The best ABC audit is a boring one. The auditor asks for something, you hand it over, they tick it off and move on. Nobody spends a weekend hunting for despatch records or trying to remember why 400 readers have no request date.
Getting there isn't about a big push the month before. It's about keeping the right records all year, so audit preparation is mostly a matter of printing things out. Here's how I'd approach it, having spent a good chunk of my career on the bureau side of this.
What an ABC audit is actually checking
An ABC certificate is an independent statement that your circulation figures are what you say they are. Advertisers and agencies rely on it because they can't check your database themselves. The auditor's job is to test your claim against evidence.
In broad terms, they want to know three things:
- The copies were produced. How many were printed, or how many digital editions were made available.
- The copies were distributed. Who they went to, how, and when.
- The copies count. Each copy claimed in a category meets the rules for that category: paid copies were paid for, requested copies were requested, and so on.
The detail of what counts, how far back requests can go and how digital copies are treated is set out in ABC's reporting standards. Those change from time to time, so always check the current ABC reporting standards for your type of title rather than relying on how it was done last year. If you're audited by BPA instead, the principles are similar but the rules are theirs.
Start with the numbers you'll claim
Before you collect any evidence, be clear on the figures you're going to put on the return. For each issue in the period:
- the print order;
- copies distributed, by category (paid, requested, other free distribution and so on);
- digital editions, if you're claiming them;
- copies left over, returned or destroyed.
Every number on that list needs to be traceable to a source. If you can't say where a figure came from, the auditor will ask, and "the spreadsheet Sarah used to keep" isn't a source.
The evidence to keep, all year
Print and despatch records
Printer's invoices or delivery notes for each issue, plus the mailing house's despatch records and proof of postage. These are the backbone of the print side. They should agree with each other and with the number of names in your mailing file for that issue. Where they don't, write down why at the time. Spoils, office copies and stock held back for events are all normal. Unexplained gaps are not.
Paid subscriptions
For paid copies, the auditor will want to see that the subscription was ordered and paid for, at what price, and that it covered the issues claimed. That means orders, invoices and payment records you can pull up by subscriber. If you offer heavily discounted or bundled subscriptions, check how the current standards treat them before you claim them.
Requested (controlled circulation) copies
This is where most of the work is, and most of the risk. Each requested reader needs a request you can produce: how it came in, when, and what they told you about themselves. The request has to be recent enough to count under the standards. I've written a separate piece on controlled circulation if you want the background.
The practical point is retrieval. A web form submission, a signed card or an email request is only useful if you can find it again for the reader the auditor picks. Store the source, method and date of every request against the reader's record, not in a separate folder somewhere.
Digital editions
If you claim digital copies, you'll need evidence that each one was made available to a named recipient who was entitled to it, and possibly evidence of how it was delivered or accessed. How that's measured is one of the areas where the standards have changed over the years, so this is very much a "check the current rules" item.
The housekeeping that saves you
Process gone-aways promptly
Returned copies are evidence that a reader isn't at that address any more. If you keep mailing them, those copies shouldn't be claimed, and an auditor who finds returns piling up unprocessed will rightly ask questions. Key them in as they come back and stop the copies. There's more on this in gone-aways and why they cost you.
De-duplicate before you count
The same person entered twice is one reader, not two. Run your duplicate checks before every issue run, not just before the audit, and keep a record of what was merged.
Watch the age profile
Requests age. A circulation that looks healthy today can have a lot of readers whose requests will drop out of date over the next few months. Keep an eye on the age profile by request type, and plan your re-qualification mailings well before the cliff edge rather than after it. In Adeptis, the Circulation Age report shows exactly this, broken down by request type and age band, with counts by ABC priority tiers.
Freeze the file for each issue
Keep a copy of exactly who was mailed for each issue. If you can't reproduce the mailing file for issue three, you can't prove what went out. Point-in-time counts help too: in Avio a selection can count circulation as at any date.
Common mistakes
- Claiming copies with missing request data. If the record has no source or date, it's a hard one to defend.
- Figures that don't reconcile. Print order, despatch and mailing file disagree, and nobody wrote down why.
- Reader categories that drift. A reader recorded as individually requested with no evidence of an individual request.
- Starting too late. Discovering in audit week that a supplier can't produce last spring's despatch records.
- Relying on one person's memory. People leave. Processes written down survive them.
A simple monthly routine
You don't need anything elaborate. Once a month, someone should:
- File the printer and despatch records for each issue, and check they agree with the mailing file.
- Process all returned copies.
- Run the duplicate checks.
- Look at the request age profile and plan any re-qualification.
- Note anything unusual, with the reason, while you still remember it.
Do that and audit preparation becomes a matter of pulling the year together, rather than reconstructing it.
Where the software helps
Good circulation software does a lot of this for you. It captures request source, method and qualification answers when the reader is added. It counts circulation by category. It keeps gone-aways and duplicates under control. In Adeptis, that's the Circulation Age report, the gone-away desk and de-dupe tools. In Avio, the controlled circulation wizard captures the request data audit bodies ask for at the point the order is taken.
Or let someone else do it
If you'd rather not do this yourself, our ABC and BPA audit preparation service does the heavy lifting: checking your data, pulling the evidence together and working with you through the audit. We can also run your circulation and subscriptions day to day, so the records are right from the start.
Either way, if your next audit is looming and you'd like a sensible conversation about it, get in touch.
Rob Sherwood is Managing Director of Adept Data Services. He has spent his career in subscriptions and circulation, at WDIS, Optima and CDS Global before founding Adept.