Automated Affidavit: Incomplete status/verifying notices

Publishers can choose to receive a weekly e-mail digest of all notices for their newspaper(s) that we were unable to verify based on the e-edition we received for the publication date. You can manage your notification settings under Settings > My Account > Notification Settings. Please note that if you are a member of multiple newspapers, these settings apply to all of them.

We recommend addressing the unverified notices as soon as possible to reduce affidavit delays and ensure notices are published as scheduled.

How does Automated Affidavit verification work?

Column will automatically scan an e-edition to verify a notice was published via OCR (Optical Character Recognition). Our system is looking for a 95 percent match between the proof in-app and the content printed in the newspaper. Occasionally, our system is unable to match via OCR. Our team will manually double-check if our system cannot confirm a notice in those cases.

Why is the notice's affidavit status incomplete?

Once all the publication dates have passed, the affidavit status will be 'incomplete' until the affidavit is uploaded. For newspapers in the AA program, a notice will have an incomplete status until our team receives the e-edition, verifies the notice, completes notarization, and uploads the affidavit to the notice detail page. If a notice shows the affidavit status as incomplete, check the following:

Has the e-edition been uploaded? Check the Affidavits table to confirm an e-edition has been uploaded for all publication dates. If an e-edition is missing, please manually upload it.
Has the notice been verified? Check the activity log to see that all dates have been verified. The activity log will record each publication date when it's verified. If it's been automatically verified, the e-edition will be linked. The log won't include a link to the e-edition if it was manually verified.
Did the notice publish? When the correct e-edition is uploaded and the notice is unverified, please double-check whether the notice was published as scheduled.
Has it been two business days since the last publication date? Our standard turnaround time is 2 business days from the last publication date, provided all dates are verified. Once all dates are verified, notices will be added to the next available signing session within two business days.

Please contact Column Support if the notice is:

Fully verified, and
It's been longer than two days since the last verification date.

When the notice is unverified, but the notice was published:

A notice is unverified if we cannot find the notice text in the submitted e-edition; however, if you believe that an error has occurred — i.e., a notice marked “unverified” that should have been verified — please manually verify the notice in-app by following the steps below.

After navigating to the "Affidavits" table from the header, you can click "Verify notices" on the right side of the page. Select the box next to the appropriate notice(s) and click "Verify notices."

Once verified, the notice will be scheduled for completion within two business days.

The notice is unverified, but it's not showing up in the unverified list

The affidavits table displays only e-editions from the past 3 months; e-editions older than 3 months are archived. If a notice was published three months ago and is not listed on the unverified list, please contact Support at help@column.us and request our team to manually verify the notice for you. If possible, please provide the e-edition.

Oops. The notice was not published as scheduled.

When a notice misses publication, we recommend contacting the customer to see if the notice can be rescheduled. If so, edit the notice to remove the missed publication date and add new dates as needed.