The following are some suggestions for designing your daily operating procedures. The ideas we offer here have proven helpful to other QuickFill users, and we hope they'll serve as guidelines to help get you started. As time goes on, of course, you'll develop procedures that best suit your own company and work style.
Before you read this section, you'll find it helpful to review transactions and updates.
You'll notice that many of our suggestions are geared toward helping you establish "tight" controls over your work. That's why we emphasize that you spend a reasonable amount of time each day sorting mail and getting accurate counts of orders, payments, and so forth.
Daily tasks
Open and sort your subscription-related mail.
Separate into six categories
new orders with payment
new orders without payment
payments
renewals with payment
renewals without payment
miscellaneous transactions
Note: If you use the audit system, you should also sort your controlled subscriptions and requalifications.
If you have a lot of mail in the "miscellaneous" category, you might want to sort it by the type of transaction—address change, suspension, refund, and so forth.
Sort categories i through v into " batches," which you can then enter into QuickFill.
The more common features you have in a batch, the more information you can enter into the " batch header." The more data you can enter in the header, the fewer keystrokes you'll need to enter individual transactions. Fewer keystrokes, in turn, mean less work and, even more important, less chance for error. Remember that small batches—no more than 20 or 30 transactions—work best.
Try to sort your transactions as follows:
new orders by payment type, tracking code, and offer (price/term/premium combination)
payments by payment type and amount
renewals by payment type and offer
Prepare "batch tickets" for your batched transactions. Each ticket should include the batch number, the transaction type, the number of transactions in the batch, and the dollar total of all payments in the batch. Run an adding machine tape to total the payment amount (including cash, checks, and credit card charges) for each batch and enter that amount on the ticket. You won't be able to fill in the batch number or the date you entered transactions until you fill in the QuickFill batch header form. When you're done, file these tickets with your actual paperwork.
Decide on the most logical order for entering that day's transactions. In part, the order will depend on your update schedule. Try to enter all payments you receive before running a billing update and all renewals before running a renewal update. Also enter address corrections before you run any updates.
If you plan to print batch reports as you post each batch—a procedure we recommend—make sure your printer is turned on. You should also get into the habit of checking the amount of disk space you have available, particularly before running updates. You need about 2,000 bytes free on your hard disk for each bill or renewal notice. Labels require about 300 bytes each.
Start QuickFill. If you have an open miscellaneous batch from a previous day, close it before you begin the day's work.
Select 'Issues' under 'Definitions' on the main menu. Check that the "Current" and "New orders" issue pointers are correct. Remember, you can change these pointers independently of one another.
Enter your transactions.
Back up your database. It's critical to back up your database at the end of each day or in the morning before you start that day's work. On days that you run one or more updates—in addition to entering transactions—back up your database more than once. (Click here for more details on backing up your system.)
Say you enter transactions in the morning and plan to run updates in the afternoon. In this case, back up your database after you've finished entering the transactions, then back it up again after you've run your updates.
QuickFill warns you to back up your database every time you run an update, do a journal extract, or close a period or year. These warnings are important—DO NOT IGNORE THEM!
File your backup disks.
Don't leave your backups lying around your computer. They're your only insurance against disaster. If all your backups and your computer are in one spot, and an overhead water pipe bursts, all your records will disappear down the same drain.
File your paperwork. We strongly recommend that you file all paperwork in batches. You may want to file in batch number order. Or you might want to first separate your paperwork into new orders, renewal orders, payments, and miscellaneous transactions, then file in batch number order.
Decide how you want to use the batch reports QuickFill produces. You may want to keep the reports in a binder so that they'll be available for quick reference. Or you might want to file them with the actual paperwork—the order forms, invoice slips, renewal notice slips, and so forth—from the batch. If you decide on the latter course, you'll want to print each batch report as soon as the batch is completed (click here for details on automatically printing batch reports).
Updates
You can run any of the updates as often as you want.
QuickFill bills or sends "by days" renewal notices to individual subscribers according to the number of days you entered in the 'Next' field when you defined the billing or "by days" renewal series. (Note, renewal notices for "by issues" renewal series, are produced by the 'Issue labels' update.) So, you may want to run these updates weekly, even though you bill a subscriber or send renewal notices on a monthly basis (click here for more information on the Billing update and the Renewal notices update ).
If you do your own mailings, you'll probably find it helpful to deal with smaller, weekly batches of bills or renewal notices, rather than larger, once-a-month batches.
You can run the 'Issue labels' update as often as you want without changing the "Current" issue pointer (click here for details on the Issue labels update ). The 'Issue labels' update won't produce the same label twice.
Say you run the 'Issue labels' update for a particular issue, then enter new orders that begin with the same issue. When you run the 'Issue labels' update, you'll get labels for only the new orders. This means that you can fulfill the critical first issue for a new order the day you enter it. (The same applies if you run the 'Issue labels' update to generate labels for subscribers you have reinstated or for lapsed subscribers you have renewed and want to backstart with that issue.)
Setting up a schedule for updates & determining the order in which to run them
In setting up your schedule for running updates, consider that running one type of update may affect another. Specifically, keep in mind the following:
QuickFill begins sending "by days" renewal notices when a subscriber has a specified number of issues remaining in his or her subscription. Say you run an 'Issue labels' update before you run a 'Renewal notices' update. In this case, QuickFill is likely to generate more renewal notices than if you ran the 'Renewal notices' update first. The reason: more subscribers will have received enough issues to qualify for a renewal notice.
QuickFill will not bill unpaid new orders until it's produced the first issue label unless the 'send first bill' field is set to 'I'. (This field appears in the billing tab of the publication definition.) So if you run the 'Issue labels' update before the billing update, you may get more bills than if you ran the billing update first. That's because any subscribers to whom you have sent first issues may now be eligible for bills.
When you run the billing update, QuickFill may suspend or cancel customers for nonpayment. If you run the 'Issue labels' update before you run the billing update, you may get more issue labels than if you ran the billing update first.
Set up an update schedule for four to six months at a time. Make sure you take into account the time you'll need for printing and mailing.
The amount of time you'll need to run each update—and to print bills, renewal notices, and issue labels—depends on your computer, your printer, and the size of your database. So the first time you run an update or print a set of bills or renewal notices, record how long it takes. Then you'll have the information you need to fine-tune your schedule. If you choose 'Run later' for updates and then run them from a job list, the 'Scheduled update run' report will include the time at which the update began and the time at which it finished.
You can specify the date you want printed on bills and renewal notices when you run the update. Your update schedule should contain the date you want to run the update, as well as the date you want to print on the forms.
Double-check your renewal and billing update schedule against the number of days you entered in the 'Next' fields of your renewal and billing series.
Reports
You can run reports whenever you want, in whatever order you want. The reports always give you up-to-the-minute data.
Experiment with the reports at first. As you become more familiar with the information they provide, you can decide which you want to see regularly and which you want to review on an "as needed" basis.
Accounting
Under standard accounting procedures, you close the period or year at the end of each period of your fiscal year. If you plan to run an update on the last day of an accounting period, discuss with your accountant whether to close the period before or after running the update.
Remember to always back up your database before you close the period or year. This backup copy of the database should be archived together with the period-closing report. Don't reuse the backup disks or tape containing the period-end or year-end database. That is so that if you need to answer any questions about particular entries in the general ledger, you can restore the database and research the problem.
Calendar items
We recommend that you record these QuickFill "to do" tasks under the appropriate dates on a scheduling calendar:
Run 'Issue labels' updates. Also record on your calendar the "Current" issue number you're using for each 'Issue labels' update. If you're sending a bill with the first issue or using "by issues" renewals, record the date you want to print on the bills and/or renewal notices if it's different from that of the system date.
Print issue labels.
Run billing updates—include the date you want to print on your bills.
Print bills.
Run 'Renewal notices' updates—include the date you want to print on your notices.
Print renewal notices.
Advance the "New orders" issue pointer from #x to #y.
Advance the "Current" issue pointer from #x to #y.
Run journal extractions.
Run period close.
Run year-end close.
Make special backups that you'll save, rather than recycle.