Tech Support Q&A: How do I manually expire subscribers?

Q:     How do I manually expire subscribers?

A:     For full control over what subscriptions are expired and when, many publishers choose to disable the automatic expiration settings and manually expire subscriptions.

In this scenario, the option to expire subscribers comes each time an issue is closed.  On the Close Issue screen, four dates can be chosen to determine if and when to expire different kinds of subscribers.

In order, those dates are for:

Current subscribers
New starts
Sample subscribers
Complimentary subscribers

Some, none, or all of these subscription types may be expired at the same time. There are subtle technical differences among these four kinds of subscriptions that are important to understand.

Current subscribers, technically, are any subscribers with a Notice Type set to Renew. This should be the bulk of active subscribers in a newspaper list. When current subscribers are marked for expiration, the system expires all subscribers with a renewal date on or before the date specified on the close issue screen.

New subscribers are those having a Notice Type of New, and is used for subscribers who have not yet paid for their subscription. Not all newspapers allow this, and if it is not allowed by your newspaper, it is safe to disregard this line. When new subscribers are marked for expiration, the system expires all subscribers with a beginning date on or before the date specified on the close issue screen.

Sampled and Complimentary subscribers are those having a Pay Type set to Sample or Comp, respectively, and are expired independently of regular renewing or new subscribers. When either of these options is chosen for expiration, the system expires subscribers with a renewal on or before whatever is specified on the Close Issue screen.

With all subscriber types, the grace period prior to expiration can be controlled by choosing a date that is earlier than that of the issue being closed. For instance, if expiring subscribers when closing an issue dated March 31, 2010, specifying a date of February 28, 2010 would provide a 1 month grace period, as all subscribers with renewal dates in the month of March would remain active.

After closing an issue with subscriber expirations, it is often helpful to print the Subscription Expiration List under the Renewals report category, which provides a complete list of every subscription that was expired.