We released some cool new RoyaltyZone features last night, with more on the way soon!  Here’s what’s new:

Additional Agreement Fields
Capture and track additional license agreement data in RoyaltyZone:

1. Royalty Start Date - this replaces the “Ignore Historical” check box and lets you select any date to define the first expected royalty report
2. Account Manager - designate any RoyaltyZone user (you can add more if you need to) as the Account Manager for the agreement.  You can sort agreements by Account Manager on the Licensees page.
3. Liability Insurance Requirements - enter any insurance requirements (visible to the licensee)
4. Exclusive - enter any exclusivity terms (visible to the licensee)
5. Marketing Dates - enter any marketing date info (visible to the licensee)

Large Royalty Report Processing
RoyaltyZone has processed royalty reports as large as 52,000 sales transactions, but those big reports take some time to crunch.  Licensees uploading reports with more than 1,000 sales transactions will now be notified by email when the royalty report is calculated and ready for submission.  No more staring at a spinning wheel!  Go have some fun (or work, if you must) and RZ will ping you when the report is ready.

Improved Error Messaging for Uploads
We love to hear your feedback!  Per your requests -  we made some changes to the error messaging for sales uploads.  We improved the text content, made the display area larger, and moved the action links to a more prominent location.  The goal is to give you easy to understand instructions on how to fix data issues in your upload files.  Let us know if you have additional suggestions for improvement!

Login Management
Can’t remember your user name or need access to RoyaltyZone?  Click “Request an Account” from the login, and enter your email.  If you already have an account, you’ll receive an email with your login credentials.  If your company has a RoyaltyZone account, the account admin will asked by email to add you as a user.

Coming (very) soon: custom date Trends & Analysis reports, advertising/marketing fee management, royalty distribution improvements, and more!

The RoyaltyZone Trends and Analysis (TNA) module now provides instant access to key performance metrics for licensed properties and product categories.

Licensors can determine their best (and worst) selling properties and categories and identify opportunities to generate additional licensing revenue.

For each licensed property access:

• Royalties, Net Sales, and Quantity Sold
• # of active agreements and Ranking
• Top Categories
• Top SKU’s
• Top Licensees
• Top Territories
• Top Distribution Methods

For each product category access:

• Royalties, Net Sales, and Quantity Sold
• # of active agreements and Ranking
• Top Properties
• Top SKU’s
• Top Licensees
• Top Territories
• Top Distribution Methods

What is a licensed property? The intellectual property, normally a trademark or copyright, which could be a name, symbol, slogan, design, logo, icon, package design, image, photograph, phrase, work of authorship, or character – or any combination of these elements.

What is a product category? A group of related products that, bundled together, can be classified as a separate entity or class, such as: apparel, personal accessories, toys or electronics.

As you review your December and Q4 2009 royalty reports, be on the lookout for the 10 most costly royalty reporting issues.

Intellectual property licensees of all sizes often have insufficient staff and systems in place to effectively manage royalty reporting. In fact, studies show that 81% of all licensees under report royalties, and that 40% of licensees underpay by at least 50%. That is potentially $20,000 in lost royalty revenue for every $100,000 reported!

Factor in the amount of wasted time your own limited staff spends searching, copying, pasting, calculating, converting, mailing, emailing, faxing, and phoning, and it is clear that inadequate royalty reporting is a costly burden.

Learn how Licensors can eliminate the 10 most costly royalty reporting issues with RoyaltyZone.

The RoyaltyZoners have been hard at work turning your suggestions into new features:

Improved Licensee User Experience. Hundreds of licensees rely on RoyaltyZone to submit royalty reports, pay invoices, and view license agreement terms.  We’ve listened to your questions and feedback over the last year, and have responded with a completely redesigned user interface for licensees.

• The Dashboard is better organized, making it easier to find what you are looking for quickly.
• We moved profile and product management into the Royalty Report submission process, so you can login and get everything done in one place.
• Creating and submitting royalty reports takes less time.  We streamlined the report submission process and removed extra steps and links.

User feedback has been positive so far - we’d love to hear your thoughts - just click “Feedback” from any page within RoyaltyZone to send us your questions, comments, or suggestions.

Multi Currency. You can now select any base currency for your license agreements.  Licensee royalty reports, invoices, and balances are all formatted with proper currency symbol.  Next step: currency conversion, targeted for Q2 2010 release.

Address Book. Want to generate a mailing list of all of your licensee contacts?  Just click on the fancy new address book link, and all of your licensee contact data is instantly exported to XL.   Your marketing folks will thank you!

Partial Invoice Payments. Invoices can now be partially paid or received, with full payment history, notes, and the ability to track remaining balance.

Manage Agreements Internally. Licensors can now choose to manage one or more agreements internally,  without involving the licensee.  Licensors can submit royalty reports and manage invoices on behalf of the licensee, then easily grant access to the licensee at any time, whenever ready to do so.

More cool stuff on the way soon, including property and category reporting, streamlined royalty distribution reporting and payments, and more…

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