LIMA’s 2009-2010 Webinar Series continues next week with “Royalty Reporting: Risks and Red Flags” on Wednesday, October 28 from 12:00 Noon-2:00pm EDT.

Hosted by Vincent Leoni, partner-in-charge of the Royalty Compliance Group for Moss Adams LLP, this will session will look at how royalty reporting can help licensors identify risk areas and red flags, and steps licensees can take to make audits less intrusive and a more accepted facet of the licensing relationship.

The webinar is free for current members, $99 for non-members. Please note that registration will only be accepted until 5:00pm EDT on Tuesday, October 27.

Click here to sign up online

We released some exciting new functionality to RoyaltyZone last night!  Here are the new features for your royalty management pleasure:

• Improved Royalty Distribution Reports.  Create as many distribution recipients as necessary for each licensed property.  RoyaltyZone automates the creation of distribution reports and allows for deductions.

• Fully automated data uploads.  Licensees can now upload ALL of their sales and product data, with no manual entry at all.  We added upload review and data mapping functionality to make sure that all imported data is accurate and complete.
• Better SKU management.  Now you can Add or Ignore unrecognized SKUs found in your uploaded sales transactions.  This is a huge time saver and makes RoyaltyZone even easier for Licensees to use!
• Email notification management.  You now have the power to select which users will receive email notifications from RoyaltyZone (don’t let it go to your head).
• Wire Transfers. Licensees can now view your Wire Transfer instructions, mark payment sent, and capture the appropriate Wire Transfer payment information in RoyaltyZone.  
• Streamlined Licensee Invitations.  You can now view the status of your Licensee invitations, make changes if necessary, and resend invitations.  We also provide the ability to browse all of the available Licensees in RoyaltyZone.  Make new friends, or better yet, find new Licensees!
• Improved Financial History.  We added some new fields to all of the License Agreement financial performance tables to make it easier for you to see how things are going.
• Invoice Contact Info.  You now have two possible address and contact info options in RoyaltyZone – one for your company profile, and a second that will appear on your invoices.
• Disaster Recovery.  Your sensitive data is backed up every six hours and stored offsite via Amazon S3.

No rest for the weary – we are already working on the next release.  Improved product management, new royalty rate options, currency conversion, and more!

I had dinner this weekend with Bijoy Goswami, the founder of Bootstrap Network, a great resource for entrepreneurs and startup companies.  Bijoy has spent the last five years building content, relationships, and ideas for Bootstrap and its community.  He has created a brand, and the brand continues to grow.

Bijoy was telling me about the many business collaborations he is involved in through Bootstrap.  Most of these partnerships hinge on a revenue sharing agreement.  Bijoy owns the content, allows the partner to use the content to create and sell a product, and Bijoy shares a portion of the revenue.  Sound familiar?

Bijoy is in the licensing business, and didn’t even know it!  He has built valuable Intellectual Property that others are willing to pay to use and embed in their products.  His revenue sharing model is the equivalent of a royalty license agreement.  For every item sold, Bijoy receives a percent of net sales.

Now the fun part.

Bijoy was complaining that he had a difficult time tracking the sales results of his growing list of partners.  He and his “Licensees” had been using email and spreadsheets to keep tabs on sales and payments owed.  As a result, there was confusion, delays in reporting, and many partners were way behind on their payments.

It was like a fastball right over the plate for RoyaltyZone.

Luckily, Bijoy had his laptop with him.  We created a RoyaltyZone account, setup his associations, and published a license agreement for one of his licensees in a matter of minutes.  Now Bootstrap has a way to keep everyone on the same page regarding how, what, and when reports and payments are due.  Bijoy has a dashboard view of all his partners, what they’ve sold, what they’ve paid, and what they owe.

The light bulb went off!  Ideas started flying around new ways to license the Bootstrap brand and IP, now that there was a tool in place to track performance and payment.

Welcome to the licensing business, Bijoy!  I wonder how many other accidental licensors are out there…