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Acumen Royalty Software

Acumen is a leading ERP software solution used by about 170+ small and mid-sized book publishers in North America. Some publishers purchase a 2 user version of Acumen just to handle their accounting for royalties.

Acumen's main competitor in the area of royalties and rights is Bradbury Phillips with 250 clients and relatively new Media Services' Elan Rights and Royalties Solution (released in 2007).

Bradbury Phillips costs less, is more scalable and costs less than Acumen.

Media Services's Elan Rights and Royalties Module offers publishers an eay to use and affordable ASP option designed for integration with most accounting software solutions.

Acumen offers integrated title information management, sales analysis and contact management functionality that the Bradbury Phillips product lacks. Futhermore, since Acumen is part of an ERP solution it can be expanded to handle your accounting, sales, inventory mangement and e-commerce requirements.

We recommend that our small to medium sized clients evaluate each of these products and select the one that best meets their requirements.

A small publisher looking for subsidiary rights management software should also look at the That's Rights software, a more affordable solution. Medium sized publishers should also look at solutions from Klopotek and Vista, which cost more but offer greater functionality.

Clients: 170+ and growing

Target Market: Small to medium sized book publishers

Website: www.acumenbook.com

The ACUMEN Royalty software is designed to significantly ease the work load involved in fulfilling your Royalties obligations. It can maximize your understanding of Royalty costs and improve your ability to communicate with authors regarding Royalty issues. Acumen Royalty Software together with ACUMEN's optional Fulfillment Import Module can import sales information into Acumen from your accounting system to handle the accounting for royalties due to your authors and export the payables information back to your accounting package for payment. With its optional Rights Marketing module it can help you to maximize your income from subsidiary rights sales.

Royalty Features:
  1. On-line view of Royalty Earnings detail, Royalty Payments, and Royalty Payable information for any title, author, and/or time period is readily accessible.
  2. Royalty checks can be created automatically by a click of a button.
  3. Seamless, automatic updating of Royalty files is based on Invoice, Credit Memo, Check, Voucher and Adjustment transactions.
  4. Up to the minute earnings information is always available.
  5. Royalties can be tracked on a cash or accrual basis. ACUMEN's powerful "Royalty Fix" function enables you to recalculate the royalties for any title from any point in time. This not only updates all relevant royalty records, but the general ledger as well.
  6. Royalty Advances are tracked and can be viewed on-line.
  7. Earnings against Advances are tracked and can be viewed on-line or printed.

Royalty Contract Features:

  1. You can create an unlimited number of authors per title, and each author can have a unique set of Royalty Rules (contract terms) and information for the title. This unique set of information for each author of a title is called a Royalty Record.
  2. Royalty Records are easy to create and accurately reflect Royalty contract terms.
  3. You can create an unlimited number of payees for each Royalty Record, allocated by %.
  4. A payee can be specified so as not to receive a statement.
  5. Royalty Rules can be based on the Royalty Type of an invoice or customer.
  6. Royalty Rules can be based on List Price, Net Price, Gross Profit, Gross Profit less Commission Cost, or Net Price less Commission Cost.
  7. Royalty Rules can be based on unit sales levels or sales value levels. These levels can be accumulated based on multiple editions.
  8. Royalty Rules can be based on different sales discounts.
  9. Royalty Rules earnings can be based on a percentage of sales value, or a fixed amount per unit sold.
  10. Royalty Rules criteria can be customized to your special needs.
  11. Reserves against returns can be specified by dollar amount or as a percentage of the payment due or as a percentage of total earnings.
  12. Earning periods and payment terms are easy to enter and are very flexible.

Royalty Statement Features:

  1. Royalty Statements are detailed, yet easy to understand.
  2. Royalty statements can reflect all titles for a given author.
  3. ACUMEN comes with a detailed, four page template in Microsoft Word format explaining every aspect of the Royalty Statement. You can customize this and send it to your authors.
  4. Royalty Statements can be run at any time for any period.
  5. Royalty Statements can be printed for all contracts due for a period, or for any user-selected contracts.
  6. Multiple contracts can be combined on the same statement.
  7. Unrecovered Advances for one contract can be optionally applied against other contracts on the statement.
    Statement can optionally contain a summary of future earnings.

Standard Royalty Reports: The following pre-formatted reports come with ACUMEN.

  1. Royalty Advance: A report containing the activity and balances of user-selected Royalty Advance Records.
  2. Royalty Detail: A detailed report of royalty earnings.
  3. Royalty Detail Summary: A summary report of royalty earnings.
  4. Royalty Payable Aging: An aging report for royalties payable based on user-selected records.
  5. Royalty Payable Detail: A detailed report of royalties payable based on user-selected records.
  6. Royalty Payable Summary: A summary report of royalties payable based on user-selected records.
  7. Royalty Payments Due: An audit report showing payments due to authors.
  8. Royalty Report: A detailed report of royalty records (contracts).
  9. Inv Transaction Royalty Audit: A report showing the full detail of royalty earnings for user-selected invoice and credit memo line items.

Royalty Documents:

  1. Royalty Statement: A document that can be sent to authors showing royalty earnings and payments for a user-specified period.

Acumen Royalty Contract Screen Shots

For more information on the Acumen Royalty Software contact us.