounts. For more information about these Postalsoft products, see the PostWare and Label Studio specification.

Business Rules determine whether you are using PostWare for mail sorting, and whether mail labels should be printed in Periodical class, Zip code, or user-defined Zip code order. If you use Zip code or user-defined Zip code order, Business Rules also determine the layout of your mail labels. Finally, Business Rules determine the walk sequence indicator that appears on the first line of the mail label, and whether bag tags are printed for mail bags.

To print mail labels:

• Select Print Labels from the Mail menu to display the Mail Labels window.

• Choose the product for which you want to print mail labels by selecting the appropriate Process checkbox.

• Click Continue to produce the mail labels. See for information.

Example—Mail Labels

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

The Advance Processing menu contains options for an “early” publishing run. For example, your newspaper may drop several sections for your Sunday paper, including “Entertainment” and “Comics”, with your carriers on Wednesday. When the rest of the paper arrives on Sunday, the carriers insert the early sections into the paper before delivering them.

The advanced publishing run works independently of the regular publishing run, but it accomplishes the same thing: it calculates the draw and produces documents (bundle tops, truck manifests) that allow the correct number of papers to be delivered to the right carriers.

A key difference between the two publishing runs is that the advanced publishing run only estimates the draw. During Start Advance Run, the system looks at the draw for the last publishing date, and subscriber transactions (starts, stops, payments, etc.) that have been entered up to the advance publishing date. Using this information, it estimates draw figures and creates distribution documents based on that estimate. The draw estimate is known as advance draw.

Of course, additional subscriber transactions will probably be entered after the advance draw is calculated and the early sections distributed. In the case where the actual draw for a route is less than the estimate, no further distribution is needed. When the actual draw is greater than the estimate, however, extra copies of the early sections need to be distributed with the rest of the paper (this is indicated on the bundle top).

A single advance publishing run can be done for all sections, or for each advance section independently, depending on Business Rules. If each section has a separate advance run, then advance draw figures will calculated for each section independently. Otherwise, only one set of draw figures will be calculated and used for all sections.

To illustrate how advance processing might work, let us take the example of the “Comics” and “Entertainment” sections given above for a single route, route 12.

On Monday, an advance processing is run is started for the following Sunday’s “Comics” section, and the draw for route 12 is estimated at 50. Bundle tops, truck manifests, and other documents are printed for distribution, and the section is delivered. On Tuesday, the “Entertainment” section for Sunday is delivered. In this example, we have Business Rules set to have one advance publishing run for all sections, so we do not need to start a new advance run, but different distribution information (bundle sizes, etc.) needs to be entered for “Entertainment”.

On Saturday, the regular Sunday publishing run is processed, and the actual draw for route 12 is calculated to be 54. On the bundle tops and truck manifests, an advance draw of 4 will appear for the “Comics” and “Entertainment” sections, and 4 extra copies will be distributed to route 12.

An advance processing run requires the following steps:

1. The run must be started, just as with a normal publishing run, using the Start Advance Run option. The draw for the advance run is calculated at this point.

2. Before documents can be printed, bundle information must be entered for the run. You must indicate the sections, truck sequence, and bundle sizes for the run, among other things. You enter bundle information for each section in the run separately. This is done using Enter Bundle Info.

3. If you round the draw for bulk routes (see Round Draw), at this point you would use Round Draw to perform the draw rounding.

4. Now you can print the documents that are needed to distribute the advanced sections. You can print a Press Room Report, Daily Draw Worksheet, bundle tops, and truck manifests. You can also interface data to stacker equipment using the Stacker Interface option.

5. You can delete a run in progress using Undo Advance Run. If you do not “undo” a run, Circulation assumes the advance run was distributed (there is no “end run” option). Undo Advance Run reverses the entire advance run for that date, product and section (if you do advance runs by section).

6. Check the status of the advanced publishing run at any time using Advance Run Status.

The individual options on the Advance Processing menu are discussed briefly below.

Enter Bundle Info

Use this option to establish bundle sizes and other information that should appear on bundle tops. This is similar to the regular publishing run option (see Enter Bundle Info) but the additional fields, Paper Section, Rounding Model, Combine With Final On, and Create One File Set? are active:

• In Paper Section, enter the paper section for which you are defining distribution information (sections must be set up). You can then print bundle tops, truck manifests, and other documents for the particular section.

• A rounding model should be specified in Rounding Model if you round draw (see Round Draw).

• Combine with Final On allows you to print advance section information, including inserts, on the final truck manifest and bundle tops for the publication on a different publishing day. For example, Saturday insert prepacks could be delivered at the same time as the Friday newspaper. This value must be a valid publishing date, and it cannot be later than the run date. The advance detail can also print on the final truck manifest for the advance publishing date, based on the Business Rule— Should the advance section detail reprint on the publishing manifest if it was combined with a final on an earlier date? In order to use Combine with Final On, a mix must be entered in Mix Name.

• Create One File Set allows you to override the Business Rule settings that create separate bundle top and truck manifest files by publication and edition. When this checkbox is selected, one combined export file for all multi-pack editions is created (i.e., instead of separate files), and the remaining editions are exported as before (based on File Map setup). A Business Rule— Should the export file set for multi-pack products default to 'One File Set' in 'Enter Bundle Info'? (Route Processing section), was added to set the default value for this checkbox.

Start Advance Run

This option is similar to Start Publ Run (see Start Publishing Run), but you do not select a delivery method (advance runs are always for route delivery). Another difference is that you can start the run for any future publishing date. When the run is started, the advance draw is calculated based on the last publishing date of the same weekday, plus processed and unprocessed transactions for any date prior to the advance run date.

As mentioned earlier, Business Rules determine whether you will have separate publishing runs for each section, or a single advance run covering all sections. If doing separate advance runs, you will need to enter the section for the run in the Section field. If only one run is used, Section will be set to “*”.

Round Draw

To make it easier for distribution personnel to handle advance sections, some newspapers use only standard bundles for bulked routes; key bundles are either rounded up to become an additional standard, or rounded down (skipped).

In order to do draw rounding, you must:

• Set Business Rules to allow a draw rounding for the publication (the Business Rule is in the Route Processing section).

• Set up draw rounding models, which determine what trucks or route groups within a truck have their bulk draw rounded (see Rounding Model in the Setup Manual).

• Enter the rounding model in Enter Bundle Info (see Enter Bundle Info), and enter bundle sizes based on either truck or insert mix. Rounding cannot be done if bundle sizes are based on edition, AAM zone, or delivery method.

• Use Round Draw to do the actual draw rounding.

Once rounding takes place, the rounded draw will appear on the advance bundle tops, truck manifest and Press Room Report. The truck manifest and Press Room Report will also display unrounded advance draw for reconciliation purposes.

In the live run, rounded figures will be used when determining the number of extra advance sections needed on bundle tops, the truck manifest and the Press Room Report. There is also a rounded draw export option (see Adv Reconciliation).

To do draw rounding, select Round Draw from the Advance Processing menu. Choose the advance publishing run for which to do rounding, and click Continue. The advance draw will be rounded based on the rounding scheme entered in Enter Bundle Info.

Distribution Documents

All of the distribution documents that can be printed for the advanced run (Press Room Report, Daily Draw Worksheet, stacker interface, bundle tops and truck manifest) work similarly to the equivalent options in the regular publishing run.

The Press Room Report, bundle tops, and truck manifest produced in the regular publishing run will show the difference between the actual and advanced draw (if the actual draw is greater). If the advanced draw is greater than the actual draw for a route, a negative number will appear on the truck manifest. The driver may choose to collect the extra advanced sections from this route.

Select an advance run and click Continue.

Undo Advance Run

If you start an advance run and later decide not to distribute the advance sections, use the Undo Advance Run option. The bundle information records (specified using Enter Bundle Info) will be deleted, and the draw for the advance run will be set at zero. The normal publishing run for that day will ignore the advance run.

To undo an advance publishing run:

1. Select Undo Advance Run from the Advance Processing menu to display the Undo Advance Run window.

2. Select the advance run to undo by selecting the appropriate Process checkbox.

3. Click Continue to undo the advance run.

Advance Run Status

You can display the status of all advance runs using the Advance Run Status option, which is similar to Publ Run Status (see Publishing Run Status).

There are only two statuses: “Run Started” and “No Bundle Info Entered”. “No Bundle Info Entered” is displayed until bundle information is entered for the advance run (using Enter Bundle Info). “Run Started” is displayed from that point on.

An advanced run will no longer appear in this window when the regular publishing run for that product and date has ended.

Ending a publishing run is a necessary step in the publishing procedure. It purges messages, updates AAM history and rolls the draws to seven days in the future, updates churn history, and creates a report of the activity. Depending on Business Rules, pending draw, subscription demographics and, if you have InsertPlus, the Preprint Zone Summary, may also be updated during this process.

When you purge messages, all carrier and subscriber messages retained during the processing period will be deleted if they have printed on bundle tops and have an end date earlier than the process date. We recommend that you do not select this option until you have verified that all distribution reports are printed and saved to disk.

To end the publishing run:

1. Select End Publ Run from the Publishing menu to display the End Publishing Run window.
2. Choose the product(s) whose publishing run you wish to end by selecting the appropriate process checkbox(es).

3. Click Continue to end the publishing run. Circulation process the activities mentioned above and produce a report that displays any routes where the DistribPoint AAM Town and/or DistribPoint Zip percentages do not equal 100 (see Distribution Point in the Setup Manual for more information).

Example—End Publishing Run Report

This option allows you to export start and stop activity by post code and price code. This information can then be sent to the Finnish Post. Three exports can be run, depending on the value selected in the Export Type field.

To export start and stop activity:

• Select Finnish Post from the Mail menu to display the Finnish Post Export window.
• Click Add.

• Complete the following fields.

  Fields

  Type

  What to enter

  PRODUCT

  setup

  Identify the product for which information will be exported.

  EDITION INCLUDE ALL EDITIONS

  setup yes/no

  Identify the edition for which information will be exported, or select Include All Editions.

  RUN DATE

  date

  Enter effective date of the start and stop information.

  EXPORT TYPE

  predefined

  Select one of the following export types:

  • Billing—This export will include the draw count for each unique volume number, service code, and price code.

  • Subscr(iber) Audit—This export will include the subscription start and stop activity for selected editions. Only subscribers with new activity since the last export will be included.

  • Full Audit—This is the full version of the Subscriber Audit. It will include all subscribers and not just those with new activity.

  ROUTE TYPE

  setup

  Enter the route type(s) for which information will be exported.

  FILE FORMAT

  setup

  Select the file map to use for this export.

  FILE NAME

  setup

  Enter the name of the file to be created or accept the default.

  FILE OPTION

  yes/no

  Indicate whether you want to append an existing file with the same name or replace it.

• Click OK and then Continue to export the information.

The DM report gives district managers a summary of new activity on their routes for this publishing day. The report is printed by district order, then by route. Route information includes the following for each transaction:

The report also includes the ID of the Customer Service associate who handled the transaction and whether the transaction resulted in a start, restart, complaint, etc. (complaints will be printed only if bundle tops have been processed for the publishing run). Totals are provided for each product, route, and district. The report contents can be exported to an ASCII file, as governed by Business Rules; see Appendix B in the User Manual for the export format.

To create the DM Report:

1. Select DM Report from the Publishing menu to display the District Manager Report window.
2. Choose the publishing run for which you want to produce the report by selecting the appropriate Process checkbox. Note that edition will be “*” unless you have separate publishing runs at the edition level (see A Note on Editions for details).

3. Click Continue to produce the report.

Example—District Manager Report

Use this option to print receipts for single copy routes that show the number of papers dropped, by product. Each receipt also has a section that shows the number of returns collected. Two receipts are printed, side-by-side, for each route. A sample is shown below.

Each single copy type that will use this option must be identified in Setup. On the Single Copy Type window (Setup | Distribution | Route | Single Copy Type), there is a field, Print Receipt?, that must be set to “yes” to allow receipts to be printed.

To print single copy receipts:

1. Select Single Copy Receipts from the Distribution menu to display the Single Copy Receipts window.

2. Choose a product and edition by selecting the appropriate Process checkbox.

3. Click Continue to print the receipts.

Example—Single Copy Receipts

If you use the Round Draw option to round advance draw for bulk routes, you can export rounded draw figures with this option. Both the rounded draw and original advance draw figures are exported for each truck or route group that had rounding. With this information, the export file can be imported into other software programs to perform reconciliation reporting.

Adv Reconciliation exports draw rounding information to the /dti/exchange/cm directory. The file name will be recon<publ><mmddyyyy>, where <publ> is the ID of the publication and <mmddyyyy> is the date of the export. For example, if Adv Reconciliation exported a file for the Times on the 6th of March, 2008, the name would be “reconTimes03062008”. The export file format is given in Appendix B of the User Manual.

To export rounded draw figures:

1. Select Adv Reconciliation from the Distribution menu to display the Advance Reconciliation Draw window.

2. Choose the products and run dates for which to round draw by selecting the appropriate Process checkbox.

3. Click Continue to export.

This option displays the publishing status of all publications currently in an active publishing run. For each publication, delivery method, edition, and publishing date active, a status message will be displayed. Common messages are listed in the following table. This is especially helpful when more than one individual is processing a publishing run.

When you end the publishing day for a publication and delivery method, it no longer appears in the Publishing Run Status because it is no longer active.

To view the publishing run status, select Publ Run Status from the Publishing menu. Click Done when you have finished viewing the publishing run status.

The Press Room Audit report provides the same information as the Press Room Report (see Press Room Report), but it can be run for past publishing dates.

To run the Press Room Audit report:

• Select Press Room Audit from the Publishing menu to display the Press Room Audit window.
• Click Add and complete the following fields.

  Field

  Type

  What to enter

  PRODUCT

  setup

  Enter the product for which you want press room information.

  PUBLISH DATE

  date

  Enter the publishing date for which you want press room information.

  DISPLAY PRINT ONLY

  yes/no

  If you select this checkbox, the report will be limited to print information. If you do not select it, both print and online information will be included.

  REPORT TYPE

  predefined

  You can print detail information, summary information, or both.

• Click OK and then Continue to produce the report.

Use this option for importing the files that have been added in the Press Room Entry section.

To import the Press Room entries:

1. Select Press Room Import from the Publishing menu to display the Press Room Import window.
2. Select Add and complete the following fields.

   Field

   Type

   What to enter

   READ OPTION

   predefined

   Indicate whether to run the import in Edit mode (changes will be validated but not updated) or Commit mode (changes will be updated in Circulation).

   INPUT FILE FORMAT

   predefined

   Indicate the FileMap format of the import file.

   INPUT FILE NAME

   open

   Enter the name of the file to be imported, if different from the default.

3. Click OK and then Continue to import the file.

Use this option to record statistical information about the publishing run. This information is necessary for AAM reporting, as well as the Financial PO Report (if you use PostWare, see the PostWare documentation for more information).

To enter press room information:

• Select Press Room Entry from the Publishing menu to display the Press Room Entry window.
• Click the Add Press Room Entry button ().

• Enter the product, edition, and publish date (described below).

• Click OK and complete the remaining fields.

  Field

  Type

  What to enter

  PRODUCT

  setup

  Enter the product (a publication or TM product).

  EDITION

  setup

  Enter the edition (if a publication).

  PUBLISH DATE

  date

  Enter the publication date for this edition.

  NUMBER OF PAGES

  integer (3)

  Enter the number of printed pages in this edition. A full sheet is four pages.

  AD PERCENTAGE

  decimal (6)

  Enter the amount (as a percentage) of ROP (Run of Press) advertising in this edition.

  UNIT OF MEASURE

  predefined

  Enter the unit of measure (pounds or kilograms) used to specify the weight of a single copy of this edition.

  AVERAGE COPY WEIGHT

  decimal (8)

  Enter the average weight of a single copy of this edition (the number of units specified in Unit Of Measure).

  AVERAGE COPY THICKNESS

  decimal (4)

  Enter the average thickness of a single copy of this edition (in inches).

  BASIC COPY WEIGHT

  decimal (8)

  Enter the average weight of a single copy of this edition minus inserts (specify the unit of measure in Unit Of Measure).

  If you do not use InsertPlus, you can enter the same value you entered in Average Copy Weight.

  TOTAL COPIES

  integer (8)

  Enter the number of copies of this edition that were printed.

  SPOILED COPIES

  integer (8)

  Enter the number of copies of this edition that were unusable for any reason.

  LEFTOVER COPIES

  integer (8)

  Enter the number of copies of this edition that remained after truck and carrier distributions were made.

  PRESS START DATE PRESS START TIME PRESS END DATE PRESS END TIME

  date time (00:00)

  Enter the date and time when this edition’s press run began and ended.

  DELIVERY DATE

  date

  Enter the date on which the product will be delivered.

  RETURN PERIOD START DATE RETURN PERIOD END DATE

  date

  These dates identify the acceptable period for returns; they will default if return rules are defined in the Deliverable record.

  You can override the return rules and establish a different returns period by entering new dates.

  QUANTITY OPENED

  integer (8)

  Enter the number of rolls of newsprint that were opened for this edition.

  EXCLUDE FROM AAM

  yes/no

  Indicate if this press run is to be excluded from AAM totals for this publishing day.

  For example, if the publishing day draw exceeds the 15% limit defined by AAM (due to a big news event or a bad storm, for example), the day could be excluded from AAM reporting if approved by AAM.

  EXLUDE FROM DRAW ANALYSIS

  yes/no

  Indicate whether this publishing day should be included in the Return Draw Analysis.

  When running the Return Draw Analysis, days that have this checkbox selected will be excluded.

  COVER DATE

  open

  Enter a cover date for the publication, if applicable (e.g., “May 2010”, “Spring 2010”).

  WEATHER HEADLINE LEAD PHOTO

  open (9)

  Enter a brief description of the weather, headline, and lead photo for this publishing day.

  These fields are optional and for reference only.

  REMARKS

  open

  Record comments about this edition’s press run.

• Click OK to accept the press room information.

If the product setup allows for it, distribution documents can be re-generated for single copy routes after the initial distribution of a product. This resupply can be created as a draw adjustment batch or through the Dispatching module when dispatching a shortage.

This option, Resupply Documents, is used to generate the actual documents (bundle tops, manifests, and stacker reports and files) for resupply-related draw adjustments.

To create resupply documents:

• Select Resupply Documents from the Publishing menu to display the resupply draw adjustments that have been accepted.

• Select the checkbox next to the product and publish date for which you want to generate resupply documents.

• Complete the following fields:

• Click Continue to produce the resupply documents.