ER Manual Verify imported sales
Verify imported sales
Does your royalty system sales match your accounting system sales?
If not;
- Were sales for all distributors and retailers imported for every month?
- Did you accidently duplicate a sales import?
- Were the correct exchange rates used for foreign currency sales.
EasyRoyalties has tools that will help you audit your imported sales transactions?
Tool 1. Sales Summary Report
The first tool is the Sales Summary Report (Reporting > Sale summary). This report summarizes sales revenue by month and for the year to date. If the report sales amounts don’t match the total in your accounting records use the sales analysis report to find out why.
Tool 2. Sales Analysis Report
If the sales summary report numbers do not tie use the sale analysis report (Reporting > Sales analysis) to see where the error is occurring? Were sales from a distributor omitted or imported twice? Were the correct exchange rates used foreign sales currency transactions?
The sales analysis report shows sales and returns for the specified period.
This report can group sales by:
- Channel
- Customer
- Edition
- Format
- Marketing Class
- Product Line
- Territory
- Title
- and several more groupings
You can filter by 12 reporting options such as; sales only for a specified sales import batch, publication date range, title, sales date range.
Grouping the report by customer shows you the total sales dollars and quantity for each customer’s (Amazon.com, Amazon KDP, Audible, Apple, Barnes & Nobles, Baker & Taylor, Google, Ingram) sales import file. Compare the customer’s total to your distributor’s report to validate the sales numbers.
Tool 3. Sales Detail Report
The Sales details report (Reporting > Sales details) lists all the sales records and the currency for the specified search criteria.
Tool 4. Sales Record List View
From the sales record list view (Data & functions > Sales) you can see all sales records. The view can be filtered to show only records that meet a specified criteria. You can add or delete columns to show additional information about each sales. The record list can be sorted in ascending or descending order.
A user with foreign sales can add a column to see the exchange rates used. If you sort the list in descending order records with a highest exchange rate will be at the top.
Clients that pay royalties based on MSRP can add a column to see the MSRP applied to each sales record. This will tell you if you omitted entering an MSRP price in the product record.
Tool 5. Sales Record Export
Our royalty software allows the user to export sales records to an Excel file for detailed analysis.
ER Manual Royalty rate escalators
Royalty Rate Escalators
Royalty contracts often have royalty rate escalators. With escalators royalty rates increase based on the quantity sold, revenue or retail price.
EasyRoyalties supports escalators based on sales for a contract, royalty rule, product format, ISBN and product group. Escalator rules will often exclude free books, deep discount sales, sales to the author from the royalty rate escalator.
Example 1: By Contract
For all products sold under this contract royalty rates is 10% of net for the first 5000 units sold, 12.5% for 5001 to 10,000 units and 15% thereafter. Free books, books sold at greater than an 80% discount and sales to the author are excluded from the escalator quantity.
Escalators based on a contract include sales of all products linked to this contract; Audiobooks, eBooks, paperback and hardcover unless a format is specifically excluded from the escalator.
Escalators based on a contract (i.e. sales of all products linked to a contract) are not common.
Example 2: By Format
For all paperback products sold the royalty rate is 10% of net for the first 5,000 units sold, 12.5% for 5,001 to 10,000 units and 15% thereafter. Free books, books sold at greater than an 80% discount and sales to the author are excluded from the escalator quantity.
This escalator totals the sales of all paperback editions linked to this contract. If there is a 2nd paperback edition the escalator level includes sales from the 1st edition and the 2nd edition.
The royalty contract may call for basing the escalator only on sales for the edition seperately. If this is the case, many publishers will create a new royalty contract for the new edition or create an escalator based on ISBN (see example 4 below).
Example 3: By Rule
For all paperback books sold at a discount of 55% or less the royalty rate is 10% of net for the first 5,000 units sold, 12.5% for 5,001 to 10,000 units and 15% thereafter. Free books, books sold at greater than an 80% discount and sales to the author are excluded from the escalator quantity.
A rule-based escalator only includes sales that fall under this royalty rule. For example, this example excludes paperback sales that were applied to a foreign royalty rate or a high; greater than 55%, discount.
Example 4: By ISBN
For Product 425 the royalty rate is 10% of net for the first 5,000 units sold, 12.5% for 5,001 to 10,000 units and 15% thereafter. Free books, books sold at greater than an 80% discount and sales to the author are excluded from the escalator quantity.
A by ISBN escalator is used if the royalty contract escalator resets for each edition (2nd edition, 3rd edition, etc.) of the product.
Example 5: By Group
For product 425 and product 525 the royalty rate is 10% of net for the first 5,000 units sold, 12.5% for 5,001 to 10,000 units and 15% thereafter. The escalator quantity is the total quantity sold for both products. Free books, books sold at greater than an 80% discount and sales to the author are excluded from the escalator quantity.
Escalators based on product groups are used if the escalator combines sales from products listed on multiple contracts. This may occur if you assigned related products to contracts to track royalty advances on each product separately.
Tip: To exclude sales;such as export sales or deep discount sales, from an escalator create a royalty rule for those sales and select the check box for exclude sales for this right from royalty escalators.
Tip: Royalty escalators for paperback and hardcover books are usually based on quantity sold. Escalators for eBooks are usually based on revenue.