Remarks for PrismCore Users

The annual NACS Financial Survey asks for financial information about your bookstore, much of which has been collected by your PrismCore system. As a member of the NACS Financial Information Team (F.I.T.), Nebraska Book Company is working with NACS to provide you with guidelines on where and how to obtain the data from PrismCore. The survey asks for financial information mostly available in PrismCore (POS, ICS and/or IAS).            Following this introduction are pages relating to each of these sections. A separate spreadsheet provides a summary and can serve as a checklist.

G/L or ICS or POS?

Where you find the data you need depends primarily on whether or not you have and use the PrismCore General Ledger. If you do, almost all the data you need to complete this survey can be found on either the Income Statement or the Balance Sheet. If you do not, you will rely on the Stock Ledger, and a few exported reports. In this document the two types of users will be referred to “G/L users” and “ICS-only users” (although it is understood that most, but not all PrismCore users, have POS and some ICS-only users may have A/R and/or A/P).

How easy it will be for you to respond to the questions also depends on how closely your DCC structure (and if you have G/L, how your G/L Account Codes relate to the DCC structure) corresponds to the inventory categories used by NACS in the survey. The structure will determine which option in Net Sales and COGS sections will make the most sense for you to select. See the remarks for both these sections.

Potential Difficulties

One of the difficulties you may encounter in gathering this data is that some of it may not be at your fingertips. If you routinely purge data from your POS system (in accordance with our recommendations) so that only a few months are retained, it will not be possible to generate reports unless you have archived the data when you purged it. That being the case, it is a straightforward operation to regain the data for the full fiscal year using Utilities | Merge Transactions option. (After generating and printing the report, we would recommend that you again purge your POS system.)  If you don’t archive your data when you purge, you may want to consider doing so, so that reports can be printed at the end of future fiscal years.

The second difficulty ICS-only users may encounter relates to the fact that only the last 14 months of data are visible on the DCC screen and only the last 22 months are reflected in the Stock Ledger. Consequently, whereas GL users can print and income statement on-demand to obtain the net sales for the previous fiscal year, ICS-only users must rely on previously printed reports.

Net Sales Notes for PrismCore Users

The survey gives you 3 choices to report income:

Option 1: Best Practice - Specific departments (new course books, custom publications, used course books, general books, medical reference books etc.) for Detailed Sales, beginning and ending inventory, net purchases, personnel, occupancy and misc. operating costs.

Option 2: Standard Response- Detailed Sales, total cost of goods sold, and personnel/operating costs.

Option 3: Total net sales, total cost of goods, total operating costs

The option you choose will depend on how you have structured your DCCs (ICS-only users) or GL codes (G/L users). If, for example, you combine all course books sales in a single department, it might be more convenient to selection Option 2. Or, with a single course book department, with a break-out of new versus used as two different classes, you can obtain the data for Option 1 by printing the spreadsheet report for the textbook department at the for each class. Or, if custom publications are a category of new textbooks, you would need to drill down to the category level to obtain the correct information.  These instructions are based on Option 1.

GL users can obtain the required information on the Income Statement.

ICS-only users will need to view or print spreadsheet reports for all departments as well as some classes or categories (Jump 171). On the sample spreadsheet report (page 9) the data you need is on lines 18 and 19, YTD Retail. Depending on which option you select, you may need to add sales from various departments, classes or categories together.

New this year is Rental Information. The Nebraska Managed Rental Program (NMRP) is reported as sales in the system. The information for the survey can be obtained by using the Rental Profitability Report. However, these numbers must be subtracted from the New and Used numbers so that they are not duplicated. Store-Managed Rentals are not included in sales and are entered in the Other Income and Expense category.

Reminder: Sales and sales returns are net any discounts or markdowns.

Tip: when printing the reports you can save paper by requesting only YTD information, only for the range of Departments, Departments/Classes or Department/Class/ Categories you need. And, where appropriate, do not forget to consolidate DCCs!

Units Sold/Rented Notes for PrismCore Users

Number of units for new, used and ebooks can be obtained using the Posted Sales Department Detail Report provided that each category has its own department. Since this might not be the case, we suggest using the Stock Adjustment Report for reasons “Sold” and “Mail Order”. You will want to make sure the ebooks and NMRP are not counted twice in your reports. 

Number of units for rentals can be obtained from the Rental Profitability Report. This includes both NMRP or NBC Partnership and Store-Managed Rentals.

The Stock Adjustment Report for ebooks can be used for Sales Details Section also.

Cost of Goods Notes for PrismCore Users

GL Users

You will need both your Balance Sheet and Income Statement to obtain the information required for beginning and ending inventory and freight. See below for how to obtain the amount of purchases. Depending on how your G/L is structured you may need to print comparative statements to obtain the financial information for the reporting option you have selected.

ICS-Only Users

On the next page is a sample Spreadsheet Report for one department. The assumption is that this department equates to one of the reporting categories in the survey. Below

is a table of where to find the data required.

*If you don’t enter Purchase Discounts into ICS, you will have to obtain the figure elsewhere. GL users will have it in the Income Statement.

Note: Do NOT include Purchase Accruals or Return Accruals because these figures will be included in the next fiscal year’s Purchases and Returns.

Sample Spreadsheet Report for One Department

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Average Inventory Notes for PrismCore Users

By calculating your beginning inventory for month 1 plus your ending inventory for month 12, and dividing by 2 you will have your average inventory.            If you wish, you can leave this blank, but providing the most information will be the most beneficial.

COGS/Inventory by Product Notes for PrismCore Users

For this section use the same options for level of reporting detail as in Net Sales. (See remarks for Net Sales section.)

For each product line entered in Net Sales Section, you will enter Cost of Goods Sold along with the Average Inventory if calculated.

Again the data required is found on the Spreadsheet report (Jump 171) for ICS-only users. In this case you will find the data in the YTD Cost column.

Operating Expenses Notes for PrismCore Users

While G/L users should find all requested data on the Income Statement assuming it is being entered into the G/L, ICS-only users will have to obtain this information from another source. 

Other Income & Expenses Notes for PrismCore Users

G/L users should find all requested data on the Income Statement assuming it is being entered into the G/L.

NBC Partnership Rentals and Store-Managed Rentals are included in Rental Revenue and Rental Not Returned Revenue at the bottom of the Stock Ledger Spreadsheet Report.

Textbook rental costs that are not included in the COGS would be outside of the system, if any.

You will need the Consolidated Register Totals ‘by date’ report from POS. Other income will include the total for all Non-Merchandise, possibly some Pay-Ins plus any other income your store may have that is NOT rung through POS. Other Expenses may include some Pay-Outs.

Sales Details Notes for PrismCore Users

Number of Adopted Titles can be obtained from an Order Decisions report generator. There is a link on our portal to download the report (Total Titles for terms by Location.XML). After importing the file into report generator, you will need to change the terms to your actual terms within the last fiscal year.

Number of Titles available to rent can be obtained by searching Rental Number Maintenance for a rental period and then looking at the record count on Quick Search Results’ last record, for all rental periods in the last year.

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Number of Titles available to sell would be the difference between adopted titles and titles that are available to ONLY rent, if any. If all titles are available for either rent or sale, then titles available to sell would equal the number of adopted titles.

Text ebooks sales can either be found using the Stock Ledger Spreadsheet report or the Stock Adjustment Report for reason of “Sold” and “Mail Order” for the specific DCCs. Trade ebooks was previously entered in the Sales Section.

Textbook Online Sales and Non-Textbook Online Sales can be found on the Posted Sales – Department Detail Report in Manual Sales, ICS Jump 144.

Make selections based on the following criteria. This will give one report for each type of sales and you will only need the web order report showing consolidated locations.

Additional Information Notes for PrismCore Users

General Ledger Users

Most of the information you need to respond to net sales, refunds, customer refunds and contributions to campus can be obtained from a consolidated Income Statement. Assuming you have been using the G/L for the last two fiscal years, print a comparative Income Statement for fiscal year 2011 and 2012. How you will need to respond to the

‘Consolidate Stores? Location? and Divisions?’ prompts to obtain the data pertaining to allowances, customer refunds, etc., will depend on how you have structured your G/L account codes. If your G/L structure does not provide a means to break out this information, refer to the ICS-Only Users section.

For purchases, returns, and buyback refer to the discussion for ICS-only users. For remainder of the fields refer to the discussion for ICS-only users.

ICS-Only Users

Last year’s net sales: If you have had the Stock Ledger turned on for the whole period, you can obtain that year’s net sales by going to the YTD Retail column of the Spreadsheet Report and subtracting Sales Returns from Sales. In other words, on the sample spreadsheet line 19 from line 18. (Both Sales and Sales Returns are net of any discounts or markdowns.)

The data for Refunds, Purchase Returns, and Purchases are available on the Spreadsheet Report (Jump-171).

In the dialogue box for the spreadsheet report parameters, be sure to select the last month of your fiscal year and not to specify a range of DCCs. The information you will see will reflect the YTD information at the end of your store’s fiscal year. It will look similar to the screen picture on the next page. (Line numbers have been added on the right.)

Sample Spreadsheet Report

Note that your report may look different than this one if you do not expense freight, postage or postage accruals.

The table below is a guide for finding the data for the survey in the spreadsheet. The ‘data requested’ gives the item number and a brief description from the NACS Survey. The other three columns refer to where the data is in the sample spreadsheet.

*Figures are net of discounts and markdowns.

 **Do not use Inventory Variance for it is PrismCore’s way of dealing with timing issues (receiving, selling and entering invoice information) as well as sales rung by DCC, rather than SKU, and other DCC transactions that cause Inventory Variance. Instead, use Count Adjustment + Theft, with both figures expressed as positive numbers for the survey.

Contributions to Campus fall outside the parameters of PrismCore ICS. Selling, storage and other space square footage is not stored in PrismCore.

Annual Textbook Buyback can be produced from the Session Buyback Report from Buyback Module Session Setup, ICS Jump 245.

PrismCore Guide to NACS Financial Survey

Net sales

Units Sold/Rented

Cost of Goods Sold

Average Inventory

Beginning inventory month 1 + Ending inventory month 12 / 2

COGS by Product

Operating Expenses

 Other Income & Expenses

Sales Details

 Additional Information