For a company intent on telling governments how to govern and Australians how to vote, News Corp. should, in my opinion, get its own house in order when it comes to billing small business newsagents for promotions. The image on the left is the description used by News Corp. when billing newsagents for the recent ANZAC coins. Yes, the company billed the coins as The Courier Mail, a newspaper. The charge is a net charge.
News is not providing newsagents with any means of validating the charge. This is inadequate in my view. Newsagents deserve an accurate accounting of what they were supplied line by line and what they were charged for each line item. The accounting also needs to detail the returns for each line item.
The single line on the statement from News is inadequate, so inadequate that an auditor would probably want more information.
The News Corp iServices portal is no help for newsagents either, adding to the frustration.
I am posting this here at the request of several newsagents who have approached News Corp. without success in having the matter even considered by the company.
When you complete your returns via the News Ltd promotional returns portal, you can see the supply number, the return number and the derived net charge level, plus you can print it if you wish. Not perfect, but it works.
Thanks Bruce. I don’t have a direct account with News. While I appreciate you have the data at the time you enter it, the news accounting software should report this for a full and proper billing.
Agreed.
Have you asked them for the data to validate the charge?
News invoices have always been impossible to reconcile in regards to subscription credits etc. we just have to trust them.
Would love to see News limited have some transparency with these promotions on the accounts we receive like supply, returns and net figure.
The portal has not worked for the last 3 promotions and have had to email returns in, we then receive this,
Hi,
Your enquiry has a comment added:
Hi Warrick
I have entered these returns for you and you should receive a confirmation email direct from the portal as well.
No other email received from news.
I saw an account from another newsagent who processed their returns exactly the same way and was charged for their full supply.
This system from News has to change.