Authors' Royalties Systems - Bradbury Phillips International Ltd.

The Authors Royalties System is designed to calculate the royalties due for a specified Royalty period from sales and advances. Details of book sales, advances, deductions, reserves and foreign income are recorded. The System will calculate the royalties due, if any, according to the rules for that book and will maintain an unearned balance. A statement will be printed for each title showing all the movements this period. A remittance advice will be printed for each payee, showing in summary all the statements for them including the money they are owed. Only statements over a specified minimum value will be paid. UK. Income tax will be calculated where relevant. A royalty ledger for each title is maintained, together with various reports and analyses. Up to 4 royalty periods are maintained.
The System maintains a database of titles, authors and payees. Titles can have several authors and payees. Up to twenty rules can be held for each title. These rules define the basis on which royalty percentages are calculated. They cover levels of discount percent, foreign, export or all sales, book club sales, price paid, pence per copy or published price. Each rule shows how many copies have been sold against it. For each payee, an unearned balance, a current reserve amount, total advances and total earnings are maintained. Each payee may have up to four levels of escalator percentages per rule. A payee may be payable through an agent.
Reserves can be made against all titles or specified titles. They can be calculated as percentage of sales, earnings or copies sold, or as earnings on a specified number of copies or as a flat amount. A payback date can be recorded and the System will automatically generate the payback transaction at the correct time. Reserves can be made against specific rules or all rules.
A Name and Address File is maintained with addresses for authors, payees and agents.
A Publisher/Imprint File is maintained. Most reports can be run by Publisher or Imprint.
A file of valid brick codes and their descriptions is maintained. Sales coming into the System must have a valid brick code.
There are various reports and analyses showing title/author data, royalty and payee ledgers, names and addresses and rules.
Sales details are imported and validated by ISBN and brick code. They contain a sales date, discount, price paid, quantity and brick code. The brick code determines whether the sales is home or export. An error report and Error File are written containing any invalid sales data, and a Transaction File is generated containing all valid data. The Error File is corrected and validated again until all errors have been cleared. The result is a Transaction File of valid sales data.
The Transaction File can be updated manually to enter figures for advances, deductions, reserves, paybacks and sub-rights sales. These will not affect the unearned balance and sales figures until after the statements have been fully processed and the ledgers updated.
The Transaction File is used to generate a temporary Statement File. This can be done at any time, and as frequently as desired. The Statement File can be use at any time to establish royalty liability up to a specified date, without updating any ledgers, sales figures or unearned balances. It can also be used a period ending dates to print statements, remittance advices and other analyses. When these are satisfactory, the ledgers, sales figures and unearned balances are updated.