Warning on magazine returns

Magazine distributors in Australia are serious this year in enforcing rules around magazine return claims.  Whereas in the past they have permitted paper, fax, website and EDI claims, they have eliminated fax and will eliminate paper claims.  This brings the website and EDI returns claims into sharp focus.  In each case, they require all data to be provided.  Newsagents submitting returns without issue codes or returns on the wrong EDI form (supplementary versus regular) risk missing credits.

I know a bit about this because I own Tower Systems.  Tower serves more than 1,600 newsagents and have met the evolving EDI standards since they were first introduced more than ten years ago.  We work closely with the magazine distributors and XchangeIT on changes to ensure that our newsagent community is able to process returns with certainty.  Millions of dollars are involved.  This is why we sunset our DOS software ten years ago.  DOS is dead for newsagents and has been for years.

I have also been helping several newsagents in the last week who have missed returns because inaccurate data provided via they software they have used. In three cases, the software is at fault – one did not include return codes and the other system involved did not differentiate between supplementary and regular returns. In the case of the second software company, they have not sought to understand the returns handling process and have thereby missed ensuring that their software protects newsagents from missing returns credits.

Now is the time for newsagents to contact their software providers and request immediate and guaranteed continued compliance with current EDI standards and seek up to date training on how to make this work operationally in a newsagency.

Tower Systems is currently running free EDI / XchangeIT training nationally – face to face and online.  By the end of the current cycle hundreds of newsagents will have participated.

The magazine returns process ought to be easy and certain.  Sometimes, poor technology and a lack of training can make it expensive for newsagents.  I will gladly help any newsagent missing return credits regardless of they software they use.