NESFA® Treasury Procedures – Table of ContentsLast updated, but inactive, 25-Jun-2012.

Superseded procedure

This procedure was superseded for a simpler procedure, enabled by a Peachtree feature which was not known at the time the original procedure was written.  The new procedure eliminates the need to generate an internal bill and then pay the bill.  Instead, the received books can be bought directly from the AS-BOOKnnn account, using the Tasks\Payments dialog.

NESFA® Treasury Procedures:  Buying in a New Book

Buying in a book is triggered by the receipt of the final bill from the printer with a number of books printed on it.  Before you buy in a book you must pay the printer and record the royalty to the author.  These are the usual last postings against the book asset account used to accumulate the costs of producing a book.  Paying the printer is a simple payment transaction just as for any NESFA bill.  Recording the royalty is a general ledger transaction that debits the book asset account and credits the royalty account for the author.

Buying in a new book is a multi-step process.  It consists of:

Before you can buy in a book, its asset account must exist.  You (or a previous treasurer) must have already created  the AS-BOOKnnn book asset account to accumulate the costs of production for the book and all the major costs of that book must have been already entered, so that the AS-BOOKnnn account contains the actual costs to produce the book.  For a new book, the book asset account should include payment to the artist (though a few of them have been contracted under royalty agreements and so are handled similarly to payment to the author).  The majority of the entries to the book asset account should be costs of printing and shipping for both text and cover, binding charges, possibly charges for galleys (printing and shipping to reviewers), and charges for shipping to PSS. 

There must also be a royalty account for the author (RY-Zzzzzz where Zzzzzz is the author's name) to accumulate all the author's payments for all their books.  This royalty account should exist as it should reflect a debit from the author having been paid their advance.  The credit from the knowledge of the number of books printed should leave the amount owed the author as the royalty account balance.  We are up to date if the balance of an author's royalty account is zero.  A royalty check to an author debits their royalty account.

As an example, for the Yolen 2 book, Once Upon a Time (She Said) the accounts are:

Sanity Check the Asset Account for the Book

In PeachTree, select Reports, General Ledger, predefined GL 3...(to be continued...SL)

  (check that the royalty and asset accounts are debited and credited as described and not vice versa!)

Set Up the New Inventory Item

Purchasing the Books into Inventory

This is a two-step process.  In the first step we create a Purchase/Receive Inventory form, and in the second we actually do the purchase.

  1. Print out the AS-BOOKnnn account used to accumulate the book's production expenses.  Be sure to set the period to cover allthe production and royalty expenses.  Note the total at the bottom which you will need later.  This report is also what gets filed with a treasury reference number.
  2. Purchase/Receive Inventory
    1. Open the form Tasks > Purchases > Receive Inventory
    2. Set the vendor ID to Buy books into inven
    3. Set the date as close as possible to when the books were received.  You may have to go into an older period to do this.
    4. Fill in the invoice number using the reference number in step 1, above.
    5. Fill in the number of saleable books printed in Quantity
    6. Fill in the Item as using the inventory item name which you created, above.
    7. Fill in the amount you got from the asset account in step 1, above.
  3. Post the journals
  4. Buy the book
    1. Open the form Tasks/Payments
    2. Set the vendor ID to Buy books into inven
    3. Set the date to the date used in Step 2, above
    4. Set the cash account to the AS-BOOKnnn account in which the book's expenses were accumulated
    5. You should see an invoice appear the in section at the bottom with the treasury number from step #1, above, and an amount due which matches the amount entered in step 2, above.  (Select the invoice tab in the bottom section if it isn't selected.)
    6. Fill in the same number under Amount Paid and check the box, Pay, or just check the appropriate box in the list of vendor invoices displayed. 
    7. Fill in the description to say that you are buying the XXX book into inventory.
    8. Click Save in the forms menu bar to save the form.
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