A signed contract and a spreadsheet of hope
The contract says a third of the advance on signature, a third on delivery and acceptance of the manuscript, and a third on first publication. The signature payment went out. The manuscript was due in March, arrived in May, went through a round of revisions and was accepted by the editor in an email in August. Finance heard nothing about it.
In October the agent writes, politely, to ask where the delivery payment is. Someone searches the editor's sent mail to find the acceptance date. Meanwhile, on another title, a payment was made on delivery even though the editor had not accepted the manuscript, because the spreadsheet only had a column for 'delivered'.
Why payment triggers get missed
The contract defines the trigger, the editor witnesses it, and finance pays it. Those are three people and usually three systems. The event that matters, acceptance, is often an informal email rather than a recorded step.
- Delivery and acceptance are treated as one event when the contract separates them.
- Extended delivery dates are agreed by email and never updated in the tracker.
- Publication payments depend on the publication date, which moves in production.
- Split advances across formats or territories are recorded as a single figure.
- Agents' commission and invoicing details sit in a different file.
It is also common for the contract to say one thing and the editor's practice to say another. Some editors treat the first full draft as delivery, others wait for a revised draft. A tracker cannot settle that, but it records which event the editor has confirmed, and when, so finance and agents are working from the same fact.
What drifting delivery dates cost you
Late payments strain relationships with agents and authors, and early payments on unaccepted work are hard to recover. There is also a planning cost: a list plan that assumes manuscripts arrive on their contract dates will slip, and nobody notices until the catalogue is being written.
| Gap | What follows |
|---|---|
| Acceptance not recorded | Delivery payment is late and the agent chases |
| Extension not recorded | The book looks overdue and a false alarm goes out |
| Publication date moved | The publication instalment is paid in the wrong month |
| Instalments held as one figure | Nobody can say what remains unpaid on a contract |
| Overdue manuscripts not visible | The seasonal list is built on books that will not arrive |
The contract tracker we build
- A contract record per book with each advance instalment as its own line: amount, trigger event and status.
- Delivery due date and any agreed extensions, with the email or letter that agreed them attached.
- An editor's action to record delivery and, separately, acceptance, which is the event finance watches.
- A link to the publication date held in your production schedule or title management system, so the publication instalment follows it.
- A weekly list for finance of instalments whose trigger has happened but which are unpaid, with the payee and agent details.
- A list for the publisher of manuscripts past their delivery date, sorted by how soon they are needed for the list.
If you use Xero or QuickBooks, we can create the draft bill for each due instalment through their APIs so finance approves rather than retypes. The payment itself stays a finance decision.
What finance and editorial see from then on
Editors record acceptance where they already work, with a single action. Finance opens a list of what is due and why. When an agent asks, you can answer from the record rather than from memory, and the publisher can see which books are late before the sales conference, not after.
Your contracts keep saying what they say. The tracker only makes sure the events they depend on are written down.
Is this happening to you?
- An agent has chased you for a delivery or acceptance payment in the last year.
- Finance learns that a manuscript was accepted by asking the editor.
- You cannot quickly list which advance instalments are still unpaid.
- Extensions to delivery dates exist only in email.
- Publication instalments are worked out by hand each season.