FAQs for Booksellers

Making payments through Batch is a two-step process:

1. Authorize the invoices you want to pay and credits you want to use.
2. Transfer the total payment amount to Batch via ACH or wire transfer.

Other payment notes:

• There is a $40,000 limit for ACH transfers. Any payment over $40,000 should be sent by wire transfer.
• Batch is not connected to nor able to draft funds from your bank account. Stores must initiate the payment transfer.
• Batch sends payments to the publisher every Friday morning and also on the last business day of the month.
• The cutoff for Batch to receive funds is two days prior to the payment date by 6:00 pm Eastern. Payments arriving after that time will be held until the following payment date.

Payment Resources

• Complete list of payment dates and payment cut-off dates.
• Guide to making a payment (also available as a downloadable pdf)

Batch submits payments to the publishers every Friday morning and on the last business day of the month. There is a corresponding payment cut-off two business days prior to the payment date at 6:00 pm Eastern.

At 6:00 pm Eastern on the payment cutoff date, all invoices and credits must be authorized and your payment must be in our bank account. Payments received after the payment cut-off will be held until the following payment date.

Notes:

• The payment cut-off for the weekly Friday remittances is Wednesday at 6:00 p.m. Eastern.
• The payment cut-off for the last business day of the month remittance varies based on when the last business day of the month falls.
• Invoices authorized after the payment cutoff time will not be remitted until the following payment date.
• When sending payment by ACH, be sure to take into account transfer times. ACH payments typically take 3 business days to arrive in our account.

Resources

• Complete list of payment dates and payment cut-off dates.
• Guide to making a payment (also available as a downloadable pdf)

Email support@batchforbooks.com detailing the nature of the problem. If you’re able to provide supporting documentation, such as a statement or an invoice, attach that to the email as well.

You can find any funds brought forward from your previous payment in the Balance Summary report that is located under your Current Summary.

Fields in your balance summary:

• B/FWD (Green background, preceded by CR): The amount brought forward from your previous payment if preceded with a CR.
• Amount Paid to Batch: Amount Batch has received during current payment period.
• Current Balance (Green background, preceded by CR): The amount to be carried forward to the next payment.
• Funds Still Owed (Pink background): The amount still owed by the store by the payment cutoff in order for Batch to remit their authorized transactions.

Notes:

• Current Balance and Funds Still Owed are the same field. The field will read Current Balance when Batch has enough funds to remit your authorized invoices and will read Funds Still Owed when Batch does not have enough funds to remit your authorized invoices. 
• Current Balance / Funds Still Owed totals take into account any funds on hand from a previous payment (B/FWD) and funds received during the current period (Amount Paid to Batch)

Email support@batchforbooks.com detailing the nature of the problem. If you’re able to provide supporting documentation, such as a statement or an invoice, attach that to the email as well.

You can change the status of invoices marked 'Not Paying through Batch for Books' by selecting 'R' for 'Restore to Open' or 'A' to authorize the transaction to be paid. 

Invoices and credits will be shown on Batch For Books as soon as the vendors send them. The system displays invoice and credit data provided by the vendors; if there are errors or items missing, contact our team at support@batchforbooks.com.

No. If any claims against an invoice are authorized, all associated transactions will also automatically be authorized.

Log on to Batch For Books Payments and choose the Invoice Finder option from the Main Menu. Entering the order number or delivery note number will display details of any invoices relating to those numbers.

Select the invoice and click on the 'N' button ('Not paying'). Click on ‘Update’ at the bottom of the page and the transaction will be removed.

Yes, any invoice can be printed directly from our website. On the system, you will find a complete record of all your transactions with each vendor.

Select ’Period Summaries’ from the Main Menu. Once there, click on ’Show Period‘ and choose ’Past‘ from the drop-down menu. Then select the date and the payment summary will be displayed.

The amount to be transferred is in the 'Ready for Payment' column.

We can easily arrange for your colleagues to have access to Batch For Books, but each person will need his or her own user name and password. To add new users, email support@batchforbooks.com with the following information: name of person to be added, email address of person to be added, and access level of person to be added. After receiving the email, we will send out an email to the new user asking them to register for the site.

The access levels are:

• Authorization — user can authorize invoices for payment.
• Verification — user can verify that the invoice is correct, but final authorization is done by another user, such as the owner of the store.
• Authorization and Verification — user can both verify receipt of invoices and authorize them for payment.

Yes. If you go to Reports, you will see a link for Statement Downloads (All Transactions). The format of the file is .csv, which can be opened in Excel.

On a Mac
— Chrome: Click on the link for Statement Downloads, which will open the file in a new page on your web browser. Go to File → Save As, and save the .csv file to the location of your choosing.
— Safari: Right click on the link for Statement Downloads on the Reports page and select Download Linked File As..., which will allow you to set the name and location where you would like to download the .csv file.

 On Windows
— Microsoft Edge/Firefox: Click on the link for Statement Downloads. A dialogue box should appear asking what you would like to Open or Save the file.
— Chrome: Click on the link for Statement Downloads, which will open the file in a new page on your web browser. Go to File → Save As, and save the .csv file to the location of your choosing.

If you have any issues downloading your information, email support@batchforbooks.com so we can help.

A red flag indicates an overall credit against a vendor, which will be carried forward to the following payment period.

Yes, you can. For detailed information on how to make a claim, please go to https://batchforbooks.com/web/how-batch-works/making-claims.

Batch is able to integrate with both the desktop and online versions of QuickBooks. By integrating Batch with QuickBooks via BatchSync, you’ll be able to save hours of time each month as you'll no longer need to manually enter invoice information into your QuickBooks account. For more details and instructions on connecting Batch with your QuickBooks account, please visit our Linking with QuickBooks page. 

If you use an accounting package other than QuickBooks, let us know by emailing support@batchforbooks.com.

In addition to being able to access invoices on Batch, stores will continue to receive mailed or emailed copies of their invoices directly from the publisher with the following exception:

HarperCollins: Upon going live with Batch, stores will no longer receive mailed or emailed invoices from HarperCollins. In addition to the Batch view of invoices, PDF copies of invoices will be available for viewing, downloading, and/or printing directly on Batch for Books.

To access a HarperCollins invoice, users can click on the PDF icon in the "View PDF" column within the list of transactions (as per the image below).

The current roster of vendors available on Batch are:

• Penguin Random House
• Macmillan
• HarperCollins
• Gardner's US
• Blackstone Publishing
• Independent Publishers Group (IPG)
• Microcosm
• Arcadia Publishing

When you register to use Batch For Books, you'll be asked to provide your account numbers for the vendors you'd like to pay through Batch. We'll inform the publishers and they will begin to transmit all invoices and credits to your portal once your Batch set-up process is completed.

Current Batch Users: If you're a current Batch user and would like to add one of the vendors to your Batch portal, please send your store name, the publisher you'd like to add, and the publisher account number to support@batchforbooks.com, and we'll submit a request they be added.

Yes. All vendors on Batch require that your account be in good standing before they’ll start transferring invoice information to Batch for Books. There are also two other publisher-specific stipulations:

• Additional Confirmation: Macmillan and Penguin Random House require additional confirmation from stores about their intention to start using Batch for Books. Instructions on how to confirm your account will be provided during your Batch onboarding process.  

• Required payments through Batch House: Penguin Random House requires all payments from that point forward to be made through Batch for Books. For all other publishers, stores can make payments outside of Batch if the need arises.

We recognize that circumstances may arise where you need the flexibility to pay either through Batch For Books or directly to the vendor. For most of the vendors, you have the option to pay directly through Batch OR you can opt to pay them directly. Should you pay the vendor directly, you will want to mark those invoices as 'Not Paying through Batch' on the system so that those invoices are no longer open. (There is a separate FAQ on reopening and authorizing those invoices later, should you need to.)

The one exception is Penguin Random House who have stipulated that once a store goes live on Batch For Books with PRH, payments must be made through us.

Early in the morning of the day following the closing date for authorizations, you will be able to see the amounts paid to vendors in a few different locations:

1. From the main menu, go to Period Summaries and set the 'Show Period' filter to PAST.
2. From the main menu, got to Reports and then select Bookstore Payment Status.

Yes. If you pay your MPS invoices within the MPS early settlement terms, a credit note will automatically be added to your Batch For Books account. This can then be used as part of your next payment.

Yes. In order to do so, you need to authorize a transaction and bring it forward to the current period. Users are able to bring transaction forward on either an individual basis or en masse. 

For individual transactions — Go to the 'Future period summary' and authorize the invoices to be paid early. Then, find the invoice you want to bring forward in your list of transactions, click on the invoice number to show the invoice detail and click on the 'Due Date' drop down box. Change the due date to the current period and click ‘Update’.

For multiple transactions — Go to the ‘Future period summary’ and authorize the invoices to be paid early. Once the transactions have been authorized, click on the clock icon to the left of the authorized transactions and that will bring all the authorized invoices to the current period. 

Related material: Watch an instructional video on how to bring invoices forward.