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Why Not Just Use QuickBooks?

by Steve Carlson, Upper Access Publishing, Inc.

New publishers often start out with over-the-counter business software such as QuickBooks_TM or PeachTree_TM. This may be a good choice early on, when inventory consists of boxes of books in the garage and each day produces a handful of orders to invoice and ship.

But as time goes on, the limitations become increasingly apparent. Although every publishing company is different, here are a few issues that often come up:

• You may find that your software isn't producing the kinds of invoices Baker & Taylor wants, or the kinds of monthly statements Ingram requests, or the detailed histories needed to collect past-due bills from Borders or other large customers.
• You may find that your software can't properly track consignment accounts like Amazon Advantage or Quality Books, let alone the sales, returns, and reserves reported by an exclusive trade distributor such as Midpoint or PGW.
• You may get an inquiry from a college or state agency that needs a pro forma invoice before finalizing its big order of your books.
• Many publishers start with books they have written themselves, so royalties are not a concern, but then take on other authors on a royalty basis. At that point, you'll need precise records of sales, shipment, and receipts for each title. All invoices and receipts will have to be produced in a "smart" manner, so that your software will know exactly which books are sold or paid for, in a way consistent with your author contracts.
• As publishers grow, they often contract with sales reps. These may be traditional regional reps who sell to the trade, or they may be friends or fellow publishers who sell your books from their Web sites or other outlets. Your software will need to produce reports computing their commissions, with enough detail to show that you are being accountable to them.
• You may find you need quicker, easier ways to crunch numbers for business analysis. Exactly how many direct sales did you get from each of the ads, or the radio interviews, or the Book Sense Advance Access program, the Google Ad Words, etc. Which specific promotions have been cost effective, and which have been duds? To run your business efficiently, you'll need to be able to answer those questions at any time, with just a few keystrokes.
• Publishers' needs for contact management are different from those of other businesses. They need to hone down specific lists of reviewers for each title, based on the subject matter and other issues. They need to keep track of which customers bought which books, for mailings (or e-mail) when the next title from that series comes out.
• Keeping track of inventory can become tricky, particularly when some of the books are in the warehouses of your consignment customers. At any given point, you may need to know exactly how many copies of each book are available at each location. And in April (if that's when you fill out your taxes), you may need to know exactly how many copies of each book you had back on December 31. In other words, inventory tracking needs to be date-sensitive.
• You may need to keep track of subscriptions for a newsletter or e-zine, or standing orders for an annual directory or series of books.

The list goes on. But the point is, the over-the-counter programs are made to be useful for caterers, plumbers, wedding singers, and birthday clowns. Book publishing is a different kind of business. All of the large publishers, and most of the successful small houses, use business software that meets the specific needs of our industry.

Incidentally, don't throw away your copy of QuickBooks. You'll still want to use it for some of the standard functions that are, indeed, common to all types of business. Managing your checkbook, for example, and handling your payables that are not specific to publishing, and producing certain reports you'll need for taxes. You may want to use QuickBooks to compute your payroll. Publishers' Assistant, like most other industry-specific software programs, does not try to do the things that generic software programs do very well. In fact, we make it easy to export data from Publishers' Assistant to QuickBooks, to avoid any need for duplicate data entry.

But to meet the specific demands of our unique industry, you need industry-specific software. We've been a leading developer of business software for publishers since 1989, and in that time, we don't know of a single publisher who has considered going back to depending on generic business software. We can help your business to grow, and, in the process, we can provide software that grows with your business.