Grace WriteOff

A newspaper may allow a subscriber who is late in payment (or has not yet paid for a new subscription) to continue to receive the paper. This is known as being “in grace”. When the payment arrives, the grace amount is deducted from the payment. However, if payment is not received after a certain period of time, the newspaper stops the subscription (or turns the subscriber over to a billing method of carrier collect). If this happens, the cost of grace period, or “grace owed” amount, will not be paid for by the subscriber (unless a late payment arrives). Eventually, the newspaper may want this grace owed amount “written off”, either in Accounting | Subscriber | Grace Writeoff or, individually, using this option.

You can write off grace for active and stopped subscribers using this option. For example, you can write off the grace owed amount for a subscriber who wants to start a new subscription but does not want to pay for the old “grace owed” amount. You cannot, however, write off grace for a subscriber who has a pending (unprocessed) payment. Grace write-offs are immediate; they do not have to be processed by transaction processing.

To write off grace-owed amounts for a subscriber:

1. Find the subscriber for whom you are writing off grace.

2. Click the Grace Writeoff button ().
3. Enter information in the fields described in table below. If the subscriber has more than one grace-owed amount, select the amount to write off in the pop-up window that appears (Ctrl-click to multi-select).

   Field

   Type

   What to enter

   WRITEOFF TYPE

   predefined

   You can choose to write off grace only in the GL, in which case the grace-owed amount will still appear for the customer and be deducted from payments in Circulation. If so, select General Ledger here.

   If, conversely, grace should be written off in Circulation but not in the GL, select Customer Services.

   If grace should be written off in both places, select Both.

   PRODUCT

   setup

   Select the publication for which you are writing off grace, or leave the default.

   WRITEOFF DATE

   date

   Enter the general ledger transaction date for this writeoff.

   SOURCE

   setup

   Enter the code for the party who originated the writeoff (for instance, “Carrier”).

   REASON

   setup

   Enter a reason code for the write-off (for instance, “move,” indicating the subscriber moved away).

   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.

   ORIGINAL GRACE DAYS ORIGINAL GRACE OWED GRACE PAID GRACE WRITTEN OFF DISCOUNT

   display

   Circulation displays the original number of grace days the subscriber had received and the value of those days (grace owed). The amount of this grace owed that was paid is also displayed, with the remaining grace that will be written off.

4. Click OK to accept the Grace Writeoff.

Grace WriteOff Transaction Security

Transaction Security is added to the “WriteOff Type” field so that it may be regulated at the user level.

• If the Security field in Transaction Security is left blank, all options under the “WriteOff Type” field are accessible to all users. The security field value is set to blank by default.

• If any Security is applied to the Security item, users who are part of the Security ID will have access to the "Writeoff Type" field, and all options are available, while users who are not part of the Security ID would not, and the "Both" option is selected by default.