I am working with a group of retailers in a country which is behind Australian standards in the handling of magazines. While here in Australia we are able to handle arrival of invoices and document unsold stock electronically and quickly, the group I am working with lives in a completely manual world – manual pricing of magazines, paper based invoices, paper based returns forms and paper based requests for additional stock.
This manual world condemns retailers to a higher labour cost and restrains them from being able to provide good customer service. It hurts publishers because of lack of sales data.
While I think the Australian magazine distribution system is in urgent need of overhaul, my recent exposure to worse practices overseas is a reminder of how far we have come in recent years.
There are still many agents like this in Australia,no need for all the extra work they bring on themselves.
Dont speak to soon Mark, the current changes to Network returns has got me baffled at the moment. I had not problems with their returns before, once a month. Now they want me to do it 4 times a month. If I only receive one bill at the end of the month anyway, how is doing returns 4 times a month going to help my cash flow. And Gotch website, thats another story, they had the best web site out of the 3 suppliers, and now the have changed it to the worst. Go figure. Things “HAD” improved dramaticly from 5 years ago, but whats going on at the moment. Looks like VANA must have stuck their nose in.
Danny , i agree what is going to be the huge difference with doing the returns weekly ,as you say we are still only going to be credited at the end of the month so what really is the point to it all .
i worked for a marketing group of newsagents (won’t mention their name) in brisbane for 3 years, they still do returns and pricing of mags manually, often our returns were weeks late as the staff needed to complete the manuall returns was not and still is not allocated to the stores. Having the write the price and return date on every magazine takes to much time and often magazines were not out untill the next day. The long hourse of writting up manual returns and invocing in a manual way made me leave the group and people don’t really know how bad the magazine management control is in this group especially when multiple stores returns have to be completted by very few staff.
About Network returns, this is my interpretation.
Probably they seem more flexible in the sense that you can submit the returns online wkly but send physical returns within 4 weeks.
Email explaining new procedure seem to say all magazines off sale the previous week will be on following Monday’s returns form. If so this will mean we’ll get credit on the same month as long as they are submitted online before last 2 business days of that month.
Those on mthly returns only get their form the 1st Tuesday every mth. Hence all offsale dates in the prior mth can only be returned/credited in the next mth. Thus 1 month’s delay in credit and old magazines sitting on backroom shelves.
About Gotch’s recent update online, I have no complaints as it’s easier now to scroll down the form rather then going page by page waiting for the computer to refresh the screen. Also I can have an immediate copy of what I have just submitted which is what it should be in the first place.
bario that can not be correct about the last 2 business days as i called them to find out if we get next weeks returns off this months account and they dais no ,so for a whole months trading we get only one lot of returns in . i could be wrong but that is what they said on the phone .
Shaun s,
according to correspondence I received last year on Agents activated for weekly returns,
it states clearly that if you submit in the last 2 business days, then it goes to the following month.
So take next week for eg, the wkly return form would be released on Mon 26th, if not Tue 27th bcos of Australia Day hol., so the last day of online submission is Jan28th if you want credits on Jan09’s statement.
I’ll try to test this out and see if they do as they claim on the letter.
From my experience customer service may not always be up to date on policy matters.
yes Bario it will be worth trying and yes i agree with the customer service people you can ring up 5 times a day ask the same question and get different answers.
Is everyone ready for the over supply for lovetts books now as network are now the distributors ,the supply with NDD has been pretty good regarding lovatts tittle but you could guarentee this to change
just an update on tis, whether you received the same auto-email yesterday from Network Services saying there are outstanding return forms to submit online.
It went on to say that the deadline is Wed28thJan should I want the credits to go through this month.
Have to give them kudos for this email this time!!!