Spots you owe back

An advertiser paid for an airing and did not get one. That is a debt — not a rounding error, and not a note in a comment field.

Every traffic system can tell you *ordered 12, aired 10*. The question that matters is the next one: were those two ever made up?

Two months later the same line reads *ordered 12, aired 14*. If nothing links those two extra spots to the two that were missed, the books balance only in somebody's memory.

Where they come from

A spot becomes owed in one of two ways, and which one decides what you tell the advertiser.

Would not fit is caught when you generate the day. Unplaced spots are listed with a reason, never silently dropped.

Missed is caught when you reconcile the day against the as-run.

You can also open one by hand, for the times a spot ran and should not have counted.

Why the morning after matters

A makegood found at invoice time can no longer be made good. The campaign is over, the advertiser has moved on, and every option left costs money.

The same debt found the morning after, with three weeks left in the flight, is a row in next Tuesday's log. Nobody has to call anybody.

So Cartwright opens the debt as soon as reconciliation proves the miss. It shows on Daily Log and the Dashboard that morning, not when somebody gets around to running a report.

Read the runway first

Beside each owed spot is its runway: how many eligible days are left to run it. Eligible means a day the order runs on, inside its dates, or up to 30 days after the miss, whichever is later.

The 30 days come from the contract. Cartwright's standard terms promise to reschedule a missed spot "in a comparable position within thirty (30) days", and to credit it only when that cannot be done. So a spot missed in the last week of a campaign can still run after the campaign ends, on the order's own days of the week, in its own dayparts, with its own copy. Nothing else from the order runs on those days.

• Runway left is a scheduling job. Pick a day, or let Cartwright pick.
• No runway is a phone call. No day left in the flight can carry the spot, so the options are to credit it, get the order extended, or agree to let it go.

They look different on purpose, because they are different problems.

A row can also be held rather than stranded. The days exist, but their logs are already sent. That is not the same as a flight that has ended, and it needs a different answer from you.

Settling one

Open Daily Log and find Spots owed. Every row offers these options, and Cartwright does not choose between them for you.

• Find days for these tries a placement across the owed rows: earliest day first, one makegood a day for each order, and never on a log already sent. It shows what it would do first, and nothing is saved until you accept.
• Make good on a row, or beside a missed spot under What aired, shows the day Cartwright picked. One click schedules it there. Choose a different day or time is for when the client asked for something particular: a day, and if they want, a time window such as 7:00 to 9:00 AM. The spot then goes in a break inside that window.
• Credit or write off closes the debt without an airing. Both ask who decided and why, and keep the answer. A credit and a favor are different conversations six months later.

When the client asks for something outside the rules

You missed the spot, so the client usually gets their way. Cartwright checks the day and time you choose against the rules it follows when it picks a day itself, and tells you each one you would break:

• after the order and the 30 days after the miss
• a day of the week the order doesn't run
• a second makegood for the same order that day
• outside the times the order was sold for

You can go ahead. Cartwright asks why, for example "the client asked for Saturday", and keeps your reason and your name on the makegood.

Three things can't be overridden, because they would change what already happened or what is already on the air:

• A day that has aired, or today.
• A day whose log is on the on-air PC. Revoke delivery on that day first, schedule the makegood, then generate and send the day again.
• An order that isn't active. Make it active again, or credit the spot.

Reading the state

Made good is proved, not assumed. Putting a makegood in a log does not close it. The day has to be reconciled, and the spot has to appear in the as-run. Anything less would tell you an advertiser is square when they are not.

Not proved is not the same as made good, which is why it has its own row. If a lot of them pile up, days are being built and not reconciled. The Dashboard names the oldest day still waiting to be reconciled.

What this does to the invoice

Cartwright bills from what aired, not from what was scheduled. An owed spot is never quietly invoiced and forgotten. It stays visible until somebody closes it, and the invoice can point at the spot that repaid it.

That is why there is one row per owed spot rather than a count. You cannot point at a count.

Two things worth knowing

Nothing settles itself. Running it again, crediting it and letting it go are all decisions a person makes. Cartwright finds the debt, shows what is possible and records what you chose. It will not close a debt to an advertiser on your behalf.

Generating a log again does not lose the debt. The day a makegood is aimed at survives the log being regenerated. Whether it is actually *in* a log is checked fresh every time, so a makegood that fell out comes back onto the worklist instead of looking paid.