Quickbooks and Authors

October 26, 2010 By admin

To use QuickBooks with royalty software; such as Easy Royalties, you need to configure your vendor file to 1) faciliate exporting author information to your royalty software and 2) properly report royalty payments to the IRS.

This is a two step process;

1. Assign a vendor type of “Author” (or “Royalty Recipient”) to each of your royalty recipient vendor accounts. This will allow you to filter your export file to include only royalty related vendors to your accounting software.

2. Activate Tax: 1099 in QuickBooks Preferences. Then on the addtional info tab of each royalty recipient vendor record enter their tax identificaiton number and select the ” Vendor eligible for 1099″ check box.

Filed Under: QuickBooks Tagged With: QuickBooks

QuickBooks Royalty Software Sales Import

October 26, 2010 By admin

Importing QuickBooks sales into most royalty software solutions is simple. Export the sales from QuickBooks in Excel format. Then import the file into your royalty software.

The example below shows how this is done in Easy Royalties. The Easy Royalties sales import will automatically filter out any rows that are blank – such as subtotal rows and rows with no data. It can handle sales files with line item discounts and invoices that have a single discount line item for all line items on the invoice.

Procedure

Step 1. Customize QuickBooks Sales by Item (Detail) report

You need to customize the standard report via Modify Report to turn off the headings and footers.

Then add the additional fields that you you may want to import.

Step 2. Memorize the customize report for future use

Step 3. Export the Sales Report into Microsoft Excel

When you select the export button, click the advanced tab and select send header to screen. This will place the field names in the first row of your Excel file.

Step 4. Import Sales file into Easy Royalties

Open Easy Royalties and go to File > Import > Sales, and select the file you wish to import.

At this point you can tell the software whether the discount is included in the line item amount or if the invoice has a single discount line item for each invoice. Easy Royalties can handle both situtation.

Step 5. Review the Import Report

After you import the sales file Easy Royalties; and most other royalty programs, generate an error log that lists any rows that could not be imported. This usually occurs if you did not create a product in the royalty software prior to importing sales.

Filed Under: QuickBooks Tagged With: QuickBooks

Royalty Expense Accounts

October 25, 2010 By admin

Royalty and licensing expenses are usually tracked with four royalty expense accounts;

1. Royalty Expenses (consolidated). Many organizations use a roll-up account to summarize the balances of their royalty sub-accounts.

2. Royalty Expense. This account tracks the royalty expenses incurred during the period.

3. Royalty Advance Write-off. This account is used to expense royalty advances (payments issued against future earnings) that are written down to their net realizable value. This can occur if a project is canceled or if the expected royalties from sales will not cover the outstanding balance of the royalty advance AND the recipient of the advance is not expected to return the unearned balance of the advance.

4. Unearned Royalties (or Royalty Write-off). This account is used to write-down the value of the unearned royalties balance sheet account. Unearned royalties occur when a company has overpaid royalties to the royalty recipient. This can happen when returns for a period exceeds sales – thus resulting in a negative royalty expense. If the company does not expect future royalty earnings to cover the royalty recipient’s negative balance (i.e. the unearned royalties) the balance is written down to its net realizable value.

Analysis

The use of four expense accounts allows a publisher to present royalty expenses as a single line item and track the value of royalty expenses, advances written off, and excess royalties paid.

Example 1:

Royalty Expenses (consolidated) $100,000

Unconsolidated:

Royalty Expense……………………..$95,000
Royalty Advance Write-Offs…………$1,000
Unearned Royalties………………….$4,000

The royalty expense amount for a period should match the total royalty earnings reported by your royalty software for that same period.

A high royalty advance write-off could indicate that sales estimates are too high, as most publishers aim for an advance that is less than or equal to expected royalties on the first year’s sales.

A high unearned royalties expense may indicate that the publisher’s (or licensee’s) reserve for returns is too low. A reserve for returns clause in a royalty contract allows the payee to withhold; usually for one period, a percentage of royalties earned to cover returns expected during the following royalty period.

Filed Under: Royalty Accounting Tagged With: Accounting

Royalty Payables

October 24, 2010 By admin

Companies with large royalty expenses; such as book publishers, usually use a seperate payables account for their royalty liabilities. Seperating operating payables from royalties payable raises the visibility of both payables accounts.

Example: Chart of accounts with three payable accounts;

20000 – Accounts Payable (roll-up account)…………………$21,000
20100 – Accounts Payable………………………….$10,000
20200 – Royalties Payable………………………….$11,000

The roll-up account shows the total accounts payable liability; Accounts Payable + Royalties Payable.

Filed Under: Royalty Accounting

That’s Permissions

October 23, 2010 By admin

That’s Rights (aka Easy Royalties) released a new add-on module called That’s Permissions. This module allows publishers to track the permissions they have granted to others and the permissions that they received.

A permission might cover the use of an illustration, a graph or an extract from another book. With this product a publisher can access the status of all permissions they requested and obtained for each title published.

Filed Under: News

McGraw-Hill Education selects Advance Rights & Royalties

October 22, 2010 By admin

Publishing Technology welcomes McGraw-Hill Education, the seventh largest publisher in the world, as our newest client. The global provider of educational materials, information and solutions will be installing the rights, royalties and permissions modules from Publishing Technology’s recently released suite of applications, advance.

By replacing several existing applications with a single, integrated system, McGraw-Hill will now have a holistic view of their rights, royalties and permissions information across the entire group. The new system will provide strong controls with greater flexibility enabling business process improvement, detailed budgeting and greater forecasting capabilities.

The advance suite intertwines Publishing Technology’s more than 30 years of industry expertise with cutting edge technology to create applications with unmatched flexibility and built-in workflow management controls specifically designed for content providers. The end users benefit from dashboards, user-level personalization, an intuitive user interface, extensive workflow management tools, and powerful analytic tools; while IT and Operations areas benefit from accelerated development, process automation and simplified maintenance.

“We are very pleased to be working with such an innovative and established publisher. advance™was developed specifically to address the continuously changing business environment by providing greater adaptability and control to management while creating greater freedoms and personalization for users. It is exciting for us to see that the thought and work that went into this application is being recognized by some of the industry’s best,” commented Randy Petway, Executive Vice President, Strategy & Business Development.

Filed Under: News Tagged With: Advance

Eeerdmans purchases Elan Rights and Royalties

October 22, 2010 By admin

William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, a religious publisher based in Grand Rapids, Michigan, has agreed to upgrade their CISPUB system to Media Services Group’s cloud-version of Élan Book. This upgrade will provide Eerdmans with licenses of Élan Book, Circ, CRM, Rights and Royalties (RR), Product Lifecycle Management (PLM), Analytics (excel-based data analysis) and an integrated website optimized for ecommerce and customer web self-service. Eerdmans has been a CISPUB customer since 2003.

Founded in 1911, Eerdmans is well known for their biblical and theological reference publications and religious titles. They also publish works on Philosophy, Political Science, Ethics and related topics.

Filed Under: News Tagged With: Elan