Quick start

New to Cartwright? This page shows you the whole tool in about ten minutes.

What Cartwright is for

Cartwright helps your station get two things right every day:

• What goes on the air, and did it play? That is Traffic.
• Who are you selling to, and who is listening? That is Sales and Audience.

The two sides meet in one place. A company is a business you are talking to. An advertiser is a business that is already buying. Only advertisers can reach the log (the list of spots for the day), so a half-finished prospect can never end up on the air by mistake.

The sidebar, top to bottom

Today

• Dashboard is your morning glance: today's log, anything running behind, and anything that needs fixing.
• Tasks, Show Prep and Liners are the day's work.

Sell

• Leads, Companies, Contacts, Pipeline and Contests.
• This takes the place of a separate sales system, so you only keep one list.

Traffic

Revenue

• Pacing shows whether each campaign is getting what was sold.
• Sales Inbox, Billing and Reports help you get paid.

Audience

• Studio Inbox is what listeners sent in.
• Listeners is who they are, birthdays included, for the morning show.

Station

• Station setup holds the things you set once, like your clocks and rate card.
• People, Settings, Trash and this Help.

The one flow that matters

Everything else in Cartwright supports this:

Order → Spot → Stage → Generate → Approve → Send → Verify

1. An advertiser buys spots. You enter the order. 2. You add the audio, or the copy for a live read. 3. You stage the audio, which puts it where your automation system can find it. 4. You generate the day's log. 5. You approve it. 6. You send it. 7. You check that your automation system took it.

Try it once, start to finish, with one spot. It is the fastest way to learn. If a step stops, it tells you why. The full walkthrough is in Getting a spot on air.

Five things that save time

Every number opens. If a tile says 6, click it to see those six records, with buttons to edit them.

Empty is not zero. An empty rate means nobody has priced it yet. For a giveaway, set billing to comp instead of typing 0. That way your revenue reports can tell the two apart.

A spot's kind comes from what it holds. Upload audio and it is a produced spot. Type copy with no audio and it is a live read. There is nothing else to set.

Unplaced spots are owed back. If a spot does not fit in a day's log, Cartwright lists it with the reason. It becomes a makegood, a spot you owe the advertiser.

Always verify the import. Sending a log puts a file where your automation system looks for it. Verify import asks the automation system whether it read the file, and shows you its answer.

When something goes wrong

Cartwright cannot take your station off the air. It never changes your automation system's own files. It places a log file in a folder the automation system watches, and the automation system picks it up on its own schedule.

• A log will not build or import: see When a log will not import.
• The app says the server is unreachable: see Starting the server, and backups.

Questions waiting for an answer

Settings lists things your station has not decided yet, such as how many spots an hour can hold, or a rate that was never written down. These are questions, not problems.

When you answer one, Cartwright records the answer, who gave it and when. The old answer is kept too.

If you are not sure of the answer, ask the person who would know. It is better to leave a question open than to fill in a guess.