ABC Bulk Distribution

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Reporting Standards for products registered in the ABC Bulk Distribution sector.

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Reporting Standards

• General Principles and Record Keeping
• Reported Data

Free Copies

• Free Pick Up
• Free Requested
• Free Letterbox

Paid Single Copies

• Retail Sales (Sale or Return)
• Single Copy Sales

Paid Subscriptions

• Single Copy Subscription Sales 
• All You Can Read Sales
• Multiple Copy Subscription Sales

Other

• Editions
• Issues to be included / excluded
• Reporting Periods
• Optional Reporting
• Publication Active Views
• Return Form Submission, Audit, Certification

Latest updates

December 2024

• Periods from June 2025: Details of changes together with the Reporting Standards for periods from June 2025 are available here. 

December 2023

• Optional Christmas/New Year Exclusions – Daily Titles: With Christmas Eve falling on Sunday, free daily titles in particular can be significantly impacted by changes in demand on the last working day, Friday 22nd December. Therefore, in line with the treatment in 2017 when this pattern of dates last occurred, the Christmas/New Year optional exclusion period for daily titles this year will commence from issues published Friday 22nd December 2023 rather than 24th December. Issues you wish to optionally exclude from your title’s average circulation can be entered in your title’s December return in the usual way. 

July 2022

• Excluded issues: A clarification has been added to help avoid the situation where a publisher might feel forced to print the normal quantity of copies, suspecting that a significant portion might never be distributed, purely in order for the issue to qualify to be excluded from the average circulation figure. 

September 2021

Free Letterbox Delivery: Following its introduction during the COVID restrictions of 2020, this category is now permanently available in this sector.  

Digital Publications: As an alternative to reporting calendar months, you may opt to use the equivalent dates for the relevant months according to the published ABC Accounting Calendar. This would allow, for example, a newspaper to align their Digital Publication's periods with their print publications by using periods that include only whole weeks, starting on a Monday and ending on a Sunday. 

November 2020

• Digital Editions - allowable content changes between a print parent edition and its Digital Edition have been amended.

• Free Digital Editions - can now be included under the Free Requested Delivered Copies category where distribution is demonstrated by the active opening of the copy.

• Paid Digital Editions - All You Can Read Sales category introduced, for copies where the consumer has paid and viewed a copy as part of a multi-publication offer.

March 2020

• Temporary standards changes issued to help address the challenges of coronavirus. 

Issued March 2020

• ROI publications that previously reported under separate ROI ABC Bulk Distribution standards will now report under these standards. 

Issued December 2017

• Excluded issues - Christmas (Daily titles only): The following has been added in relation to optional exclusions for the Christmas/New Year period: "If the fall of days renders these dates inappropriate ABC reserves the right to amend the dates for any particular year". It has been agreed that for 2017 publishers may opt to exclude issues published on Friday 22nd December from the average circulation. The issue's circulation must be reported separately on the certificate in line with existing requirements.

Issued August 2015

• Sample Free Distribution - new category available from September 2015: This new category will allow you to claim copies that meet the existing rules for Free Pick Up, except for the fact that their distribution does not follow a regular and consistent pattern. Therefore one-off or irregular distributions can be claimed under this Sample Free Distribution category and will be analysed by type by issue. You must obtain ABC’s agreement in advance of the distribution. Due to the increased audit time this type of distribution will incur, additional costs will be payable which will be dependent upon the extent of the job. Please contact us for guidance on this.
  
  

Guidance Update - August 2015

• Retail Promotions - Guidance on discounts / cash reimbursements: Clarification of how in-store promotions that result in discounts or cash reimbursements affect the reporting of the publication for ABC purposes.
• Retail promotions - Guidance on clarification of clear and conspicuous pricing: Clarification of what is clear and conspicuous pricing when a publication is sold in-store as part of a bundle or package with other products.

If you require information on any earlier changes please contact us.

Reporting Standards Group (RSG)

The Reporting Standards for ABC Bulk Distribution are approved by the ABC Board. 

Submission deadlines

Accounting calendar

Details of the weeks applied to each audit month and the months applied to each reporting period.

ABC Bulk Distribution Data

View the latest data in our Data Hub.

Archived standards

If you require past versions of Reporting Standards you can find them here.