Baseview Products, a division of Harris Corp., has updated CirculationPro — a Mac-based circulation management software targeted to newspapers — to version 2.0.
The new version of CirculationPro features Web Import, which lets your customers start subscriptions, stop subscriptions, schedule vacations, view account information, and make payments via a publication’s Web site.
“Our Web Import feature not only makes it easier on customers, but importing the information is easier for your circulation department,” said Scott Bray, Baseview’s circulation product manager. “With the click of a button the information is imported into the database, where it can be quickly verified.”
CirculationPro now has improved Newspaper In Education (NIE) features, including the ability to schedule schools for days off, the inclusion of NIE donations as part of preauthorized payments and the ability to designate an account, such as a specific classroom, when making a donation, he added. There’s also a function within the preauthorized payment feature that lets the customer make carrier tips ahead of time, Bray added.
“The preauthorized payments are one of our most popular features,” he said. “Customers can easily set up payments to a credit card, a debit card, a checking account or a savings account. Not only do subscribers like not having to deal with monthly bills, but circulation departments like not having to print them out, mail them out, then follow up with phone calls and other reminders. Preauthorized payments are easier on both ends.”
New single-copy tools have also been added to version 2.0, including what Baseview is calling “Flash Run.” This means a circulation department now has the ability to have multiple runs and divide distributor draws into separate runs, Bray said.
“For instance, a morning paper that goes to press at 11 p.m. can drop off 50 early editions at a 24-hour store, to ensure the store has copies to sell overnight,” he said. “Then, in the morning, the carrier can return with a later edition and drop off the remaining 150 papers, and it’s all spelled out on the runsheet.”
The reports in CirculationPro have been enhanced, including improvements to the Audit Bureau of Circulation (ABC) report that allows for exception days to be excluded and more detailed returns breakdown. And service errors are managed more in this new version, so that repeat service errors are quickly and easily identified, Bray said.
“We’ve always been able to identify service errors by customer and by carrier through our Dispatcher utility, but there’s now the added ability to have Dispatcher automatically identify customers with multiple service errors. You can also have the service errors billed directly to the distributor’s bill without manual entry.”
The new version of CirculationPro is available to current service contract customers free of charge. For more information on CirculationPro and to see the Web Import features in action, head on over to the product Web site.
Baseview also makes advertising, editorial, and production modules for news organizations. The company has clients on six continents and in all 50 states.