New feature: Additional fees

Release date: May 13, 2025

A key benefit of media planning software is the ability to manage the media insertion costs.

MediaPlanHQ always provided cost management to compute different cost information (Discount, Taxes, Commissions, etc.) in different cost modes (Net-based, Gross-based, etc.)

But what if you have additional fees, such as delivery fees, production fees, partner fees, etc., that you want to capture as part of the media insertion costs?

Previously, you had to capture these fees as "fake" line items and "game" the cost to fit the nature of the fee into the cost mode:

With this release, you can now create fees in your account and add them to your media insertions.

Let's have a look at how it works...

Existing users: The feature is opt-in. You must create fees in the Administration > Costs > Fees section in order to activate Fees related behaviour.

Defining fees

You can manage the fees used in your account in the Fees tab of the Administration > Cost settings module:

Use the New fee button to create a new fee.  This will display the Create fee form:

Name	A unique text identifying the fee e.g. Production fee
Insert by default?	Whether or not to insert this fee into a new media insertion automatically.
Type & Default	The type of tee: Fixed-rate is a fee with a fixed rate that is distributed keeping the rate on all running days. Fixed-cost is a fee with a fixed cost that is distributed equally on all running days. The default rate or cost is used as the initial value when adding the fee to a media insertion. It can be changed afterward for the media insertion.

Adding fees to the planned cost of media insertions

Now that your account has fees, you can add them in the media insertion form. 

Use the Add fee dropdown to view the available fee that you can add to the media insertion:

Click on the fee to add it to the media insertion. The fee will be added with the default rate or cost.

You can adjust the rate or cost.  This will recompute the other rates and costs accordingly:

You can add as many fees to the media insertion:

Viewing fees in media authorizations

You can also view the total fees in the media authorization:

Estimating fees in actual costs

The system will also estimate the fees when updating/importing actuals based on the given actual net cost and the planned fees.  The fixed-rate fees will keep their rate, while the fixed-cost fee will be distributed equally on all running dates.

In the example above, the Production fee (Bullet #1) and Installation fee (Bullet #3) are fixed-cost, thus reusing exactly their planned cost.  The Delivery fee (Bullet #2) is a fixed-rate, thus reusing exactly its planned rate.

Adjusting fees in the invoiced cost in invoices

Now, when receiving a media vendor invoice, you can see the planned/actual fees for the period in the invoice form:

Even though the fees are not payable to the media vendor, this gives you the option to increase/decrease each individual fee based on the invoiced cost.

Archiving fees

You can archive fees that are no longer needed but that are currently used by media insertion.  In the Fees tab of the Administration > Cost settings module, click on the archive button to archive a fee.

You must enable the "Show archived" option to list the archived fees that are identified with a red squared A before their name:

Archiving a fee will not impact any existing media insertion using the fee.

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That's it !  We hope you'll enjoy the Additional fees feature. 

Give it a try, and let us know what you think !

As always, don't hesitate to send us your great feedback or other ideas for new features !

Have a great day,

The MediaPlanHQ team