Running Royalties

The Process

Once all your data is in PubGizmo, you can run royalties. "Run" is a multi-step process.

1. Complete importing and entering all sales records for the royalty period.
2. Ensure all relevant contracts are flagged active.
3. Flag which statements to pay out; any not paid out will have their amounts carried forward.
4. Compose (or edit) your stock messages, one for contract holders, and one for literary agents.
5. Proof your statements, either in PubGizmo, or by generating a PDF.
6. Generate email messages with the statement attached.
7. Personalize those messages as you like, and send them.
8. Generate payment records, to lock-in the amounts for the next period.
9. Generate a spreadsheet that summarizes your royalties.

Step-by-step

Complete Input of Sales Data

Ensure all sales during the royalty period have been input. This means importing all your sales sheets, as well as inputting manually sales not covered by import.

Important: Any sheets with sales during a royalty period imported after that royalty run is complete will never be counted, even in the next period, since strictly PubGizmo filters the date range for the selected period to isolate sales for that period.

Ensure Correct Active Contract/Statements are Flagged to Calculate

PubGizmo allows you flag active contracts, to determine if they get computed and included in your royalty run, by checking the Calc Royalty checkbox. Unlike flagging statements to pay out for this period (see below), the the status of the Calc Royalty flag persists through all royalty runs, i.e., contracts remain active or dormant/dead until you change them. You can set this flag in any of three locations:

1. on the Contract itself, at the upper-right,
2. on Royalty form view,
3. in Royalty list view.

Hint: you can get a list of Calc Royalty statements by their compute flag by entering either "calc" or "nocalc" in the search box below the Royalties button on the Home screen, or at the top of the Royalties window.

Flag Royalties to Pay This Period

For each royalty period, you can determine which statements will be paid out and which will carry forward their values (if any) to the next royalty period, where they will be added (or subtracted) from those statements. Unlike the Calc Royalty checkboxes, which persist until you change them, the statements you will actually pay varies each period. By default, when you start a new period, none of the statements are flagged to payout. You decide which ones get paid, and which ones will have their values, if any, carried over until the next period.

Flag Manually

Without the Pay Out flagged, $137.34 will carry over to the next period; check the box to Pay Out 2023 with this statement.

You can flag records manually by clicking the checkbox on the statement record itself, or in list view.

Hint: in Royalty list view, you can see the Statement Amount for all listed records by clicking the header. That will toggle display of the amounts. This setting is off by default, because it requires PubGizmo to compute royalties for every statement in the list, which can be slow. Click the header again to turn off this display.

Flag Automatically

If you have many statements to pay, it's easiest to flag the majority using of them using the bulk Flag Eligible for Payout function, outlined below.

Apply Global Settings

Before running royalties, ensure you set up a couple of things in Admin (only users with Admin access can perform these actions).

Set your Payout Threshold

You may not want to cut cheques or send payments for contractees owed less than a specific amount. For example, you hold payments until next period of the contractee is owed less than $25.

Compose or Edit Stock Messages

For bulk-sending royalty statements, PubGizmo offers two stock messages:

1. contractee (author, etc.),
2. literary agent of record for the contract, if relevant.

Merge Tags

Message text is merged with recipient data at the time the message is sent. The subject and body text of these messages are set in Administration > Bulk Mail Templates tab. The templates include a number of merge tags, each enclosed in "<" and ">", into which relevant data is substituted at the time the message is composed. These tags include:

• <Year> The royalty year, if your press uses the calendar year for statement period, otherwise the start and end dates of the royalty period.
• <Title> The book's title, or titles, if the author has multiple active contracts, in a comma-delimited list (Title1, Title2, etc.).
• <GreetingName> The value in the Correspondence Name field on the recipients Contact record (defaults to the contact's first name, but can be edited). For Organization contractees, this will attempt to use the email address of the Org's rep, if defined on the Contract, otherwise it will use the Org name.
• <Artist> The contractee's first and last name. Note: in the Agent email, this will substitute with the phrase "(refer to attached PDF)".
• <Address> Recipient's mailing address in one line.

Contractees/Agents With Multiple Statements

Rather than sending out multiple individual statements to an author, PubGizmo "rolls up" statements, that is, gathers all relevant statements into a single PDF, and attaches them to one email message, under these circumstances:

• author/contractee has multiple active contracts
• literary agent is agent-of-record on multiple active contracts

The Bulk Royalty Actions Popover

The functions to complete royalties are executed in a popover accessed using the royalties (crown) button available in the List View of the Royalties module.

These actions are performed only on the Found Set (the records currently showing in the list) and then only on those records in the Found Set with Calc Royalty checked. Statistics at the top-right of the popover describe the composition of your total and current Found Set of records, and how many will be processed with the buttons.

You have four ways to configure a Found Set to run the royalty buttons against:

1. click the Show All Records button (hidden if you are already seeing all records) to do a complete run of all Calc Royalty statements
2. load a Snapshot of Royalty records you have created previously (see Tags & Snapshots on how to create Snapshot sets)
3. close the Bulk Royalty Actions popover, and use the Find box with criteria to generate a Found Set of records you want to process
4. close the Bulk Royalty Actions popover, and Tag the records you want, then show only the tagged records you want to process (see Tags & Snapshots on how to Tag and show only tagged records)

The Process

1. Flag Eligible for Payout

Flag Automatically

The Flag Eligible for Payout button in the Bulk Royalty Action popover will auto-flag for the payout for the selected period for any active contract where the amount owing to one or more of the contractees exceeds the threshold (set in Admin), e.g., pay out only if the author is owed $25 or more, otherwise leave it unflagged, for the amount to carry over to the next royalty period (negative amounts always carry over).

To auto-flag:

1. Set your threshold in Admin (bottom of main Admin screen).
2. Open the Royalties Menu.
3. Click the Flag Eligible for Payout button.

Proof the Statements

Important! You should examine every statement before it is sent. You can do this in two different ways:

1. On Screen: page through statements using the arrow buttons at the upper-left (slower)
2. Generate a PDF: create a single PDF with all the statements (faster)

To generate a PDF, select PDF Found Statements (will generate a PDF containing only those Royalty records in the found set), or PDF All Calc Statements (PDF containing all statements with the Calculate Royalty flag active). The PDF is saved to your desktop.

Send the Statements

When you select Bulk Email Statements, PubGizmo generates draft email messages (it does not send them) addressed to the contractee's primary email address (as configured on their Contact record), with the statement attached, and similarly generates draft email messages to literary agents. Your default email program must be Mac Mail if you are on macOS, or Outlook if you use Windows (let us know if you use something else).

You can customize the email message as you like, and send each individually.

Create Payment Records

This step "locks in" the amounts, such as the advance remaining and carry-forward values, which inform calculations for your next royalty run.

Important notes:

1. All of the steps above must be fully complete (all sales records imported, appropriate records set to calculate and pay-out, statements fully proofed) before you complete this stage. If you change anything for the current period, you will have to create the Payment records again.
2. You must complete this step for each royalty period before running the subsequent one, because important values (e.g., Advance Remaining) are carried over via Payment records. Your next period will be inaccurate if the previous period's Payment records have not been generated.
3. If you have created any Payment records previously and try to do so again, PubGizmo will warn you that records already exist, and they will be deleted and new ones generated. This is fine: the new Payment records will be created using the latest royalties data.

CSV Export

Generate on your desktop a CSV (spreadsheet, can be opened in Excel), which summarizes the statements. You can provide this to your accountant.