Recently some people electing not to use the offsale recall method, have been reporting problems that the return weeks with some magazines like TV Week and Woman's Day are wrong.
The problem is that there are several different ways of calculating a week number. We at POS Solutions prefers the ISO standard because the Australian government, and most Australian business accepted it, but many organisations do use different standards. That is why diaries often have different week numbers for the same date.
Probably, when XChangeIT was set up, it would have been a perfect time for the newsagency industry to adopt a standard week numbering system. However, then only Gordon and Gotch were using weekly returns and since no-one else cared about it, no standard week system was adopted.
So when Network decided to go for returns weekly, they adopted a system different than Gordan and Gotch. Their week number was always supposed to be one week behind the GG week number. However, this, for some reason, did not happen, which suited everyone fine.
Recently, in July, Network fixed up their code so inadvertently their week numbers in the XChangeIT files became one week out with the GG recall week. This is what has been causing the problems with the Network return week number in XChangeIT.
To fix this, Network has now agreed to add an extra week at the start of their recall timetable to bring their weeks back into alignment with the GG ones. This should happen in the next couple of weeks.
What this does show is the need of an industry standard for the calculation of recall weeks because now GG, Network and IPS all use a different system.
It is my view that we should all go to the ISO week number which would bring us into line with most Australian organisations. Barring that GG week number system should be adopted as it is already in place.
