As far as I know, we are the first ones to announce this service. Hopefully the benefits will shortly flow onto the rest of the industry.

Next week we will be conducting trials of EDI Returns of John Sands Father’s day cards via XChangeIT with several of our Customers.

Together with these customers, XChangeIT and John Sands we are trying to bring the same benefits that you now have with your magazine returns to your cards returns.

We would like to thank the newsagencies that are taking part in our trial as they will provide us all with a valuable insight into the process and bring us closer to our goal of delivering EDI card returns to all newsagents in the future.

Regards,
Phil
National Support Manager

This issue has come up again today in a big way. A client of ours sold a lot of Optus recharge, but because they were on the standard Optus rate, they got a smaller margin then they could have.

If you are one of our clients and getting 4% on Optus or Telstra, please let me know. The odds are you have been put on the standard Optus rate, and you should be getting with us a bonus rate.

Hi All,

We have had a very busy start to today at the GNS Fair in Sydney. We have had a lot of people wanting to convert to PosBrowser. We have also had a lot of interest from stationers who have no system this year.

Everyone has loved the new security options, including the new fingerprint and RFID staff systems and also the integrated security cameras!

I will keep you updated on how the rest of the day goes.

Thanks a lot,

--
Garth

The ABC figures are now auditing for selected newspapers online sales.
I do not see any big numbers of people in the latest ABC circulation report of newspapers being sold online. Currently it is about 10% of those newspapers being audited.

The other issue is that many of these people reading online are paying very little. For example I was offered AFR for one month for a $0.99

Overall their audit showed a 4.8% drop in magazine sales which is less then newspapers. Magazine companies have certainly not given up as the number of titles went up.

No real pattern I can see except that the biggest drop was in weekly.

I think Pacific would be overall pleased with the result in tough retail times their drop was only 1%.

You can get a copy of the report [Link removed from site] here and make your own conclusions.

The latest circulation figures from the ABC are now the OCT-Dec 2012 figures.

Most worrying is that newspaper circulations have continued to decline, and the rate of decline is still accelerating. Currently, it is 6.5% down on the same quarter Oct-Dec 2011.

Looking at the figures, much but not all of the decline is in Sunday papers, Fairfax (who must be very worried about these figures) and NSW.

It is also clear that the number of major newspapers in each region is not declining as much as the number of minor newspapers. This shows that the trend for one newspaper town is growing.

What is unclear now is what is going to happen to magazine distribution under T2020. At present the magazine companies are waiting to see how it comes out before they are going to make their decision.

Now we already have clients using our software that are delivering in the volumes that T2020 require. All started off with magazines, almost all have dropped magazines. It is too much work and bother for the return.

The problem I see for magazine companies is that few of these big distribution agents will be interested in handling magazines. The other issue is that even if these big distribution agents were interested, they are not going to handle many of the smaller titles that they do not see as selling. They will do what most newsagents do now and early return them so cutting them out of the distribution network.

The other problem is most newsagents after T2020 will become retail shops. Without newspapers it is not worth it for them to keep subagents.

For years the magazine companies have been piggybacking on newspapers but soon they will be confronted by a choice of either dropping sites or doing more direct distribution.

These have been sent out.

For most newsagents the Sydney Morning Herald will increase in price to $2.00 Monday to Friday and go from $2.80 to $3.00 on Saturday. This change commences on Monday, 4 February 2013.

The Daily Telegraph will also be increasing in price from $1.00 to $1.20 Monday to Friday, beginning Monday, 4 February 2013

Note: If you have subscribed to in POS Scripting, you do not need to follow these instructions as it will be done automatically.

These notes are really only for people that use DOS which requires manual updating.

Fairfax Metro Media have announced a price increase for The Sydney Morning Herald and for newsagent fees however....

Currently the cover price of the weekday edition of The Sydney Morning Herald is $1.70, the newsagent margin is $0.4100 (24.1%)
the news retailer is $0.3200 (18.8%)
and the general retailer is $0.2050 (12.1%)

After Monday, 4 February 2013, the price for a weekday SMH will be $2.00 and the newsagent margin will be $0.4400 (22%)
the news retailer is $0.3400 (17%)
and the general retailer is $0.2050 (11%)

Margins are coming down.

To make it easier for our clients a script will be released on Monday or Tuesday to make the price change for you automatically.

For those on DOS who still need to do it manually, an information sheet will be released on Tuesday to explain how to do it.

[link removed]

You will find here a marketing calendar for newspapers that gives a list in 2013 of major events happening. It should give you some marketing ideas that you can use to leverage your newspapers and magazines.

Note the easy print version is much easier to read.

Financial Review is going bumper on the Australia day weekend. A set of documentation both for windows and DOS systems has already been prepared. It is being sent out now.

Also a patch is being sent to run on Thursday morning, so those clients of ours on support need do nothing.

An automatic update has been released to our clients that allows for EDI ordering from Dynamic Ink.

What is happening now is Dynamic is emailing a DD2 file immediately after they are receiving the order via EDI.

Therefore the full processing method for a Dynamic Ink invoice is now as follows for our clients

1. Create the order in the Stock Ordering Program
2. Tick the EDI Order box, select the EDI Account and then click process
3. Go to the EDI Document and send the purchase order.

When the stock arrives,

4. In the Stock Ordering document go to the Load Existing Order tab
5. Filter by Processed
6. The orders you have sent should have a status sent.
7. You should select the one you have received and click on the button Set Converted

This will Mark the order as “Converted” (fully processed”) and they will no longer appear in the list and when you go to send your EDI orders. Up until then the orders are available for resending if need be.

8. You should then process the DD2 file in Stock Received from Dynamic in order to invoice the stock.

This all should save a lot of time.

I was in officeworks this afternoon and was impressed with this school book list display unit, I saw there. It was in a prime position saying "Forgot your book list?". On the stand was a general school book list for a young kid but what impressed me was there were also folders of the school lists from many of the local schools. Supporting the stand was marketing messages on posters advertising this message hanging from the ceiling.

Using our software, users of our system could print similar lists and although I realise that space is at a premium in many newsagencies, I think that a similar stand set up like this could give them incremental business.

A list of instructions for Paper changes for 2012 Christmas and New Years' periods are available. If you require further assistance with changes to papers, please get in touch with the PosSolutions Help Desk at (03) 9597 7222

http://www.smh.com.au/business/media-and-marketing/news-ltd-loss-deepen…

Revenue of The Australian, Herald Sun and Daily Telegraph fell by 11% – down from $2.9bn to $2.6bn for the financial year ending June 30 and News Limited has posted a $476.7m loss for the financial year. Falling advertising was blamed for the fall in revenue.

Staff numbers are also down by 3%.

We were thinking now the holiday season is approaching how years ago we used to do was issue information sheets for public holidays because of price changes and stops in publications. This was frustrating and repetitive work. The sheets had to be written up carefully. This was then sent out to clients. Then what would happen is clients would be ringing up with last minute questions to go over the procedures. So we would need to explain it over again with many of them over the phone.

It was even worse when our clients had to put it aside until the correct day as sometimes they would lose the information sheets.

Even with detailed instructions, someone would get it wrong, often causing a major disaster. This was not the way computer is supposed to be. They are supposed to make life easier.

Then we introduced scripting. Just like the automatic updates for the software that everyone loves so much, as it saves so much time now when a newspaper price rise, bumper editions and more these are almost all done automatically! The user needs to do nothing! This is a terrific time saver for our clients.

So once set up, our system automatically for many public holidays, it sets the stops and starts for your customers for bumper editions, change paper prices according to the supplier's releases and will also set any papers that will be stopped on public holidays with stop/start dates!

There is no work for our clients so making their life much easier.

Nothing like smart software.

In a recent discussion, with a major magazine distributor, it was pointed out that often newsagents cannot take into account unexpected shifts in magazine distributions as they do not know say if a major advertising campaign is occurring with a particular magazine.

Well it is good that the magazine distributors know something big is happening with a particular magazine but what will happen today is that when a bulge in a magazine title comes to a retail store. Unless it is a seasonal advertising campaign, the newsagents computer system will flag it as an abnormality.  Whoever is doing the magazine processing will probably review it and seeing it is abnormal will reject much and put them in the early return pile. Therefore when the customer walks into the shop because of the advertising often there is not enough. As a result much of the advertising and the effort in bringing more magazines into the shop are  wasted.

What is required is some notification during magazine processing to warn the people processing the magazines that something abnormal is expected to happen with this magazine.

If this was done newsagents could take better advantage of this mass market advertising and maximize their sales by properly displaying the product.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-12-10/high-costs-stop-same-day-newspape…

Newsagents often have to deliver newspapers when they are unprofitable but it appears publishers do not despite the fact it will hurt the industry.

Mmmmmmmmmmmm

One reason for the T2020 plan is that some of the delivery costs incurred by the publisher now will be transferred to the Newsagency industry.

http://au.news.yahoo.com/technology/news/article/-/15543283/news-corp-s…

News Corp is planning to split the company into two parts one with the fast-growing film and television operations, to be named Fox Group, and the other will retain the News Corp name with its news and publishing assets.

I doubt it will change much with us but it is interesting.

This one was actually quite difficult as it was full of errors. For this reason do not use the file being sent out now by Artwrap but use the one on our website.

This Artwrap catalogue file is now available for download and importing into your system.