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Customizable Royalty Statements

January 29, 2010 By

Easy Royalties software allows the user to customize the look of their royalty statements. You can show summary information or detailed sales information. You have a choice of how each section of the statement is titled.

You can select this options after selecting print royalty statements. The options you have are shown on three tabs; main statement, summaries and headers & footers.

This makes it easy to customize the statement for different types of products; books, dvds, software, music, etc.

Example; a book publisher’s statements might label editions “editions”, an art museum can all it “artworks” and a music publisher might use the term “songs.”

Royalty Statements Options 1

royalty statement option 2

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Royalty Data Protection

January 1, 2010 By

Protecting the data in your royalty software is of critical importance. We tell you how to protect your data and the computer that the data is saved on. [Read more...]

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Import QuickBooks Sales

November 20, 2009 By
Importing QuickBooks sales into our royalty software is an easy three step process.
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First, generate a Sales by Item Detail Report. Modify this report to turn off  headers and footers. Memorize the report under a new name; i.e. Easy Royalties Sales Detail Report, so that you will not need to make these changes in the future.
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Second, export this report to Excel, being careful to select Send header to screen in Excel in the Advanced tab of the Export Report window. This will place the field names in the first row of the spreadsheet.

QuickBooks Export Report Settings

Third, in Easy Royalties go to File > Import  > Sales Entries

In the Mapping Section of the Import Screen note the settings for Ignore rows when any of the following fields are blank. If an indicated field is blank then this row of sales data will not be imported. In the example below a row will be excluded if the date or item number (i.e. ISBN) cells are blank.

QuickBooks Import File Map

In the screenshot below you can see which rows (those with a red line) will not be imported.
 
   
 
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IRS 1042 Webinar Oct 26

October 20, 2009 By

Do you pay royalties to foreigners? If so you should be filing IRS Form 1042 for each payment (not form 1099 MISC).

Learn more about Form 1042 and what the IRS is looking for by attending the Accounts Payable Now & Tomorrow webinar “Preparing for Form 1042 Audit” on Monday October 26, 2009.

Register at: http://ap-now.com/1042audit.html 

“Please join us for an information-packed 60 minutes on October 26, 2009 as Cyrus Daftary, an international tax and regulatory compliance expert :

  • Explains why tax withholding has become such a hot topic and what this means for your organization

  • Documents the cost of non-compliance

  • Reveals what you can expect during an audit

  • Shares insights into what the IRS really wants

  • Provides a better understanding of the IRS’ Internal Revenue manual

  • Tips for handling the audit process

  • Describes some validation tools being used today by major corporations”

The cost for this 60 minute semianr is $179, if you cannot attend you can order a CD of the webinar.

PS: If your roylty software does not track 1042 liabilities, your accounting software may.  Kensai International; a book publishing consulting firm, recommends that publishers utilize software; such Dynamics GP, Dynamics NAV (see knkPublishing) or AcumenBook that can generate the required 1042 forms.

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Multi-title Royalty Statement

October 15, 2009 By

To report royalties by title in a report that has one row for each title use the multi-title royalty statement.

This statement format is useful where the royalty recipient receives royalties on lots of titles, i.e. 50+ titles and you don’t want to print a 50+ page royalty statement. Many publishers will use the multi-title statement as backup for their accounts payable request while sending the more detailed regular statement to the author.

Before using this statement format we recommend that you create a new header for a landscape report in Options & Settings > Stationary. Call it Landscape. You will use this header on your landscape formatted reports.

Then from the Author Statements screen select the statements that you want to include (you can us the Advance button to filter the list for you). Then press the Documents button and select the Multi-Title format.

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Error 02. Program Shuts Down on Starting

June 27, 2009 By

How to solve a situation where slower computers, limited memory, or overloaded registries cause Easy Royalties to shutdown when the program is opened.

Easy Royalties uses Microsoft Office runtime libraries when it executes. If you have Microsoft Office installed, there are some cases (slower computers, limited memory, overloaded registries, or other situations) where Easy Royalties might start up and link to the wrong copies of the Microsoft Office libraries that it uses (it may link to your copies of the Office libraries, instead of its own copies). When this happens, Easy Royalties may not function properly. This problem can sometimes be avoided by setting a parameter in the startup shortcut, as described in the instructions below.

Instructions

1. On your desktop, select the icon for Easy Royalties! (but don’t double-click – i.e. select the icon, but don’t launch the program)

2. Right mouse-click, and select “Properties”

3. Click the “Shortcut” tab

4. Look at the field labelled “Target”. It should look something like this:
“C:\Program Files\Common Files\SagekeySoftware\StartAccess_2003.exe”
-CMD=”Software\JDC Software\Easy Royalties”
(pathnanmes may be slightly different on your system)

5. You need to insert, just before the “-CMD=…”, the following text: -WAIT=30000

(put your cursor in the field and slide to the right, or use the arrow keys, to get to “-CMD”)

6. Now the whole thing should read something like this (except for any differences in pathnames): “C:\Program Files\Common Files\Sagekey Software\StartAccess_2003.exe” -WAIT=30000-CMD=”Software\JDC Software\Easy Royalties”

7. Now try launching Easy Royalties (by double-clicking the icon)

Remember, if you have any problems with the software please can contact us.  Technical support for Easy Royalties is free.

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Elan Rights and Royalties

May 16, 2009 By

Elan Rights and Royalties is one of  four hosted royalty solutions that we recommend to publishers with revenue of $5M to $30M USD.

The other solutions are Klopotek, Publishing Technology and Royalty Tracker.

Why Elan?

First, Elan is a modern .NET 100% browser based application. You don’t have to install any applications on the user’s PC or MAC. Yes, this software can be accessed by both PC and MAC users. The backend database is MS SQL. The report engine is Crystal Reports.

Second, the software features an Inductive User Interface. This means that the software is extremely easy to use and that can it can be adapted to the requirements of its users. Compared to other software implementations its like night and day. The interface can be customized to the user, it utilizes Wizards to guide the user and it has integrated help.

Third, the Elan solution is hosted at mirrored sites at world class data centers. Two hosting sites are located in the United States and a third is located in London. All data is mirrored (copied) from one site to the others. If one goes down you will have seamless access from the other two hosting sites.

Four, Elan features automated report delivery to management and authors.

Fifth, Elan is offered by The Media Services Group, a company with a diversified client base of 400 book and magazine publishers.

The price?

According to an article in Book Business Magazine the price for this hosting solution is $900/month. That’s $10,800 a year or $54,000 over five years. The hosted solution includes technical support, software upgrades and data backups.

PS:  Are you wondering why we mention the competition? It’s because we want you to pick the best solution for your company. We like Easy Royalties alot. Its affordable and powerful.  We can help you implement it really fast; however, its not for everyone.

Look at all the solutions within your budget, check references and select the royalty software that best meets your requirements.

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Royalty Software Leaders

April 26, 2009 By

The leading royalty and rights software solutions for book publishers include Klopotek, Publishing Technology, Bradbury Phillips, Elan Book, Royalty Tracker by MetaComet and Easy Royalties.

Each of these vendors has a large client base of publishers and actively promote their software to book publishers as a stand-alone rights and royalty software solution that can import sales information from your existing system(s).

Klopotek offers powerful standardized rights and royalty software functionality along with an optional module that gives author and agents online access to their royalty statements. What sets Klopotek apart from the competition is its breath of large clients and the close integration with their production management modules. Klopotek is for companies with sales of $25M+.

On Klopotek’s heals is Publishing Technology’s new .NET based rights and royalties software.  Publishing technology designed their software in a manner that allows their clients to easily customized it. More importantly, the Publishing Technology solution incorporates power work process controls. This royalty software is targeted at companies with sales of $10M+.

Elan Rights and Royalties is a powerful and easy to use hosted royalty software solution that runs on a MS SQL platform.  Priced at $900/month for a hosted solution or $25,000 for a stand-alone solution (according to an article in Book Business).

Bradbury Phillips offers publishers a choice of hosted or stand-alone rights and royalty software applications. They are a market leader and their software is used by book publishers and literary agents.

MetaComet’s RoyaltyTracker software is a powerful and easy to use application that can manage 100,000+ roylaty contracts. In the past its been used by only the largest publishers; however, they recently released a hosted version that  small and mid-sized publishers can afford.

Easy Royalties is a relatively new royalty software solution. Its comparatively low price and ease of use targets small publishers. An optional rights management module is available.

Which software is best for your firm? Each of the solutions listed above has a solid customer base and offers unique strengths. You need to pick the solution that best meets the current and future needs of your company.

In the case of Easy Royalties, we recommend this software to publishers  looking for a  powerful, easy to use and low cost royalty solution. This solution lacks some of the bells of whistles of it competitors; however, it also offers its own unique advantages.

Example; MSGL’s Elan Rights and Royalties software allows the user to email royalty statements to authors. Publishing Technology’s royalty software solution allows the user to customized the screen and field names. Klopotek’s software allows authors and agents to access sales and royalty reports on-line. 

Easy Royalties does not offer these features. What it does offer is a low price; about $500 to $10,000 USD, with no required maintenance contract. Technical support is free.

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Speed Up Easy Royalties

April 22, 2009 By

Here’s how to speed up the performance of your Easy Royalties software.

First, make sure that your PC has at least 1GB of RAM, preferably more. If you have over 500,000 sales records you will need at least 2GB of RAM. Adding more RAM is usually the most effective change you can take to improve the speed of any royalty software that you use.

Second, when generating royalty statements – a data intensive process - close all other windows that are open on your PC. This will maximize the amount of RAM that Easy Royalties can use.

Third, defragment your hard drive monthly. Use the built in windows defragger or a third party tool such as PerfectDisk or Diskeeper.

Royalty software such as Easy Royalties generates author statements faster when they run on a PC that is optimized for large databases.  This requires more RAM, a fast processor, a fast hard drive and a defragmented hard drive. 

One client ran about 200 royalty statements in 8 minutes on an old PC. On a newer PC the same process took about 1 minute. Another client running the multi-user version of Easy Royalties found that it took about 10 minutes to generate royalty statements for 3,000 products on a new PC and 30 minutes on an older PC.

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QuickBooks Royalties Setup

April 19, 2009 By

Quickbooks can  work with the Easy Royalties software.  You can export authors, products and sales from Quickbooks and import this information into Easy Royalties. This post tells you how to setup your  vendor (author) and item (product) files to work with the Easy Royalties.

First, you need to define a vendor type called “Author”, and assign this vendor type to all author and agent vendors. This will allow you to export only your author vendors.

Second, populate your item list with the ISBN and title code of each product that you sell.  The ISBN should go into the item number field and the title code populates the manufacturer part number (MPN) field.  Though each book must have a unique ISBN, the various editions of a book; paper, hardcover, eBook, can share the same title code.

Example;

  • How to Cook, paper, ISBN 9781000000008, Title Code: HTC
  • How to Cook, hardcover, ISBN 978222222333X, Title Code: HTC
  • Martian Cooking, paper, ISBN, 9783444444400, Title Code: MC
  • Martian Cooking, eBook, ISBN, 978450000099, Title Code: MC

Third, in the item list define new fields to store the book’s format (paper, cloth, eBook, etc.) and publication date.

After your lists are updated with the correct vendor type, ISBN, title code, format and publication date you are ready to export author and product information from Quickbooks so that it can be imported into Easy Royalties software.

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