All-New ABACUS Gets High Marks for Ease of Use

In September, ABA began work to reintroduce the ABACUS industry study, a proven financial research tool for independent booksellers that offers a wide range of bookselling-specific financial breakdowns and analyses. By integrating the ABACUS data into their business planning, independent booksellers can compare their store's financial performance against detailed industry composites.

In a number of recent sessions at the fall regional booksellers association trade shows, ABA CEO Avin Mark Domnitz and others from ABA explained the key changes in the new ABACUS. "An important point that we really tried to get across in all our conversations with booksellers is that reporting to ABACUS is now much, much easier," Domnitz told BTW. "We realized that providing a store's financial information to the old ABACUS could be difficult. From our earliest planning sessions, our goal was to make the entire process much more user-friendly," he said.

With that in mind, ABA created an all-new, simplified survey form, which is now available on the Web at http://www.bookweb.org/docs/abacusform/. From this page, members can download and print a worksheet that can be filled out offline. Once complete, participants can simply return to the Web site and copy the totals from the worksheet into matching fields in an online form. To make the process easier, there are online help boxes for each question. It's estimated that most stores should be able to complete the survey in less than an hour.

This was the case for booksellers contacted by BTW. Scott Yanke of Scott's Books in Delano, Minnesota, noted, "It was really easy -- if anything, it was asking far less information than I expected." He said that after completing the survey he was surprised to talk to booksellers at the recent UMBA trade show who had not yet submitted their financial information to ABACUS. "I couldn't believe that more people hadn't done it -- it's not that hard," he said.

Yanke gathered the necessary information from his business' QuickBooks program, and, then, entered it using the online ABACUS survey form. He told BTW that ABACUS had been a major help when he opened the bookstore. "It gave me an idea of what the averages were," he noted, and he said that it helped with his key financial planning. Scott's opened in 2000 in Delano, which is located approximately 30 miles northwest of Minneapolis. While there are fewer than 4,000 people in Delano, Scott's draws customers from a community of approximately 20,000 people who live within a 10-minute drive of the store.

Barbara Allen Bogart of Bear River Books in Evanston, Wyoming, is another QuickBooks user who found it easy both to collect the information using the software and to enter the store financials using the online ABACUS entry form. "It was very easy -- mainly because ABA provided the categories of info [online]," she said. Bogart opened her store in 1997, and, she noted, "I could not have [created] my business plan and gotten financing without ABACUS." In addition to the business plan, using the ABACUS information, she created five-year projections, projected sales estimates, and established a budget of expected expenses, all of which she credited with ultimately helping to secure a Small Business Administration loan to establish the business.

In the months ahead, ABACUS will be offering participating bookstores a growing range of data, allowing them to compare their financial operations to a valid industry standard, and to identify trends in their stores compared with a meaningful sample of bookstores. "We believe that ABACUS will allow bookstores to shine a new light on their businesses," said Domnitz. "It will help booksellers identify key indicators of success and to take the steps necessary to help ensure profitability."

If you are interested in participating, please click here. For more information, call Domnitz at (800) 637-0037, ext. 1205 or send an e-mail to avin@bookweb.org.