Audit season at a small B2B publisher usually looks the same. Somebody exports the circulation list, builds pivot tables to split requests by type and age, finds the numbers don't match last time, and spends a week working out why.
Adeptis does that arithmetic for you, from live records, every time you open the report. And because the figures are only as good as the data, it gives you the tools to keep that data clean all year, not just in the fortnight before the auditor arrives.
The Circulation Age report
This is the controlled circulation report an auditor would recognise. It takes one best record per reader per title, then breaks your circulation down the way ABC looks at it.
- Key figures: total circulation, how much of it is requested, how much falls within five years, and the split between individually and company requested.
- ABC priority tiers: a count and percentage for each tier, shown as bars so the shape is obvious at a glance.
- Request type by age band: individually requested, company requested, non-requested, agency copies, compulsory copies and anything unclassified, across age bands from under a year to five years and over.
- By circulation section: readers and percentages per section.
Because every reader resolves to one winning record, someone who has requested twice isn't counted twice. That's the mistake that usually causes the week of head-scratching.
The gone-away desk
Returned post is dull work, and it matters. Every gone-away left on file is a copy you print and post for nobody, and a reader your figures shouldn't be counting.
The gone-away desk is a single-purpose screen for it. Key the reader number from the returned wrapper, check you've got the right person, then mark them gone away or still there. There's a "done today" list, an undo for mistakes and its own audit trail. You can lock a user account to just this screen, so whoever opens the post can do the job without access to anything else.
There's more on why this matters in gone-aways and why they cost you.
Demographics you define
Advertisers want to know who your readers are, not just how many. Demographics in Adeptis are your own questions: job function, company activity, buying plans, whatever your market cares about.
Questions can be specific to one title or apply to every contact, and they can be single choice, multiple choice or a dropdown. Answers feed straight into audience selection as filters and into the media pack breakdowns, so the question you ask on a registration form is the same one you sell on.
De-dupe without losing history
Duplicates creep in from web forms, online orders, imports and the odd typo. The de-dupe tools find likely duplicates among companies and contacts (for example, the same email or the same name at one company) and let you review each group before you merge.
A merge brings every related record across in one transaction and keeps a full history. Nothing silently vanishes, which is what you want when an auditor asks what happened to a record.
Software plus people who've done this for decades
Adeptis gives you the figures and the clean data. If you'd like help getting audit-ready, our ABC and BPA audit preparation team has been doing it for a long time, and how to prepare for an ABC audit is a good place to start. New to requested circulation? Read controlled circulation explained.
Circulation requests are captured on each contact in the CRM, with their audit classification, request type and method, and paid copies are handled under subscriptions and renewals. For larger groups with heavier volumes, Avio covers controlled circulation at scale, including data quality tools built for big databases.
Book an Adeptis demo and we'll show you the Circulation Age report and the gone-away desk in action.
Questions
Does Adeptis carry out our ABC audit?
No. ABC carries out the audit. Adeptis gives you the figures and the clean records behind them, and our ABC and BPA audit preparation service can help you get ready.
What are ABC priority tiers?
They rank each reader by how they requested the title (individually or through their company) and how recent the request is, so the strongest requests come first.
Can someone process returned post without seeing everything else?
Yes. A user account can be locked to the gone-away desk and nothing else.
Can we write our own demographic questions?
Yes. Questions can apply to one title or to every contact, as single choice, multiple choice or a dropdown.
What happens to history when two records are merged?
The de-dupe tools merge every related record in one transaction and keep a full history of the merge.