RoyaltyZone royalty software now offers a solution to this problem.   We added another new feature today: configurable payment instructions, which allows you to:

1. Create different payment instructions for each invoice type (royalty, advance, guarantee, and fee).
2. Create multiple verbiage options for each invoice type.
3. Assign instructions to an Agreement on its details page.
4. Edit payment instructions on each individual invoice before sending.

To use the new feature:

1. Go to Setup > Invoices
2. We created a default entry using your existing payment instructions for each invoice type
   1. Click “edit” to make changes
   2. Click “Create New” to add a new instruction
3. All existing agreements are set to use the default entries
4. To change the instructions used for an agreement, visit the agreement, then click “Edit”
   1. New agreements: set on the description page
   2. Published agreements: set on the edit details page

More cool new royalty management features coming soon!

FOB stands for “Free On Board”, and is always used in conjunction with a port of loading. Indicating “FOB port” means that the seller pays for transportation of the goods to the port of shipment, plus loading costs. The buyer pays cost of marine freight transport, insurance, unloading, and transportation from the arrival port to the final destination. The passing of risks occurs when the goods pass the ship’s rail at the port of shipment.

Any royalty rate can be assigned an FOB equivalent in RoyaltyZone royalty software.

Licensees indicate if a sale is FOB when entering or uploading sales transaction data in RoyaltyZone.

RoyaltyZone calculates royalties using the standard or FOB royalty rate.  Licensors and Licensees can rest assured that the correct royalty rate will be applied for each sales transaction.

Automating FOB royalty rates is another example of streamlining royalty management processes with RoyaltyZone royalty software.

Check out this brief tutorial on how to use the new product category hierarchy features:

There is enough space to take notes for a two hour meeting, which I then immediately enter into our CRM system (if you don’t use one, check out Highrise).  Erase, and ready for the next meeting. One more step towards a paperless office!

I’ve been taking the board with me on lunch/coffee shop meetings as well for an instant conference room.

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!

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.

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.

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…

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