Your publication may have a grace period for subscribers who have passed their expire date without any new payments. For a certain number of grace days, then, the subscriber is receiving “free” papers. If they later send in a payment, the cost of these days (the “grace owed” amount) may be deducted from the payment (depending on Business Rules). For example, if a customer paid for three months of the Daily Bulletin, but had two weeks of grace, the subscription would only last for two and a half months.
Another situation arises when a customer in grace does not end up sending in a payment—they become permanently stopped after being in grace a specified number of days. At some point this grace amount must be “written off”—that is, the amount must be transferred from Subscription Accounts Receivables to Bad Debt in the general ledger.
Use this option to write off grace. Grace can be written off in the GL, in Customer Service, or in both places. For example, you might want to write off grace in the GL for fiscal reporting reasons but retain it in Customer Service in case the subscriber later sends a payment (allowing the grace owed to be paid).
The number of days subscribers stay in grace before they are stopped, and the number of days that must elapse before a grace owed amount can be written off, are tied to the subscriber’s credit status. All grace amounts where the grace end date plus the number of days specified in Setup is less than or equal to the cutoff date, will be written off.
Note:
Grace will not be written off for subscribers who have pending (unprocessed) payments.
Select Grace Writeoff from the Subscriber menu to display the Grace Writeoff Report window.
Click Add and complete the following fields.
PRODUCT
setup
Enter the product for which Grace Owed transactions should be written off, or enter “*” to multi-select products.
CUTOFF DATE
date
Enter the cutoff date on which the writeoff selection should be based.
ACTIVE SUBSCRIBERS
yes/no
Indicate whether grace should be written off for active subscribers. If this checkbox is not selected, grace will be written off only for inactive subscribers.
SEPARATE WRITEOFF
yes/no
Indicate whether grace should be written off separately for Customer Service or the GL. If this checkbox is not selected, grace will be written off in both places.
SELECTION TYPE
predefined
You can choose to write grace off only in the GL, in which case the grace owed amount would still appear for the customer and be deducted from payments in Circulation. If so, enter General Ledger here. If, conversely, grace should be written off in Circulation but not in the GL, enter Customer Services. If grace should be written off in both places, enter “*” (note, however, that grace owed will only be written off for Customer Service if the grace period has ended). This field will only be active if Separate Writeoff, above, is selected.
WRITEOFF
yes/no
Indicate whether grace owed transactions should be written off. You may want to run this option initially without Writeoff selected to see which grace owed amounts will be written off.
G/L TRAN DATE
date
If transactions should be written off (i.e., Writeoff is selected), enter the general ledger date for the writeoff transaction.
SOURCE
setup
If grace will be written off, indicate the party that originated the writeoff (for example, “DM”).
REASON
setup
If grace will be written off, indicate a reason for the writeoff.
CHANGE CREDIT STATUS
yes/no
Indicate whether to change the credit status of subscribers whose grace is written off. Circulation will change the credit status to the Stop Credit Status setting of the subscriber’s current credit status, as defined in Credit Status setup (see the Setup Manual).
IS WRITEOFF NOW UNPAID
yes/no
When this checkbox is selected, in addition to performing the usual grace writeoff processing, a suspended batch of draw adjustments will be created to change the draw from “paid” to “unpaid” for AAM purposes. The name of the batch will be “GW” followed by the GL Tran Date entered (yymmdd format) followed by a four-digit sequence number. This checkbox is active when: • The Active Subscribers checkbox is not selected • The Selection Type is * (all) or Customer Services • The Writeoff checkbox is selected • Transaction Security, GraceWOffUnpaid, is activated
Click OK and then Continue to proceed with the grace writeoffs. The Grace Writeoff Report will be produced as part of this process. When Grace Owed has been written off, the Grace Owed transaction changes to Grace Writeoff in the subscriber’s transaction history window.
