What it does
The 'Renewal notices' update generates renewal notices and renewal labels for "by days" renewal series according to the schedule that you set up when you defined your "by days" renewal series (click here for details on setting up a renewal series). When the number of remaining issues in a subscription reaches the point specified in the renewal series, the first notice or renewal label is generated. From that point on, additional notices are generated at the intervals specified in the renewal series until the subscription is renewed, canceled, or the last effort in the series has been sent.
In most cases you will want to set up your renewal series so that notices will continue to be sent after the final issue of the subscription has been served. However, that is not a requirement. If the last effort of the renewal series is sent before the subscription expires, it will be marked so that it will expire on the last issue. No grace issues will be sent in that case.
You also have the option of renewing the subscription automatically and either sending the subscriber a bill for the renewal, or automatically charging the renewal to the credit card number used in the prior order.
Note: renewal notices and renewal labels for "by issues" renewal series
The renewal notices and renewal labels for "by issues" renewal series are produced by the 'Issue labels' update.
Note: blanket renewals
If you want to generate renewal notices for subscribers even if they are not due for renewal, use the Blanket Renewals Report or the Gift Blanket Renewals Report (for gift or group subscriptions). For example, you can use blanket renewals to send a special renewal offer at Christmas time or before a price increase. You can also use this report to send notices that look like renewals to prospects.
When to run it
You can run the 'Renewal notices' update either once a month or more or less frequently. Each strategy has its pluses and minuses.
If you run the 'Renewal notices' update monthly, you'll produce a larger number of notices with each run. Doing so may be more convenient than producing smaller groups of notices more frequently, especially if you use a mailing house to mail the notices. If you decide to run renewals monthly, set the number of days between efforts in your renewal series to a relatively low number, such as 21. This will ensure that QuickFill produces a notice for each order that is up for renewal on each monthly run.
If you choose to run the 'Renewal notices' update more frequently (weekly is probably a good schedule), you'll produce fewer notices on each run. Getting fewer notices is more convenient if you have a relatively low volume of renewal orders and don't use a mail house. If you decide to run the 'Renewal notices' update more frequently than once a month, set the days between efforts in your renewal series to the actual number of days you want between efforts. In this way, QuickFill will generate renewal notices on the next run, after the correct number of days has elapsed (click here for details on setting up a renewal series. )
Another advantage of running this update more frequently is that you have greater control over the time that elapses between successive notices. For example, you could allow six weeks to elapse between the first and second notices and four weeks to elapse between the next notices in your series.
Note: sending renewals based on issues remaining in a subscription
If you want the production of renewals to always be in sync with the number of issues remaining in a subscription, you should use "by issues" renewal series. Click here for details on "by issues" renewal series.
How to run it
Follow these steps when you run the 'Renewal notices' update.
Step 1—Make a backup
Make a backup of your database. If the 'Renewal notices' update fails to run to completion, you cannot restart it. You must restore your database and start the update again. So it's extremely important that you make a backup before running the update.
Step 2—Check the issue table
Before running the 'Renewal notices' update for the first time, check the issue table to see that it has enough entries to include the expiration issue of the longest order you expect to renew. In practice, this just means selecting 'Issues' under 'Definitions' on the main menu and making sure that you defined issues for the next few years. If you don't have enough issues defined for an order, QuickFill won't produce a renewal notice for that order, and you'll see an error message in the renewal update report. You can then add the issues you need and either rerun the update—it will produce notices and renewal labels only for the orders that it skipped the first time—or leave these orders for renewal on your next scheduled 'Renewal notices' update.
You should also verify that you've set up the renewal series and messages just the way you want them. It is most important to check that the prices and the days between efforts are correct and the messages are the ones you want to use.
Step 3—Check that your disk is not full
Check that you have enough disk space available to produce all the renewal notices and renewal labels. Select "About QuickFill" under 'Other' to see how much space you have available on your disk. You'll probably need about 0.3k for each renewal label and 2k for each notice or auto-renewal order. If you run out of disk space in the middle of the update run, QuickFill aborts the run, and you'll have to restore your database from your backup. Then you can free up some disk space and rerun the update. However, we strongly recommend that you make sure you have enough disk space available before you begin.
Step 4—Specify which publications are to be run
Select 'Renewal notices' under 'Updates' on the main menu check the following fields:
Company name
QuickFill uses the name you enter in this field on the "header" sheet that identifies the notices and renewal labels for your mail house and on the renewal update report. This name will not be printed on the renewal notices themselves. QuickFill prints on the notices the name of the company you entered on the publication definition screen (click here for details ).
Phone number
QuickFill uses the phone number you enter in this field on the header sheet that identifies the renewal notices and renewal labels for your mail house and on the 'Renewal notices' update report. This number will not be printed on the notices themselves. QuickFill prints on the notices the phone number of the company you entered on the publication definition screens.
Date the renewal notices ____ days after the current date
QuickFill calculates the date to be printed on the renewal notices based on the entry in this field. For example, if you are going to run the update on July 15, but would like July 17 to be printed on your renewal notices, enter "2" in this field. You can also specify past dates by entering negative numbers. For example, if you are going to run the update on July 15, but would like July 12 to be printed on your renewal notices, enter "-3" in this field.
If you leave this field blank, QuickFill automatically prints the system date on your renewal notices. This field is used for no other purpose. That is, this field has no effect on the date that QuickFill uses to calculate when it should generate a renewal notice for an order. Nor does it affect the date that appears in the customer's order record. QuickFill always uses the system date for these purposes.
Publications to be processed
Choose the publications for which you want to run the renewal notices update by double clicking on the publication name or clicking in the checkbox for the publication(s) you want to include. An "x" will appear in the box in front of the publication name. Click on "Select All" to select all publications.
When you're done, click on "OK" and a message box will appear with the following options:
Run it now exclusively, only lookup allowed
Run it now shared, all transactions allowed, much slower
Run it with tonight's jobs
Save to an existing job list
Create a new job list
Click here for details on options for running updates.
Step 5—Run the update
Before the update begins to run, you'll see a warning message. This message lets you know that you must restore your database from a backup if the update fails to run to completion. It then asks if you have an up-to-date backup of your database. Choose "No," and QuickFill returns you to the 'Updates' menu. Choose "Yes," and the update will begin to run. Clearly, we want to emphasize that it's extremely important to make backups of your database regularly. Please take the time to make them.
You can follow the update's progress with the box that pops up on the screen while the update is running. QuickFill executes the 'Renewal notices' update in three steps:
It examines all the subscriptions to the publication(s) you've selected to see which orders should be automatically renewed and which should have renewal notices or renewal labels generated. Renewal orders are created in this step for those orders that are to be automatically renewed.
It sorts the orders that need renewal notices or renewal labels into the proper sequence (we tell you what that sequence is below).
It creates files from which you print the actual notices, renewal labels, and reports.
Once the update is through running, you can select 'Print…' under 'Reports' on the main menu to print (or view on the screen) the renewal notices, renewal labels, and reports. If you're using a mail-merge renewal notice format, the mail-merge file(s) containing your renewals will be located in the mail-merge directory (see mail-merge renewals below).
You should print the notices and renewal labels on the forms you specified when you defined your renewal packages. (QuickFill groups together all renewal notices and all renewal labels requiring a specific form.) Also, QuickFill produces a new file for each form you're using for mail-merge renewals (click here for details on setting up renewal packages for renewals ).
The 'Renewal notices' update can produce the following:
Renewal notices that you can print using the simple or detailed layout;
mail-merge files you can use with the mail-merge facility of your word processor;
renewal labels that you can print or convert to dBase files;
renewal orders from auto-renewal series;
renewal update report;
renewal batch report.
Renewal notices
The following describes the data the renewal notices contain and tells you how you can control what actually appears on the renewal notices. Click here for a complete renewal notice layout.
Address. The customer to whom the notices are addressed depends on the type of subscription and on the 'Who' field in the renewal series definition.
For single-party subscriptions, the notices are addressed to the subscriber, unless the order came through an agency. In this case, the notices are addressed to either the agency or the subscriber based on the renewal series definition.
For nonagency two-party and group subscriptions, the notices can go either to the ship-to customer or the bill-to customer. If you do not select the 'Send to ship-to' field on the renewal series, the update produces a renewal notice for the bill-to customer. If you select the 'Send to ship-to' field, the update produces a renewal notice for each ship-to customer. (If the notices go to the ship-to of a group subscription, each ship-to receives a notice only for the copies he or she is receiving.)
For agency two-party and group subscriptions, the notices can go either to the agency or the subscriber. If you set the renewal series to send renewal notices for agency subscriptions to the subscriber, the notice will go to the bill-to if the 'Send to ship-to' field (on the renewal series definition) is not selected otherwise to the ship-to.
If you set the renewals series to send notices for agency subscriptions to the agency, the agency will receive either one notice per group or several depending on the 'Send to ship-to' field (on the renewal series definition). If this field is not selected, the agency will receive one renewal notice per group. If it is selected, the agency will receive several renewal notices per group; there will be one notice for each ship-to in the group.
Offers. QuickFill prints all the offers you linked to a particular renewal effort on the renewal notice—unless the number of issues in the offer equals zero. (You use the zero issue offer for special per-issue pricing. Click here for details ).
QuickFill prints first and in full detail—that is, with separate lines for price, shipping, and tax—the first offer that most closely matches the quantity of the order you're renewing. (So if the order you're renewing was for 6 copies, and the renewal effort contained offers for minimum quantities of 2, 5, and 10 copies with one- or two-year terms, the one-year/five-copy offer prints first on the renewal notice.) The order of the offers on the renewal effort is important. If you want to encourage two-year renewals, then list the two-year offer before the one-year offer. After the detailed offer, QuickFill prints the remaining offers in summary form—that is, it doesn't spell out all the pricing details. (For all subscriptions other than groups, the price you see for these other offers includes shipping and tax. For group renewals, the price excludes shipping and tax. Because tax and shipping may vary from ship-to to ship-to, this makes it easier for the customer to calculate the cost of adding or dropping members from the group.) QuickFill prints the remaining offers in the order you entered them on the renewal effort screen (click here for details ).
For group orders the summary offers are based on the country of the first member of the group. If you expect to have group members in more than one country, and want to use more than one renewal offer, then you should use the same price for all countries (but note that you can adjust the total price by using different shipping charges based on the country).
If the order comes from an agency and the agency is being sent the notice, QuickFill reduces the price by the amount of the agency discount.
Company name and address. Whether or not your company name is printed on the renewal notice depends on the choice you made in the 'Print company name on renewals?' field of the company definition screen.
Credit card block. QuickFill prints credit card information only if you selected the 'Print credit card info block on notice?' field of the renewal package screen. You can use different renewal packages for each effort in a renewal series, so you can allow credit card payments on some of the efforts in the series and not on others.
Order number. The renewal notices always contain the order number. After the order number, you'll see a dash followed by an 'R' and the effort number that produced the renewal notice. If, for example, the order number is 5678 and the renewal effort is 3, QuickFill prints 5678-R3 on the notice.
Messages. QuickFill centers the first four-line message block at the top of the lower half of the renewal notice form. It prints the second four-line message block in the lower left-hand corner of the form. The text of the messages comes from the entries you made in the renewal series definition screen (click here for a complete renewal notice layout ).
Expiration date. The expiration date is the expiration date of the order you're renewing.
Payment instructions. QuickFill prints the phrase "Check payable to:" only if you filled in the 'Checks payable to' field in the publication definition screen (click here for details ). For notices being sent to Canada and the U.K. the spelling of "check" is changed to "cheque."
Federal tax ID number. QuickFill prints the federal tax ID number only if you entered your federal tax ID number in the company definition screen (click here for details ).
Publication name. QuickFill prints the publication name on the top and bottom portions of renewal notices only if you selected the 'Print publication name on the top half of notice' and the 'On bottom half of notice' fields on the "Defining renewal series" screen.
Document descriptors. QuickFill also prints document descriptors (such as "SUBSCRIPTION RENEWAL," "Please return this portion." and "FOR YOUR RECORDS") on renewal notices. The text of the document descriptors comes from the entries you made in the 'Document descriptors' fields on the "Defining renewal series" screen.
As described above QuickFill gives you quite a lot of control over the content of the renewal notice, but if you want to customize the layout of the notice then you have two choices.
Modify the layout of the standard bill by using the QuickFill Form Designer.
Produce mail-merge files instead of standard renewal notices. These files can be processed by the mail-merge feature of Microsoft Word or any other word processor. There are four different mail-merge file layouts available known as MMERG1 through MMERG4, all of which can be produced in either dBASE or delimited format. We supply sample mail-merge documents for Microsoft Word. By copying and editing one of the templates you can change the layout of the renewal notice as you desire.
Please note that the mail-merge option is not available for gift renewals and group subscriptions that require a complete list of the recipients. The reason for this restriction is that renewal notices with a variable number of ship-to addresses cannot be represented in any file format that a word processor can handle.
Click here for more information on mail-merge renewal notices.
If you use renewal forms that have all of the offer details pre-printed on them then you might need just the mailing address for the renewal notice. In that case you should choose to create renewal labels instead of renewal notices. You make this choice on the renewal package definition screen.
The top line of each renewal label contains the order number you are trying to renew and the effort number for which the label was produced. Renewal labels are sorted and produced (for ship-tos or bill-tos) just like renewal notices.
Once your renewal labels have been generated, you can either print them from the 'Labels' tab of the 'Print saved reports' screen or you can use the 'Label Splitter' to create a dBASE formatted file for your renewal labels.
QuickFill sorts the renewal notices in the following order:
publication,
renewal form,
renewal package,
number of pages (for detailed renewals only),
country,
zip code.
If the notice goes to an agency, QuickFill uses a dummy country code (ZZZZ) and the agency code instead of the zip code. As a result, QuickFill prints agency notices after all the other notices, then groups them together by agency.
Renewal update report
The 'Renewal notices' update produces an update report for each publication for which it generates notices. The update report has five sections.
Error messages. QuickFill produces this section only if there are, in fact, errors to report. Click here for a list of the possible error messages.
Renewal notice report by effort number. This section reports the total number of renewals generated for each effort in a renewal series.
Renewal notice statistics. QuickFill only produces this section if you have selected the 'Include counts by' fields on the "System preferences" definition screen. This section breaks down the number of renewal notices produced by U.S., Canadian, and foreign: by state; by Canadian province; and by foreign country. You choose which of these counts you want on the report by selecting 'Preferences' on the 'Definitions' menu (click here for details ).
Automatic renewal report. This section lists the number of renewal orders created, the total dollar value, and total amount of the credit card charges.
Renewal notice report by package. This section reports the number of renewal notices generated broken down by the package code and publication.
Mail-merge renewal notice directory. This section lists any mail-merge renewal notice files QuickFill produced. It shows the file name, the format code, the publication, and the form type you require to print the notice.