Beyond Efficiency: Key Takeaways from Column's Public Notice Cash Flow Webinar

Public notice is usually treated as a four-step workflow: receive the notice, publish it, send the invoice, produce the affidavit. But the job isn't done until the revenue is in the bank. That fifth step, collections, is where publisher cash flow is won or lost.

That was the focus of our November 5 Solutions Series webinar with Editor & Publisher. E&P Publisher Mike Blinder hosted Column CEO Megan Villanueva and Rachael Tipping, Chief Growth and Operations Officer at the Amsterdam News. Together they looked at what Column's payment data shows across our publisher network, and how one of the nation's oldest newspapers turned its collections around.

If you missed it, you can watch the full recording and download the slides on E&P. Here are the key takeaways.

1. Column gets paid when you get paid

Mike opened by asking why cash flow matters so much to Column. Megan's answer: it's built into our business model. Column doesn't earn its fee until the publisher's invoice is paid. That's different from software models where a publisher pays regardless of whether the advertiser does, which only adds to the publisher's AR.

"An unpaid invoice is lost revenue for us as much as it is for the publisher."

— Megan Villanueva, CEO, Column

Megan also cleared up a common misconception: Column is not a placement agency taking a cut of newspaper revenue. Take a $100 notice and a 10% fee. An agency takes its commission out of the $100, and the newspaper keeps $90. With Column, the newspaper keeps the full $100 and the fee is added on top, paid by the advertiser for a better placement experience. Automated Placement, our service for high-volume advertisers, works the same way.

Most publishers know Column for improving margins through automation. This webinar was about the other two levers: growing top-line revenue, and strengthening cash flow by collecting what you've already earned.

2. About 9% of annual notice volume sits in AR at any time

After seven years in public notice, Column can see payment patterns across publishers of every size, from small weeklies to large regional groups, including competitive markets like New York and Southern California. The analysis Megan shared covers 12 months of public notice transactions from publishers who process payments through Column. It excludes obits, classifieds and anything invoiced outside Column.

The headline numbers:

• $62.4M in public notice volume over 12 months

• $5.6M outstanding as of September 30, 2026, about 9% of annual volume

• ~$2.8M, roughly half of that, past due

• ~$750K more than 90 days past due

This is a one-day snapshot, not a write-off rate. Most of that money will come in. But the aging profile is telling. Normally, overdue balances shrink as they age. In our data they taper from 30 to 90 days, then jump: more than a quarter of overdue AR is 90+ days late.

"The older the aging bucket, the less likely you're going to be able to collect on that."

— Megan Villanueva, CEO, Column

Often the cause is fixable. A municipality's finance contact changes and invoices keep going to the wrong person. Column's support and Pro rep teams work with publishers to identify these customers, find the right contact, adjust billing, and put accounts on hold when needed so balances stop growing.

3. Know your number, and compare it to peers your size

Publishers often tell us, "I'm not that size, so this may not apply to me." So we broke median outstanding AR down by annual public notice volume. The network median is about 5.7% of annual volume.

• Under $25K in annual public notice volume: 3.6% median AR

• $25K–$100K: 7.2%

• $100K–$500K: 5.5%

• Over $500K: 9.4%

These are Column publishers, so if you manage public notice billing another way, your number may be higher or lower. The question to ask is simple: am I in line with similar publishers, or materially higher?

4. Three levers that speed up payment

When Mike asked what publishers can actually do about AR, Megan pointed to three factors with the biggest impact in the data.

Prepayment: 71% less AR

"Collections start well before an invoice goes overdue, and the biggest lever we're seeing is prepayment."

— Megan Villanueva, CEO, Column

In Column, prepayment means the invoice is due by the ad deadline. Publishers can also choose to cancel a notice automatically if payment doesn't arrive, so they never give up page space to a notice they may not get paid for.

Publishers who require upfront payment on at least half of their applicable volume carry 71% less AR relative to annual volume: 2.8% versus 9.5% for everyone else.

They also get paid faster and more reliably:

• Paid in about 2 days on average, versus about 13 days. That's cash in the bank 11 days sooner.

• Median on-time payment rate of 95%, versus 76%.

This compares two groups of publishers rather than a controlled experiment, but the gap is big enough to take seriously. Prepayment fits one-off filers best: LLC formations, name changes and fictitious business names. Prepayment can be set per customer, per customer organization, or by notice type.

Affidavits: the document that starts the payment clock

For many municipalities, the affidavit is what lets accounts payable start processing payment. Some customers need it attached to the invoice before they can pay. Kyle Veum, controller at Forum Communications, made this point in our recent case study. On Column Standard and Pro, affidavits are delivered digitally in under four business days after the last publication date, with verification, signing and notarization (remote online or wet signature) handled for the publisher.

ACH over checks: about three weeks faster

"This is not going to surprise anyone. Checks are our least favorite payment method."

— Megan Villanueva, CEO, Column

Checks are slow, they get lost in the mail, and refunds take even longer. The data backs it up. Publishers with almost no check payments (0–1% of volume) are paid in about 3.5 days. Where checks make up 50–75% of volume, the wait stretches to about 24 days, and above 75% it's roughly 26 days.

This fall, Column ran a campaign to move check payers to ACH, getting on the phone with advertisers to set it up. Advertisers who switched paid about three weeks faster. ACH also means no lost checks or bank runs, each payment tied to its invoice, and faster refunds. Saved payment methods in Column make every future payment close to one click.

5. Governments have more payment flexibility than we assume

Government customers matter to newspapers both as recurring revenue and as relationships that help protect public notice when legislation threatens it. They do have procurement and AP rules publishers need to accommodate. But Megan shared two assumptions Column itself held early on, before digging into the data.

• "Governments pay by check." In fact, 58% of government customers in Column's data don't pay by check. Most of them pay by credit card.

• "Governments all need net 30." Net terms are the norm, but 2.7% of government customers already pay upfront. It's a small share, but it's proof that prepayment is possible.

"Ask your customers, don't assume."

— Megan Villanueva, CEO, Column

Offer card, ACH and prepayment, and make it easy to say yes.

6. Amsterdam News: from 40 cents to 90+ cents on the dollar

Founded in 1909, the Amsterdam News is the oldest Black-owned newspaper in New York City and one of the oldest in the country. Rachael Tipping joined in 2023, when the person who had run collections left and took the institutional knowledge with them. Little of the process had been digitized.

At the time, the paper was collecting roughly 40 cents of every dollar it billed for classifieds and legal notices. Today, after moving legal notices to Column, it collects 90 to 98 cents on the dollar.

"It's 90 to 98 cents depending on me and how rigorous I am about the collection process."

— Rachael Tipping, Chief Growth and Operations Officer, Amsterdam News

A few things made the difference:

• Prepayment for nearly everyone. All but two Amsterdam News customers now prepay, and Rachael said they've gotten essentially no pushback.

• Visibility. The team can see who has paid and contact customers directly from Column.

• Growth they can collect on. Legal notice volume has grown about 200% since the paper started with Column, and the paper collects roughly 95 cents on the dollar of that growth without extra work.

"Column has every report that I would need to pull to run a collections process."

— Rachael Tipping, Amsterdam News

Why they moved to Column Pro

This fall, the Amsterdam News moved to Column Pro, where a dedicated team of Column reps runs the legal notice workflow. Rachael was clear that the decision came from trust built over several years.

"We regard it as a partnership that we've built with another company."

— Rachael Tipping, Amsterdam News

With notice volume growing, expertise mattered. "If we file it incorrectly on behalf of a customer, the legalities associated with it can be a really big deal," Rachael said. Pro also gives a small team room to breathe. Column takes notices well into the evening and over holidays, so the paper keeps earning revenue when staff are off. Team members who used to handle classifieds now work on digital and other revenue streams.

"You can't just rely on getting advertisements in a newspaper. We need all hands on deck."

— Rachael Tipping, Amsterdam News

Her advice for every publisher: find out how many cents you actually collect on each dollar of legal advertising you sell. The Amsterdam News didn't know its number until it ran the analysis.

7. The tools publishers use today, and what's next

Megan closed the data portion with a live demo of the Column features behind these results:

• Prepayment. Set upfront payment as the billing term for a customer or a whole customer organization.

• Payment reminders. Send a reminder on any unpaid invoice in one click, and add extra email addresses when the original contact isn't responding.

• Purchase order field. A new, optional PO field that prints on the invoice, so government AP teams can match and pay it.

• Customer holds. Put an account on hold so a customer can't place new notices until past balances are settled.

• Invoice outside Column. For publishers who bill customers for multiple products on their own statements, Column can skip sending a separate invoice.

• Reporting. Filter invoices by status, export them, and see customers' overdue balances by aging bucket, including across multiple papers in a group.

A few practical answers from the Q&A: publishers on QuickBooks can download Column payouts as a CSV for reconciliation. Rates and billing terms can be set by customer or notice type, so you can apply a government rate or require prepayment for one-off filers. Column also encodes statutory rates by state and county. Rachael added a tip of her own: she uses Claude to draft personalized collection emails from her invoice export, about 200 emails in 20 minutes.

Where Column is investing

Because Column doesn't get paid until publishers do, collections is a major investment for us over the next two quarters. Priorities include better financial reporting (including expected payouts for cash projections), invoice previews before invoices go out, better customer data, and more flexible invoicing. We've also hired a collections operations specialist focused on getting advertiser invoices paid.

Much of this roadmap comes straight from publishers. Rachael's team and Forum Communications' finance team shaped features like the PO field and outstanding-balance visibility.

"Publishers give us the context around which pain points are worth solving, and our engineering and product teams act on that feedback, ship quickly, and iterate."

— Megan Villanueva, CEO, Column

Five questions to ask about your own collections

Whether or not you use Column, Megan left publishers with five questions to work through:

1. How much AR do you carry? Divide outstanding AR by annual public notice volume. The median in our data is about 5.7%; prepayment publishers are at 2.8%.

2. Which customers actually need credit terms? Review payment history. Does every one-time filer need net 30, or could they prepay while trusted recurring customers keep terms?

3. How do your customers pay? Find your check payers and offer ACH or card instead.

4. What information do you capture upfront? A billing contact, phone number, address and PO give you more ways to reach the right person later. Column lets you require phone and address when a notice is placed.

5. Can your team see who has paid? Make sure whoever owns collections has reporting that shows paid and unpaid balances, so you can follow up on anything 60+ days old.

Publishing the notice completes your obligation to the community. Collecting the revenue completes the job for your business.

Want help with your public notice cash flow? Book a call with Column or email info@column.us. And if you missed the live session, watch the recording and download the slides on E&P.

Data reflects publishers processing public notice payments through Column over the trailing 12 months as of September 30, 2026, and excludes transactions invoiced outside Column. Amsterdam News figures are as reported by Amsterdam News.