Circulation Operations Manager

Overview

The Circulation Operations Manager is responsible for overseeing the strategic and day-to-day operations of multiple departments and is accountable for the financial integrity of the newspaper's circulation function. This role provides direct leadership to the Circulation Finance and Data Processing teams, ensuring accurate customer data, billing, cash application, reconciliations, fraud prevention, and audit readiness. The position plays a critical role in maintaining revenue integrity, operational efficiency, and compliance within a fast-paced media environment.

• Provide day-to-day supervision and leadership in performance management, task delegation, coaching, and professional development to ensure operational excellence.
• Manage scheduling, workload and resource allocation to ensure adherence to established department processes, deadlines, and service-level expectations.
• Foster a collaborative, accountable, and continuous-improvement-focused team culture by training and mentoring the team.
• Act as a senior advisor for escalated issues and provide strategic input to resolve matters effectively.
• Oversee circulation-related financial activities, managing all processes related to customer data, billing, cash application, refunds, credits, and variance resolution to ensure financial accuracy and compliance.
• Conduct daily, weekly, and period-end reconciliations of circulation-related bank activity, including credit card transactions, ACH, chargebacks, and returned items.
• Ensure all discrepancies are thoroughly investigated, documented, and resolved in a timely manner.
• Serve as the primary point of contact for circulation-related audits, including Financial, AAM (Alliance for Audited Media), and Sales Tax audits.
• Prepare, maintain, and deliver detailed audit documentation and reconciliations as required.
• Ensure circulation processes align with internal controls, accounting standards, and regulatory requirements through documented procedures, reconciliations, audit support, and cross-functional partnership with Finance and Accounting.
• Perform daily monitoring of credit card activity using fraud detection tools; escalate issues and coordinate blocking of bot attacks or suspicious activity as needed.
• Maintain detailed documentation of fraud-related system changes and communications with third-party payment processors.
• Partner with leadership to assess fraud trends, implement corrective action plans, and strengthen preventative controls to reduce organizational risk.
• Manage system-related initiatives to ensure operational efficiency, including clean-up efforts stemming from technical issues affecting cash postings, refunds, or escheatment processing.
• Drive continuous process improvement and system optimization initiatives across circulation and financial workflows, including root-cause analysis and implementation of scalable solutions to maintain operational continuity and data integrity.
• Develop and maintain advanced formulas, macros, and automated workflows to improve efficiency, accuracy, and scalability.
• Partner cross-functionally with IT, Finance, Customer Service, and external vendors to resolve system issues and enhance circulation platforms.
• Develop, maintain, and regularly update Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) to reflect current policies, processes, and system configurations.
• Perform training for affected staff on changes to processes and SOPs to ensure staff are apprised of changes and understand the impact to their work.
• Ensure documentation supports training, audit readiness, and operational continuity in a dynamic environment.
• Undertake the responsibilities of the role using the tools, software or technologies that may be available or required at the time.
• Achieve the outcomes and results of the role as described above using the most appropriate methodologies and best practices available or required.
• Other duties as assigned.

• Bachelor's degree in Finance, Accounting, Business Administration, or a related field, or equivalent combination of education and experience.
• 7+ years of progressive experience in circulation operations, revenue operations, finance, data…