Royalties for iPhone Developers

I have just learned that Michel Kripalani of Oceanhouse Media will be giving a talk this Friday at MacWorld 2010 on the subject of "Building an iPhone Publishing House."  What makes this session particularly interesting to me is that he will be discussing the securing of intellectual property such as content to quickly bring value to one's App, and after his exhaustive research of software to handle tracking such license payment requirements, Oceanhouse Media chose DashBook!

When Michel first approached us about using DashBook, we had only recently introduced our version 3 that supported importing sales reports to use as the data for royalty calculations.  However, we did not yet have an import for Apple's iTunes sales reports.  With Michel's input and the use of DashBook's extensible import mapping architecture, we were able to quickly send him an import map that allowed his trial version to import his sales from each of the seven regional reports that Apple generated.  Needless to say, he was impressed with our rapid response.  Of course, already having an import that could convert currencies, along with the existing royalty calculation abilities that supported multiple payees per product helped, too!

After Oceanhouse Media purchased a license to DashBook and began using it, they continued to offer great suggestions to refine DashBook for the market of iPhone and iPod (and now iPad) developers.  One of his requests was the ability to easily specify the deposit fees that were charged, and automatically spread those costs across the apps sold in that period and region.  Fortunately, DashBook already had an option to reduce the amount received by various costs, so he was able to bend it to his will.  However, DashBook v4 will soon be released which will provide a simple entry during import to a cost item whose name will makes sense - "Payment Fees."

We are very happy to work with companies such as Oceanhouse Media who seek perfection in their operations.  DashBook is a powerful system built on a flexible architecture, and our team is committed to providing the best system there is.

Thanks to everyone!

Import sales reports from iTunes Music and App Store

This week we released DashBook v3.2. Yes, we sometimes just can't wait to get new features in the program and out the door!

Our prior version 3.1 introduced our sales report import ability. DashBook can import sales reports from text formatted files, such as csv and tsv. Although we provide a utility that you can use to create a mapping to the sales reports you receive, we also include a bunch of them directly in our package so you can focus on your business.

Both the music business and software development require a community effort that is often compensated by paying a percentage of sales to those involved in creation of the product. And one of the hottest places to sell these wares today is iTunes.

v3.2 added an import map for Apple's iTunes sales reports. This map allows you to import your iTunes sales whether they are from music sales or iPhone App Store sales. During import, you can enter a currency conversion factor. One of our customers noted that typing in the bank transfer fees as a sales commission percentage allowed him to pass the pro-rata of that expense to each of the products sold, so that the royalties he pays out are properly accounted.

Our import was also enhanced to enable creation of invoices for consignment sales. This was critical to properly add the reports for Midpoint Trade Books and Consortium, two more distributors used by DashBook customers.

If you have a distributor or reseller for which DashBook does not have a built-in import, please let us know so that we can help.