Now the card companies are blaming Xchangeit for the hold up!

I know many of you are thinking it would have been good to have it out by Christmas. I had a few people all lined up hoping to give it a go then.

Based on the current schedule, I don’t see the new card categories out before the New Year. There is little I can do except register our disappointment.

I always like to check what the effect on newspaper sales are when something extraordinary happens. Generally they do show an increase partly if only as it gets people out of their homes but partly also for information. This shows that we do still have an important part to play in the community in information sharing.

One point I am disappointed is that unlike the last elections, newsagents have given up in trying getting political capital out of there concerns. For example with the ACCC since the monopoly gone surely they should be arguing in public that the ACCC is stifling competition by not letting newsagents in small business organise.

Also I wish the newsagency industry had advertised they are a green industry? I am sure there could have been some political capital out of that too.
 

Finally we have figures out for newspapers by the Audit Bureau of Circulation with comparisons.

I should say the main interest in the ABC figures are that these are official and legal so they can be discussed at any level.

Anyway I don’t see any surprises in the report. I had already discussed this issue with several of my clients and many of them had reported to me that newspapers are slightly up or stable. Which is exactly what the report shows as overall sales of national newspapers like the Australian and the Australian Financial Review are slightly up. State newspapers were constant or slightly down. Overall the newspaper industry is static. Which considering the overseas trend in the US and Britain is down is a good result!

Still it does not give us a newsagency wide figure and we should not to be so dependant on these bodies, as no-one is going to give to us these figures but should be easy to get if the ANF decides to do something about it!

Christmas and the holiday period are getting close so I thought we better give the priority to putting more information sheets out on publications handling. So an extra section on publications handling in the DOS system was been added today.

A group of around 50 small business owners is now holding signs with messages. Note how some are dressed. They are protesting at the annual general meeting of Lend-Lease in Sydney claiming that because of the extensions of the Erina Fair shopping centre in 2003 many retailers and restaurant owners were financially ruined.

{links removed  as no longer active}

I remember recently a really good newsagent near Dandenong went badly south partly for a similar reason because of changes to the center he got moved. They ended out in a section that had no after-hours trade which was a major part of his business.

Almost if not all the magazines and newspapers make most of their income from advertising so if they increase their readership they will get more advertising dollars. So they have a vested interest in increasing the readership figure.

Sometimes these methods maybe a bit too much and although American, I think you will find this article titled “When newspapers fudge the numbers” disturbing.

[Update 11/09/2018  link no longer works]

Probably in response to such stories the ABC here changed its circulation methods.

If so, this has created another major problem that we no longer have any historical comparisons of circulation figures from previous years.

Am I being cynical in wondering if that is partly the reason that they did change the method as surely they could still give us a decent figure or estimate using the old method for comparisons?

Another lot of information sheets were added today dealing with
Magazine Management Returns

You will find it here.

Earlier this week, the public was alerted to toxic chemicals being identified in the Bindeez Products. I am not sure if this alert is across the whole Bindeez range. Moose Enterprise, the distributor of the Bindeez product, informed GNS that they have set up a recall procedure for consumers. The details are on their website.

Or through a free call at 1800 303 895. At this stage, GNS is waiting on advice from Moose regarding the recall procedure for Wholesalers and resellers. GNS has pulled all Bindeez stock from sale, and I would ask that Newsagents also do the same and hold the stock until I can advise you of the return procedure. GNS sold the Bindeez products under 2 codes (00012 Bindeez refill Packs) (00014 Bindeez Starter Pack)

If you have any questions at all, please do not hesitate to contact the GNS staff in Melbourne.

Regards

Jason McLeod
State Manager Victoria
Group Newsagency Supplies
80 - 84 Peters Avenue
Mulgrave, Victoria 3170

A fair number of our clients last month signed up for on-line returns with network. Then they got nothing! So they have been querying with Zac and I about what is happening.

We have just made some enquiries! Nothing is wrong. What happened is the last release of return forms from Network was on 23/10/2007 and these people signed up afterwards so they missed that delivery. The next return form from Network should come out around the same date in November so it should come then.

Of course if nothing comes then, please let us know.

Please note we do suggest that anyone wanting to do on-line returns we recommend that you start with Gotch, then go to NDD and then NDC last.

One of my clients in Queensland emails me an email with a link to a web page from a competitor that claims that he must upgrade his DOS version. He then demanding to know what is happening.

As I see it, what he has read is a fiction!

So what is the facts, in Victoria many newsagents were not sending News Corp subscription data. News Corporations got upset so they decided to make a review of what was happening. They looked at the DOS and found certain features that they did not like. Once we found out we had discussions with them on this issue. Following these discussions we presented News Corporation with a proposal that has a good chance of being accepted that will allow Victorian newsagents of our software to keep using their software.

Now what has happened is it seems that one of our competitor although they have many such sites too are not going to upgrade their DOS version. What is going to happen to their clients that trusted them to buy software off them? It is all well and good to take someone money but once you do you should not leave them in a lurch in the middle of the river.

So as I see the facts only those newsagents in Victoria that are not POS Solution's clients are in big trouble.

We were working with Artwrap to fix up some errors that we found in their stock category listing. As a result a new file has been created and now mounted. It can be found here.

For this and other supplier files please visit here

It has been a frustrating day for us here with a supplier to try to give him sales data from a few of our clients. To their credit they need the information to find out what advertising deal would work best in the dynamics of a newsagency. So we spent most of the day trying to massage the data into a format that they would like only to discover that nothing worked not barcodes, not supplier codes nothing.

It is a case that we are going to have to go out and check their operations out to discover how they think.

The following has been done in the new version of the school book program

Added new fee reports in report section

We have added an interim report into stock order screen to get it press f8 after loading order.

Now when entering payments under the payments tab, if payment method 'cheque' selected once you click 'Take Payment' you a prompt to enable you to add cheque under the account.

You can edit the line description (i.e. the stock description) by pressing F5 for both the student booklist and the class booklist.

Under School Book Package > functions > Utilities. You will find a new tab 'Aging Process'. This tab will allow you to bulk move students into a New Year or bulk delete students from a particular year.

You can now unfinalise quotes/classes or student booklists from the function > Utilities tab. When refinalizing an Active Price-List you will be asked if you wish to updated all linked classes. By selected Yes for this choice the system will automatically update all relevant class lists. When refinalizing a Class Booklist you will be asked if you wish to update all relevant student booklists. PLEASE NOTE: That if an individual student's Qty for an item has been changed from the default Qty the Qty will not be changed.

Changes done and now being checked so scheduled soon release

School Books > Reports you will find a new report 'Profit By School', This report will show a breakdown of all items on booklist for a particular school and include all student totals.

In School Books > Setup you will soon find a new alternative 'Allow EMA Method'. With this alternative you will be able to select a payment EMA method default. If 'EMA Method' is enabled when entering the student tab, you will find a checkbox 'EMA student'. If this checkbox is ticked when selecting a student in the payment tab it will default to the preselected EMA payment method.

This one is just scary. It is going around now on youtube.

AT first I thought it was a newsagent he was hitting but now I think it is a post office. But it could be a newsagent it is so close.

[youtube]KAhD08P6kU4[/youtube]

Looking at it I suspect that it is not as easy as it looks as I noticed that he is only going where it is busy. Nor is he looking for security cameras. He must have done his research first.

You can write a comment here
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KAhD08P6kU4#

In the Australian, I thought it was interesting that it is not just newsagents that
complain about it. The journalists at The Sydney Morning Herald were complaining over their newspaper's use of a wraparound. They think that it "imperils the prestige and integrity of the paper,"

Rob came in to get some help with his Dos system from Leon and me. We predominately spoke about invoicing magazines from XChangeIT. He was having this issue where when he brought in the magazines they were linked to the wrong items. This was causing him major issues with putaways – customers would have the wrong magazine assigned to them when they come in. Also occasionally when he scanned a magazine in the register it would come up with the wrong item. This is all due to incorrect invoicing. Leon and I took Rob through the process of bringing in the magazine and either matching it to an existing item or if the item is not in his system, creating a new one and establishing the link.

Rob had a few other small queries which we answered and by the end of the session he was feeling a bit more confident – we gave him some documents to take home and go through. We told Rob to call if he had any further issues or just wanted to make queries. It was nice to be able to show the client what to do rather than describing it over the phone like I am used to. Hopefully, when he goes back to his store he’s now able to invoice like we showed him and avoid those problems he was coming across.

Recently performance has been improved with the loading and editing of subagent orders. The orders section has been changed to allow selection of what type of orders (i.e. you can view a breakdown) to speed up loading time considerably.

Here’s how it works.

From the side menu, select Subagents and then Subagent Maintenance. Call up a subby and then select the type of order under the Standing Orders tab.

Make a selection and then click the Get Orders button. You are then shown the paper orders for the conditions you have chosen. Note: you can change tabs now to view the other breakdowns.

Pos Browser is constantly being update to become faster and more useful.

Years ago all the card companies came together at a big meeting and agreed on a standard industry-wide card classification method. Then they all went back and used something different. When challenged all card companies would announce that they were following the industry standard. Finally we had enough.

For technical reasons with POS software, I decided the John Sands category system would be the easiest. So I went to Ron Thorpe the National Business Development Manager for Hallmark Cards in Australia and explained to him the situation. He then asked me what I needed. I told him what I need is for Hallmark to follow the Australian standard and then tongue-in-cheek presented him with the John Sands category under the heading Australian Standard. He immediately assigned one of his staff Kim Kan to produce a file with Hallmark cards of this category standard. What even made it nicer for us was only our clients could do it as Kim Kan only sent this file to me!

I then went to many small card companies and told them this is the standard. John Sands does it, Hallmark does it, this company does it, etc so you should be able to do it and generally, they would. Soon our clients were handling integrated card layout.

Our clients were happy and we were happy as we picked up a few good deals out of it as the card representatives soon discovered that only POS Solutions could handle integrated card layouts.

These happy times lasted until Kim Kan left Hallmark. Without Hallmark, we were back to no industry standard. So off I went to Ron Thorpe again. He told me he was working on it with John Sands as we speak. This I already knew as earlier John Sands had already spoken to us about it. However, interestingly Ron committed himself to a new system in place by 13th August 2007.

Well, it is now October 25, 2007. It is still not done. However, it is not from lack of activity as my meeting yesterday with one of the managers Ron Popp of John Sands and Hallmark showed.

It was a very productive meeting, I thought what the three of us today have agreed at the meeting was to have meaningful names for the cards. Soon your customer if they look at the receipt will have something that makes sense for them for example not “Everyday card” but say “Mum’s Birthday card”

Furthermore what we now have is a Proposed Card Classification of 16 pages of specification and discussion notes with an extra one-page summary. Although no agreed card standard yet we are close! Remember there are about 28 companies involved all with different systems all of who have to agree. So this is not a quick process as everyone is looking at something that can last about six years.

What is proposed now though is great! I would be prepared to run with it *AS-IS*.

All cards are going to be divided into several groups.
The first seven will be.

1) Product type – The physical description of the product for example Boxed Card, Flat Wrap, Calendars etc
2) The Occasion for example Birthday, Anniversary, Get Well, etc
3) The Gender of the recipient for example Male, Female, General, etc
4) The relationship to the recipient for example Mother, Father, etc
5) The life stage or Age for example Adult, Teenage, Age 3, etc
6) The Segment style for example Comic, Inspirational, Photographic
7) The Colour mainly used in Wrapping paper

I thought that number four was a particularly brilliant idea.

Then we are also going to include a range somewhere else, for example, Spiderman, Anne Geddes, etc probably using the author field of the stock file.

I cannot wait to get it going and I am sure once we do our clients will pickup an extra 5% in card sales.

Please press here for details of newsink

The Australian Press Council has just issued its 2007 Supplement to its 2006 report. This is the best report on the industry available with one particularly interesting point from our view, nowhere are newsagents even mentioned.

Still, the report is available here for reading online.

[link removed]

I recommend reading chapter 2, which has a detailed study on current circulation.

If you prefer, you can download a pdf version of the report here.

[link removed]