Royalties with QuickBooks Online Edition

Here is our DashBook version 6 announcement, which includes an option to work with QuickBooks Online Edition (QBOE). (NOTE: Intuit killed this ability, but we re-instated; desktop communication will continue as well)

We are proud to offer DashBook version 6 which builds upon years of work and customer feedback.

High on the list of improvements is speed, but we also have added more power and flexibility as well.

For DashBook v6, we restructured the royalty calculation to make it more efficient. Now royalties calculate faster than ever -- as much as 30 times faster!

You can also view order information much faster, especially if you have hundreds or thousands of products. And now deleting an order is nearly instant, no matter how large it is.

Importing sales has also sped up significantly when creating shipments.

But the larger increases in importing speed come from a new feature. Many sales reports, especially in the music business, show very detailed transactions, such that a product shows on multiple rows. You could have only 200 products, yet receive a sales file of over 30 thousand lines. DashBook v6 now has an import map option to consolidate the sales down to fewer rows. Not only will the import be much faster, but everything else downstream, such as working with the order, calculating royalties on it, and even rendering reports will be faster.

All of the DashBook v6 speed enhancements can save hours over time. We've seen it.

Our sales import is also much more powerful than before. Version 5 had a handy Skip Lines feature that allows pulling just certain rows into an order. Version 6 has changed this to Modify Data. You can request rows be dropped based on matching or not matching criteria, and can even replace a cell's content prior to import. This is especially useful when teamed with our new ability to import a single order having mixed "sales channels." For example, Modify Data can change a phrase on the report to match your sales channel phrase, so that the order and royalties understand which line item is using which sales channel.

So with mixed sales channels, a single order can now do what used to require two or more. Easily import sales of different types, such as physical vs digital, with a single import and resulting order.

Did I write Sales Channel? Well, in recognition of how versatile this feature is, we've changed the name to be Sale Class. It's not just for different sales avenues, but many different scenarios which may require a different royalty arrangement.

Version 6 also provides updated import maps for Amazon Kindle, new maps for Barnes and Noble Nook, The Orchard, Gardners, and more. If you use a common distributor sales file that we don't provide an import map for, let's add it so everyone can benefit.

Our order import, which pulls in multiple separate orders from a single file, has also been enhanced to use a contact's new default sales commission, which was critical for one of our clients handling distribution.

Royalties: While we formerly had a Less Other amount which was a fixed value per unit sold in your currency, version 6 now gives the option to take a percent off instead. So if you need to deduct 30% extra prior to calculating your royalty percent, this will be straightforward now.

If you have ever told DashBook to record a bunch of royalty payments, only to later realize that you used the wrong date, DashBook v6 now has a bulk payments delete option which will make you happy.

Reserves: DashBook never handled reserves before, but we have this as an optional module today for those who need it. Need something special? We can do it.

The QuickBooks Integration module has been great for getting data back and forth between DashBook and QuickBooks, but that only worked for the QuickBooks desktop edition before. Now in version 6, this optional module can communicate with Intuit's QuickBooks Online Edition.  (NOTE: Intuit killed this ability, but we re-instated; desktop communication will continue as well)

Reports: We have tweaked a number of reports. One new entrant is an Inventory Sales report.

And for distributing reports, we finally have Batch Email in the system as a beta feature pending more usage and feedback. To circumvent spam walls, you provide your email server information for DashBook to use in sending out reports.

And many more minor changes:
Do you use DashBook's database backup ability? We've made that much better with a very simple change - the option to append the date to the file name so keeping track of database versions is a lot easier.

The selection list on the product screen is now sort-able and includes name, title, publication date, and default product code. This makes it easy to see all products of a given title, for example. Some of you have this already.

We have plans for many more improvements to DashBook version 6, and hope you'll join with us on this journey.

Royalties for QuickBooks

DashBook version 5.2 has just been released!

In addition to providing additional report enhancements, the big news for this version is the new ability to create royalty checks directly into QuickBooks using our optional QuickBooks Integration Module.  Now you can pull QuickBooks invoices into DashBook, calculate the royalties using DashBook, and then create royalty checks in QuickBooks.

You can do all of this without any exporting or importing of interim files, since DashBook communicates directly with QuickBooks using Intuit's API (programming interface language).  The advantage of using the API is that QuickBooks can monitor what is being written so that it could complain if any data uploaded was not following the correct format.  This gives instant feedback that what we do is correct.

There are some details in the process, of course.  Within DashBook, you would first mark all of your royalty payments that you are paying as paid.  Then you can instruct DashBook to create QuickBooks checks for all payments within a particular date range.  Aside from providing the start and end dates, there is nothing more to do but click a button to do all of the work.

Of course, you can still import sales from other sales reports, such as Amazon Kindle, Ingram, etc.

Our enhancements to DashBook come from users like you.  If you have some special calculation, reporting, or integration work that would make your life easier, contact us.

We can help you.

PayPal discontinues MassPay

Normally when someone who is evaluating DashBook asks why they cannot send out royalty payments directly via PayPal through our software, it is because they simply did not set it up.  It is a very quick and easy procedure consisting of logging in to one's PayPal account and requesting API signature information which provides the credentials that DashBook needs to communicate on behalf of their business account.

PayPal's MassPay does not work with personal accounts, so an upgrade to Business or Premier might be required.  Why does DashBook use PayPal's MassPay system for electronic payments?  MassPay is a great way to handle paying a handful or hundreds of royalty holders at once.  It also fits nicely in the business model, as the sender pays a fee that is comparable to or cheaper than mailing costs, and the recipient receives the full funds without additional fees removed.  Other methods of PayPal payments would have the royalty holder receive less than the royalties due.

PayPal MassPay has been a great system for DashBook users, who are primarily book publishers and music labels right now, although of course our system handles many more businesses interested in tracking royalties and licenses.  It is very simple and easy.  One screen shows all of the royalty amounts owed for the period chosen, and one click can fire off all of the payments and record that information into DashBook for account balance purposes.  Life is good.

So when one of our new book publishers started asking about her inability to use PayPal, the answer seemed obvious.  "Go to this PayPal website page to get your account information; paste it here in DashBook."  Ah, but not so easy this time! Her PayPal system didn't have MassPay activated, and calls to PayPal resulted in her telling us that PayPal has discontinued MassPay for all but huge corporations.

What?  Isn't PayPal for the little guys who don't already have large systems setup?  If your company is already large, wouldn't you have EFTS (Electronic Funds Transfer - like direct deposit) to handle all your needs?

Well, after spending hours on the phone with various PayPal personnel, it looks bad.  Whether their decision is due to "abuses" or "high risk" (their terms), they have indeed disabled MassPay from the majority of their accounts while leaving it intact for a handful of large multinational corporations.

This is huge news.  Why isn't there outrage everywhere today?  Maybe because they did this months ago, and perhaps our clients that use this feature only pay quarterly or semi-annually, etc.
[Edit:  It appears those using it regularly have been grandfathered.]

What did PayPal recommend that we do?  Trash our MassPay API program code, and rewrite it for their alternative Adaptive Payments style, which puts the burden on the recipient for the fees -- and those fees are much higher than the $1 USD cap that MassPay has.

If you've used MassPay, contact PayPal immediately to see if they will re-instate your account. [Edit: First go to your account, select Send Payment, select MassPay, and see if yours is disabled.]

If you have experiences about this, please reply to this post so that we can all learn.  Unfortunately, change is not always for the better.

QuickBooks for royalty accounting

QuickBooks is a useful program for general accounting, but is inadequate for handling the royalty calculation needs of businesses like book publishers, record labels, music publishers, etc.  That is why royalty software such as DashBook is so important.  Royalty accounting can be so much easier with a great system.

On the other hand, while DashBook makes handling royalties very easy (import sales reports, email or upload royalty reports!), it does not handle all of the general accounting tasks.

Obviously, putting these two together makes sense.  Already, one can generate sales reports from QuickBooks including product codes (ISBN, ISRC, SKU, etc.), quantity sold, and net received, and import those transactions into DashBook.

But we can always do better.  One of our clients is growing so rapidly and has had such positive experiences with our DashBook team, that they've asked for our help.  After discussions and consideration, we've turned the problem upside down to create a fantastic solution for them.  Now they can continue their great growth, supported by an even better system.  And they are pretty excited!

What can we do for you?

Busy accounting season for royalties

Whew!  This is a busy time of year.  It is not uncommon for businesses to procrastinate on their royalty work to the very end - or even long after their deadlines.  As it turns out, they discover that they don't die after all!

However, all of this putting off of work just adds to the stress of operating a business.  When you know that you have to start organizing all of your sales, update your Excel spreadsheets or QuickBooks system with the latest releases, go through each royalty calculation in detail, print and mail reports,....  Just the thought of it all is exhausting.

Of course, you know there has to be a better way.  And there is.  You google for "royalty software" and discover DashBook and other choices.  Should you download and try?  So much work to do.

There is a lot of work to do -- no denying it.  But with some upfront time invested in setting up a royalty system, subsequent royalty and pay periods become so much easier.  We have customers saying that they've gone from a week of pain to an hour or so of work and review.  So yes, it is worth it!

The setup itself does not have to be painful.  Consult with us, and we can do most of the work for you.  We recently helped a music label setup a database within hours of receiving their CD Baby sales report and a little information about the percentages that they pay to the artists.  DashBook created all of the tracks and albums sold during that period, along with connecting the artist and royalty calculations together, in a matter of minutes by using our import system.  All the record label had to do was to add the additional tracks to the albums, and send out reports and payments.

Since they only paid their license holders via PayPal, a quick setup and a few mouse clicks, and they were done!  They even took advantage of DashBook's ability to upload royalty reports to Box.net, so they didn't have a single thing to print or mail.

Whew!  After years of agonizing, they finally have a system that just does it all for them, and it only cost them $499 for the license.  We did all of that setup for free, and provided them the database in less than a day.  Perhaps your setup might require more work for a small fee, but perhaps not.

As a friend of mine would say, "What a bargain!"

Share royalty reports using Box.net and Google Docs

We will soon be releasing a new version of DashBook that extends our use of the internet, and gives another alternative to printing and mailing physical reports in addition to our current ability to email reports.

Our next version will allow you to batch upload reports to folders on Box.net and Google Docs.  How might you use this?  Let's say you have a folder for each royalty holder, and have shared that folder with her or him.  After you've finished importing your sales reports so that DashBook can calculate your royalties, you can simply go to the royalty report you prefer and choose to Batch Upload the reports.  Each royalty recipient's report will be generated and copied up to their particular shared folder on the internet without requiring any further action on your part.

If you upload to Box.net, all collaborators will be notified (default setting) when a new file is uploaded to the folder you share with them, so you won't even need to directly let them know that they have a new royalty report.  It is all automatic!

This is just the latest of many features in DashBook that keep you productive so that you do not have to spend days working on royalty accounting.  Leave all of the grunt work to DashBook!

Your new royalty accounting system

We are excited about our upcoming version 4 release of DashBook!  As publishers stop paying high monthly fees for their old royalty accounting systems and switch to the powerful and more affordable DashBook, we have been getting an increasing interest in moving all of their pre-existing information to DashBook.

Way back in DashBook version 1, we included the ability to import contacts from your Outlook database, and we also imported complete information from older systems that small publishers used, like AnyBook.  We continued enhancements to include the ability to import contact information from csv files and the old PUB123/JAYA123 systems with our version 2 update, I believe.

In version 3, we broke into whole new territory with our creation of Sales Report Import.  By including a user-extensible system that came preloaded with the ability to easily import sales reports from Lightning Source, Fictionwise, Apple iTunes, MidPoint Trade, and many other book sellers and distributors, DashBook opened up to a new level of customer who loved this automation.  Gone were the days of typing in orders!

Well, version 4 will be extending that slightly by adding import for Ingram reports (and yes, we handle just about all book distributors and a growing list of music sellers and distributors), but the big extension is the ability to import nearly anything.  This was a requirement to migrate historic data from large older systems like Bookworks, Acumen, and Cat's Pajamas.

If you can get your data into text reports, DashBook will be able to move this information into a new DashBook database so that you can efficiently transition from your prior system, even if it is just spreadsheets, to DashBook.  And of course, DashBook still uses an open database system that does not lock up your data from your own reporting tools or desire to move away from DashBook at your whim.  (of course, we'd rather keep growing and improving DashBook to better serve you!)

If you have existing inventory, sales, royalty, or other information for your books, music, etc., let us help you get started in using DashBook today.