Module Descriptions

Standard Modules

The standard modules come with the system, and it is up to your configuration to determine which user security groups are allowed to access which modules. If there are modules in the standard list that you choose to not use at all, you can simply not give anyone access to that module.

Advertising

The advertising module allows users to schedule campaigns for their customers. Campaigns can contain nearly any type of sale, from impression-based digital advertising, sponsorships, and custom content to traditional inserts, display and classified advertising.

The advertising module also includes billing for those Campaigns, Production reports and dashboards to help handle the copy chasing activities associated with getting the material ready to feed out to either Google Ad Manager or to layout. Production also has Customer instructions, order details and sales rep notes all in here. You can set up workflow queues based on how you want to work, and those queues can differ by product since digital and print are often handled differently.

In advertising billing, you can generate the bills, send emails to those who want to receive emailed invoices, and print paper invoices for those who don’t, all in just a few clicks. When the batch is complete, it is just a single click to then post the batch to the AR.

CRM

With the Naviga Ad built in CRM, you can track opportunities, proposals and orders. You can generate call lists and manage activities. Sales budgets and forecasts can be put into the system and dashboards allow for visualization of where your actuals are compared to those goals and budgets.

There is some overlap in the available functionality between the Advertising Module and the CRM Module, wherever it makes sense to include access to that functionality from both views. For example, dashboards with views of where you are compared to budget, and the ability to actually schedule campaigns, are available from either module. Billing and Production menus are only available Advertising Module.

Credit Control & Accounts Receivable

Credit Control is all about chasing the cash. Workflows are available in here to track call backs and see where you are in your collection efforts. From here you can click to email the customer copies of their invoices on the fly, as well as send past due notices.

Credit Control and A/R actually have the same menu items across the top, so depending on permissions, users can get functions like Payment batches, refunds, Write-offs, Entering a Miscellaneous A/R Invoice, etc.

The primary difference between the modules is the dashboards. In A/R when you first log in you have a landing page where you can search for transactions or customers, you have a dashboard indicating total cash in and cash out today, yesterday, in the last 7 days or 30 days. You can also see comments to finance which have come in from the customer portal. When coming into Credit Control, you see dashboards with your customers aging information and what workflow stage you are in on collecting from those accounts. There are also quick links across the top of the page to quickly get to frequently used areas in credit, like Collection letters, controller notes, adding/removing accounts from credit stop, etc.

Accounts Payable

Using the A/P module is optional and can be hidden from users if you choose not to utilize it. Inside accounts payable you will enter vendors and their invoices so that they can be paid via check, credit card, or ACH. It tracks 1099 vendors as well so that at the end of the year you can send 1099’s to the appropriate vendors. Bank Reconciliation is also part of the AP module.

General Ledger

There will be a certain amount of G/L setup required so that the advertising modules are able to post transactions to the appropriate General Ledger account, but it is your choice if you use this module as your final G/L System, or if we are simply passing that information off to another Accounting system.

Should you choose to utilize our G/L as the G/L System of record, you can enter fixed assets in here, do manual GL entries as needed, enter G/L Budgets and then report against those budgets in the financial reports. In the financial reports you can run P&L, Trial Balance, and Balance Sheet reports as well as consolidating financial reports if you are working in a multi-company environment.

Job Costing/Production

In Job Costing you can bill non-advertising services you might be selling to your customers. Perhaps you are creating a video for them to use in commercials. Or maybe you are building a website or handling their social media presence. These are items that you might need to bill for physical items that were purchased to complete that job, talent that was hired for voice overs, and perhaps your own employees time is billable on an hourly basis to the customer.

This ties into the AP system if you choose to, so that purchase orders made here in Production will be available in AP when they are paying the bill. (It isn’t required that you use our AP to use Job Costing, but if you do use both, they tie in nicely together). Quotes can be created from here, and if approved, invoices will also be generated from here to bill the client for services rendered. Once posted, those invoices will be in the same A/R and Credit Control Module as advertising posts to. Therefore, when sending monthly statements, all the Ads, jobs (and events too), can all be on the same customer statement.

This is not full project management software for the fulfillment of the Production Job, but if you are using a 3rd party like monday.com or trello, you can link the project to the Naviga Projection job for easy access to it.

Add-on Modules

The add on Modules are not included automatically with a Standard user license. Exhibitions module and Naviga Plan module require licenses for each user who with use that module. Informer, Customer Portal, InDesign Extension, Variable Pricing by Payment Type, and Classified Self-service have a module charge rather than per-user.

Exhibitions

The Exhibition, or Events, Module is for managing selling booth space and sponsorships for Events. We can import a layout from your designer and then sales can sell the booths to advertisers/vendors for that show. There are tools in there for repeat events…you can copy the setup from one year to the next for an annual show. You can see customers that participated last year who have not yet booked booth space for this year, and you can see visually what booths are still available vs are sold/reserved/quoted. When booking the booth space, you can also offer upsells like premium carpet in the booth, internet access, power, etc.

Informer

Informer is a 3rd party reporting module that works with Naviga Ad should you have custom reporting needs beyond the reports and dashboards already available in the system. Data from Naviga Ad is pulled into Informer and custom reports/charts/graphs can be created. These can be all pulled together into interactive user dashboards which can be shared as well. The Informer tool is nicely integrated into Naviga Ad with a single sign on, so users just click on the informer module and get taken right into their reports.

Advertiser Portal

The customer portal is available to customers to log in and manage their advertising. They can pay invoices, upload content, and see their ad history. The Digital ad view will show fulfillment information which is being pulled back in from Google, and often from other 3rd party trackers, so that customers can self-serve and know how their ad is doing (you can choose to hide that part if you don’t wish to share that info). For Print ads, they can see upcoming and past ads, including a link to tearsheets if you are able to provide us with a URL to the tearsheet location. Many customers have e-editions which they will utilize for this purpose.

The portal also includes an area to send a message into the Naviga ad system where their rep will see the message and be able to respond (or if it is a billing question, it will show up in AR and Credit Control and then that user may respond)

Naviga Plan

Naviga Plan is the layout piece to Naviga Ad. Production users will place ROP ad dummies here as well as flowing the classifieds. Plans created here in Naviga Plan can then be sent to InDesign to marry up with editorial content, should your Editorial system be InDesign-based. If your Editorial System is NCS Content, we natively integrate into NCS Content. In fact the Naviga Plan tables will reside right inside your NCS Content database if you are using NCS Content for Editorial. We have also developed integrations with several other content systems such as Hermes, Roxen, and Town News.

Naviga InDesign Extension

Our InDesign extension allows artists to work on creative in InDesign and see the ads they need to work on, components that have been linked to it, and any notes/comments/instructions related to the ads. They can open the project to begin work and the extension will auto-create the InDesign document for the correct size of the ad. They can drag and drop components from the Naviga Ad palette onto the InDesign document and use all the standard InDesign functions. They can also email directly from there if they have a related question for the rep or the customer. The InDesign Extension will work natively on both Mac’s and PCs.

Classified Self-Service Portal

The Classified self-service portal allows advertisers to place their own classifieds ads. This portal allows for a frictionless experience where the users come in, place their ads, and pay for them with minimal personal information being asked of them. We only ask their name, email address and Phone number to complete the ad. The ad comes into an approval queue internally so that one of your staff can review the material prior to releasing it for publishing.

There is AI technology under the hood which will also review the text and images for content. It will highlight the issues so that internal reviewers are alerted if something is looking questionable or inappropriate. There are also reports to let you know if and when customers are abandoning the ordering process as well as dashboards to let you know what categories are getting the most traction, what day of week and time of day are busiest for ordering self-service ads, as well as geo-location of the advertisers.

Variable Pricing by Payment Type

This add on for Naviga Ad allows for a transaction fee to be charged based on the type of payment being taken. This affects payments taken in the Advertising Module, the A/R module, and the Advertiser Portal. (Classified Self-Service Portal Support may be added in a future release) There can be a different % fee for Card transactions than for Electronic Transfers like ACH. There is no fee for cash/check payments. In some areas of the world, this is a standard practice and in other areas it may not be allowed by your payment processor, so it is important to verify your terms with your processor prior to implementing.