Tips and Tricks.
Here are some commonly asked questions
and answers about the Media Interface.
Question:
We just installed Smart Plus and turned on the Financial Interface. In
Ad-Input, I did the setup and extracted data. Nothing happened. What’s
wrong?
Answer:
Check the path in Smart Plus. Set up in Ad-Input and make sure the
path’s match exactly. If this does not fix the problem, make a buy in
Smartplus, then go to directory location and see if the finance.dat file
is created. If it is and the directory paths match, the data should be
going to the correct location.
Question:
I extracted buys and I got a lot of other data, what should I do?
Answer:
The buyer is sending old data, you will have to delete it and tell the
buyers to stop sending old data.
Question:
I pulled buys over
and the call letters don’t match my vendor numbers, what’s wrong.
Answer.
The call letter fields are not updated on the vendor master records in
Ad-Input. The vendor files in Ad-Input need to be updated so that the
call letter fields will exactly match the extracted data.
Question:
The buys are in a new market and I don’t have vendors set up in
Ad-Input. I extracted and now have a bunch of buys in the interface
file that don’t match a vendor; do I have to fix them one by one?
Answer.
Add vendors, making sure to update the call letter field, under the
media interface, run the fix blank vendor numbers option and the buy
records will be corrected.
Question:
All 500 buys I pulled over are at net and they should be with
commission. What should I do?
Answer.
Have the buyer resend the buys and repost.
Question:
I pulled buys over for the last quarter of 2004 and now I have records
for Oct 04, Nov 04, Dec 04 and Jan 05. What happened?
Answer:
Broadcast buys are posted by calendar month. The last days of December
are usually part of the Jan. broadcast calendar for the next year.
Question:
I can’t bill this estimate for Jan 05; it’s not in the client’s budget.
How do I fix?
Answer:
You will have to close the Jan order and re-enter it as a Dec. buy or
correct the Dec buy to reflect the Jan. amount. Use the MB option,
“Orders” to close the Jan order and correct the December order.
Question:
I pulled buys from Strata and all the orders have the same number;
00001. Strata does not have a field for an order number, so all orders
are assigned with the number “00001”.
Answer.
Strata allows one buy record, per estimate per vendor, so there is
always only one order number for each vendor.
Question:
I pulled buys for a three-month flight and all the buys are in the first
month, what happened
Answer:
Error in broadcast calendar. Either a year has not been entered or the
start date is not correct for a month. Also, a minor bug in Smartplus
will cause this. It is seen on the finance.dat record where there is a
field for the start date of broadcast month.
