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 online, 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. Any sales input after royalties will never be counted, even in the next period, since PubGizmo uses the date to isolate sales for that period.

Ensure All 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. Unlike flagging statements to pay out for this period (see below), the Calc Royalty flag persists through all royalty runs. You can set this flag in any of three locations:

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

Hint: you can search for statements by their compute flag by entering either "calc" or "nocalc" into the search box below the Royalties button on the Home screen, or at the top of the Royalties window.

Flag Statements to Pay Out

Statements default to not being paid out. You'll notice that statements are all carrying over the earned amount to the next period. You can flag these either manually or automatically.

Auto Flag

PubGizmo can automatically flag for payout any active contract where the amount owing to the author exceeds a threshold, e.g., to pay out only if the author is owed $25 or more, otherwise the amount will carry over to the next royalty period (negative amounts always carry over). To auto-flag:

1. Set your threshold in Admin.
2. Open the Royalties menu, and select

Manually Flag

You can flag these manually by clicking the checkbox on the full view of 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 on 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 painfully slow.

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 you]r 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.
• <GreetingName> The value in the Correspondence Name field on the recipients Contact record (defaults to contact's first name, but can be edited).
• <Artist> The contractee's first and last name.
• <Address> Recipient's mailing address in one line

Contractees/Agents With Multiple Statements

PubGizmo "rolls up" statements, that is, gathers all relevant contracts into a singe 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

Proof 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
2. Generate a PDF: create a single PDF with all the statements

To generate a PDF, go to Royalties list view, and set the royalty year to the period for which you want to generate statements. A crown button will appear, which when clicked will yield a menu of options.