Support FAQ

Contacts

Yes, DashBook makes it easy to email any report, and will in fact, automatically fill in your client’s email address from their contact record. DashBook can also batch email royalty reports, or send them to shared folders on the internet, such as Box and DropBox.

DashBook allows an unlimited number of addresses and other ways to contact your customers, vendors, etc.

Exporting

DashBook has an optional QuickBooks Interface module that can directly send royalty payment bills to QuickBooks, and much more. DashBook also contains a very powerful report writer that allows you to customize its output to fit your needs. Please contact us with any specific export requests, and we will be happy to assist you.

General

DashBook runs on a Windows system, and Windows can be installed in a Mac (Boot Camp, VMware Fusion, Parallels), and even on the Internet for online access via Macs, tablets, etc.!

In addition to many standard reports and the ability to create your own reports, DashBook comes with the dashboard pre-loaded with helpful business indicators including a collectables aging report, a best seller chart, and an inventory level chart. If you would like us to create special reports for you, we can do it.

DashBook does not provide a complete general ledger. DashBook specializes in the specifics to publishing, such as royalty calculations, which QuickBooks and others do not handle well. We have an optional module to connect directly to QuickBooks for those using both systems, but QuickBooks is not required to use DashBook.

Installation

While running Setup.exe, the installation for DashBook will check to see if your computer needs certain components for Windows. These components are downloaded as needed from www.dashbook.com. However the Windows Firewall can cause the installation to stall while attempting to download these files. Solution: Close any open programs. From the Start Menu, choose Control Panel, and then choose Windows Firewall. On the General tab, select Off, and then choose OK. Run the Dash Book setup.exe. After DashBook is installed, return to the General tab in the Windows Firewall and select On. If you have any questions or problems, please contact us!

Reports

Yes, DashBook has batch upload ability to shareable folders on Box.net and local synchronized folders for DropBox, Google Drive, OneDrive and more. To see how to setup and use Box.net within DashBook, go to Use Box.net.

If you are running Parallels on a Mac, see their resolution: http://kb.parallels.com/en/6504. Otherwise, try closing your order, and if your royalty arrangement is set to calculate upon Payments, apply a payment to the order.

Orders

DashBook does not allow directly editing the retail price on individual orders, as that would make your tracking difficult in the future. You need to enter the retail price on the Product screen, and if you wish to have something different on this order, you can choose to enter a discount percent, or directly override the net price. However, if you must edit the retail price, you can choose "Allow Overrides" on the product screen for that product, which will allow not only editing the retail price on the order, but the product name/description as well. This is very handy for miscellaneous fees that you may charge. Note that during a sales import, most import maps will use the unit price from the sales report instead of the default rate within the program.

Once you begin editing information, most reports become unavailable until you either apply your changes or cancel them, so that there is no misunderstanding as the report data represents the information stored in the database on disk. Simply Apply Changes or Cancel to get to the links you wish, or edit a different order.

Yes, during an Order entry, you may elect to use the Advanced order features so that you can specify detailed shipping instructions, such as the number of units backordered. These orders will then remain unfulfilled, so you can readily complete them when your stock arrives.

Very easily. Use an Advanced Order to select a sale type of Consignment on the order lines.  Initially you only have a shipment with no invoice.  Upon sales, add invoices to that order. DashBook includes a consignment inventory report so that you can see what stock you have where.

Products

A book revision requires a separate ISBN, so you would create a new product in DashBook for this revised edition. You will need to create a new royalty agreement for this new book, and if your royalty contract required quantity breakpoints across all editions, you may need to use the number of units sold of the previous edition as an entry into your breakpoint table of the new edition.

DashBook keeps track of your inventory, which may be in multiple locations. The default warehouse that you choose is the location that DashBook will pre-fill as the location to reduce stock upon an order’s shipping, as well as the location to pre-fill for increasing stock during a return that is not explicitly associated with an order. During either of these operations, you may choose a different warehouse. If you are using a simple order, you will need to change to advanced to use a location other than the default warehouse.

Yes, you may use either 10 or 13 digit ISBNs in DashBook. In fact, as you enter your products in DashBook’s Product screen, you can simply enter the ISBN and have DashBook fetch the title and author information from the internet.

DashBook is currently used by publishers having thousands of products, as well as some with only a few.  We can help you import your setup information such as products, product codes, royalty holders, and potentially royalty structures. We advise you to use DashBook's great sales import ability to easily pull in sales from your distributor or vendor reports. Entering individual orders manually into DashBook is easy, but you may choose to enter them as bulk orders. For instance, if your distributor sends you daily sales reports, you may choose to enter them as they occur, or as a single order at the end of your royalty accounting period.  If you would like us to create an import for your distributor order reports, please send us an example.