Weekly Traffic Procedures

Weekly Traffic Procedures include the things you need to do from time to time to keep your traffic system running smoothly. While it is not absolutely essential that these things be done each week, adding them to your weekly routine will help ensure that they do get done regularly. Many operators schedule these tasks for mid-week when they tend to be less busy.

If this is the end of the month, you may wish to run these procedures for the end of the calendar month rather than for the end of the Media Month. The steps are the same, and there is probably no particular reason to run them twice in a week.

• (Optional) Print an Expired Copy Report. Report Center > Cart/Copy Reports. This is in preparation for Clearing Expired Carts (see below). Set the report’s end date to the date of the last log you are about to accept. Check the report for any existing copy you may want to keep in the system, and extend the end dates of those pieces of copy. Also, you can use this report to pull carts or purge audio files from an automation system.
• Back up the VT Database. On the VT Server, go to VT Utilities, and select Backup from the Database Menu. Accepting Logs is a critical process. If something happens to interrupt the process, you could be left with a damaged database.
• Accept the Logs. Billing Menu > Accept Logs. This is normally a weekly procedure, and involves several steps. When done on a weekly basis, logs are accepted through the previous Sunday, to coincide with the end of the standard media week. This is the process that that "posts" the spots from official logs to the individual invoices for the advertisers and agencies. Logs must be official to be accepted. And, most important, the logs must have been reconciled before being accepted. Optionally, set the checkbox for Clear Expired Carts. This will simultaneously clear the expired carts through the Log Acceptance dates.

•  NOTE - You can accept logs on a daily basis once the logs have been reconciled. Unless you send invoices every day (and some stations do), there is no particular advantage to doing it more often than weekly. Accepting Logs can be a time-consuming process, and it does not take appreciably longer to accept a week’s worth than a single day.

   WARNING - Some stations like to get a jump on end of month billing and accept logs a few days early. This practice can produce some serious problems. One problem is you produce an invoice that may be an affidavit of performance stating that spots ran at specific times. Of course, you are making a guess as to what will happen. If it does not happen that way, you might look foolish (or worse) to some of your advertisers. Once the log has been accepted, you can not reconcile it. The other big problem about starting monthly billing early involves automated stations. Once a log has been accepted, it can not be exported to automation. If you have one or more automation systems that read the VT logs directly from the database, accepting logs makes those logs disappear as far as the automation system is concerned.

• Clear Expired Carts is a procedure that should be run weekly. If you choose not to do it as part of the Accept Logs procedure, you can do it separately using the Clear Expired Carts function on the VT Advertiser Menu. Remember that carts may only be cleared through the date of the latest accepted log.
• Print Invoices for weekly and End of Schedule orders. Although this is a billing function, it can not be done until the logs have been accepted. See Weekly Billing Procedures for more information.