Version 1.424 Notes

Version 1.424 is the biggest single update to PubGizmo, and it provides many new requested features, improvements, and bug fixes. It is a stage in a cycle toward the next major update, which will include, among other things, ONIX 3.1 support.

Titles

1. "Rights Sold" move to bottom-left, along with the "Books Sold" tab, for recording all subsidiary rights sales for the title.
2. You can now "drag-and-drop" a cover image into the area where the cover appears.

Editions

When entering a new ISBN for an edition, system checks that you haven't already used that ISBN elsewhere.

Sales Imports

Red Sales Records

Sales imports display now includes much more robust error-detection. A sales record in red does not contain enough information to compute royalties – it is ignored by PG. For a sales record to be valid, all of the following must be true:

1. includes a valid ISBN
2. ISBN matches a record in PubGizmo
3. Amount field contains a value (even if it's $0); this is not strictly necessary if all royalty clauses for the edition are for List only; even so, it's useful to track
4. a valid invoice date, correctly formatted (matches the date format selector, if relevant); PubGizmo will also reject "unreasonable" invoice dates, that is, any that occurs before the year 2000, or after 2050; a badly-formed date can appear to occur hundreds or even thousands of years in the past or future
5. quantity
6. valid standard ISO two-letter country-of-sale

You can edit an individual sales record to fix it by clicking on the record. A popover will open outlining the problems that must be corrected, plus a button to look up the ISBN, if no match is found.

Sales Import Warning Beacon

If the Sales Import contains any "red" records, the red beacon will appear beside that record in the Sales Import list view. It's a good idea to check all Sales Imports, to ensure the data you have imported is valid and useable.

Yellow Sales Records

Records in yellow are informational only; they indicate that the country of sale is not represented in any contract in PubGizmo. For example, if the sale country is the Netherlands (NL), but all contract clauses for that edition cover North America only, the sale will not apply to any royalties paid. There is no harm in leaving these records in the system.

Orphaned Sales Records

You may notice a Sales Import with the name "Orphaned Sales Records"; these are sales records found during migration to the new version that were not associated any Sales Import record. These may have occurred if you deleted a Sales Import (e.g., to try it again with corrections), and you became disconnected during the deletion process, resulting in a failure by FileMaker to delete all the child records (i.e., the parent Sales Import is gone, but the child Sales records remain...they are "orphaned").

We are aware of this issue, and will be building in the next minor update a way to ensure this no longer occurs (we'll hand the deletion off to the server, so even if your connection breaks, the server will complete the purge of orphaned records).

Because of the dynamic way royalty statements are rendered, if you delete the Orphaned Sales Records record and/or delete or alter any of its child Sales records, you risk unbalancing previous royalty statements and calculations. Because Payment records hold the amounts, this will not affect subsequent royalty statements (carry forward, advance remaining, RoR amounts are all "locked" by the Payment record), but it may make past statements appear to be off, e.g., the payment amount for the statement may not match the payment amount shown on the Payment record.

Contracts

Permissions Are Now Rights

Permissions sales have been removed from the contract layout, and moved to the title record area, bottom-left, in a tab (see Titles, above). You can here record subsidiary right receivables for the title, and amounts will be disbursed to contractees according to the rate set on the contract, in the rights portal.

Payments

Support for "interim" payments: you can pay an author before the end of a royalty period (e.g., to disburse a large rights sale amount, or to provide an early payment to an author in need), and this amount will be deducted from the next royalty payment, and displayed on the royalty statement (see below, Royalty Statements).

Contacts

Record Author Purchases and Payments

You can now record purchases and payments for books from contacts (authors). Two new portals appear on the Contact layout on the tab labelled ""Pay · Book Buys · Remits":

1. Purchases: enter the data associated with the sale of books; allows for selection of print editions of books by the author.
2. Remit for Purchase: record amounts remitted by the author for book purchases.

Outstanding Amount

Outstanding amounts owed by the author for purchases can be deducted from payments for royalties. Note that when you choose to deduct from a statement, the amount deducted is considered a receivable from the author; a payment for the deduction amount will appear ini the Remit for Purchases portal, and the Outstanding Amount will be reduced by that amount. Additionally, the activity is recorded on the royalty Statement Summary page (see below).

Royalties

Layout

New elements have been added to support features listed above.

1. "All Earned" amount now displays for Organization contractees.
2. "All Earned" in the contractee portal is clickable when the contractee has more than one contract with your press; clicking it will display the current Statement Summary

Payment Info

Payment info popover layout has been improved for readability and to provide more information, including:

1. Amounts from the previous royalty period
2. Amounts being carried forward to the next period
3. Amount of the advance remaining that has been consumed by this payment

Handling

All the automated functions for emailing royalty statements, which previously worked only for contact contractees (individuals), now also work with organization contractees.

Note: at present only two email templates exist to create merge emails for statement recipients: creators and agents. A future update will allow for unlimited templates, which can be applied for any statement.

Royalty Statements

Many requested changes have been made to the entire royalty statement "package." Two new pages have been added, and will render in PDFs or printable according to various complex rules.

Layouts

Main Statement Page

Shows for all royalties.

1. Payment area move to bottom-right, at the foot of the amounts cluster.
2. Payment area is capable of showing, when relevant, deductions to the payment amount (in italics), and taxes include in the payment.
3. Lifetime Sales now at the top, to the right of the title.
4. New escalation breakdown at bottom-left
5. Permission sales have been expanded to include all subsidiary rights, and will list the full amount collected, plus the right's rate from the contract, and the amount disbursed to the contractee. These will list at the bottom-left, unless there are too many, in which case they move to page 2 (see below).
6. Interim payments made during the select royalty period will appear here, in italics, signifying to bind them to the italicized deductions shown in the payment area. These will move to the second statement page, if there is not enough room between permission sales and interim payments, at the foot of the first page statement.

Second Statement Page

A second statement page will be appended if required. The page replaces the editions cluster on the first page with relevant sections of data, including:

1. Rights sales, if these don't fit on page 1
2. Interim payments, if these do not fit on page 1.

Statement Summary

PubGizmo will append a Statement Summary to the royalty email, with the following data:

1. If the contractee has multiple contracts with your press, all titles with various amounts, included the payment amount and sum of payments (so the contractee understands how the payment for multiple contracts are broken down), and/or,
2. If the contractee purchased and/or paid for books (see under Contacts, above), these will be reflected on the Statement Summary.