In my continuing effort to close the books on ISFiC Press for 2008, I went back to it this evening. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to open the invoice file that I got from shsilver, so I've punted the inspection of that back to him.

I've now given Steven a list of the things I don't have. Since he wants this done as badly as I do, I suspect this won't take much longer.

Of course, right now, it's the ISFiC Press financials that Tom needs to do ISFiC's taxes that I'm trying to pull together. And I've now found a bunch more things that I need to get from shsilver in order to finish it up.

So I've sent him a number of e-mails. I'm sure he's delighted. :)

(Actually, I'm sure he will be delighted when this is done.)

Well, there are a couple of numbers that I still need to get from shsilver -- not his fault, in the sense that I hadn't yet asked for them -- but I think the ISFiC Press financials are now in a shape that will allow our Treasurer to finally file our tax return for 2007.

I need a better record-keeping system.

Actually, the big problem is that Steven does essentially all the work -- he has the inventory, he does the shipping, he does the invoicing, he collects and deposits the checks -- but he's not the guy who does the accounting at the end of the year. That's me and since he has all the records, life becomes entertaining. I know how to do the accounting, but it relies on being able to ask Steven for all of the right numbers.

This year, it's been an iterative process.

Today, daisy_knotwise and Katie have gone out shopping, leaving me to hack on the ISFiC Press financials so I can forward them to Tom so he can file the ISFiC tax return -- which will, no doubt, need to have an extension filed! So far, I've found that I can't find the financials from last year that Tom helped with the reconstruction of. I called him and he'll be sending those along shortly.

But I also need a bunch of sales and expense figures that shsilver has. And I suddenly recall that he went out of town this weekend, having just left a message on his answering machine.

Ok, I obviously won't be finishing this today.

shsilver and I sat down last night and have almost finished reconstructing the ISFiC Press financials for 2005 and then building the financials for 2006 so that our new treasurer can file the ISFiC tax return which has been extended about as far as it can go. I had run into a horrible time crunch in early 2006 and passed the financial data to our then-treasurer (who is, quite sadly, now deceased) to crunch the numbers. Unfortunately, he didn't realize that we actually needed to use inventory accounting now that ISFiC actually had inventory.

Oops. An easy enough mistake to make, I suspect, if you're not familiar with the problem, but it meant that we had to rebuild the 2005 financials so that we had a firm place to stand to get 2006 straightened out.

We're a couple numbers short of a full load, but I've got a pretty close picture of where everything stands and I know what everyone -- except me! :) -- is owed, so Steven can get the appropriate checks out. The problem with a small press (as jeff_duntemann periodically reminds me) is that you're almost always undercapitalized. So are we. But the good news is that all the books save one have rolled to a position where we're at a cash flow break-even (roughly) and last year's collection, Outbound, is essentially sold out now -- bad from the point of view of having a back list, but really good from the point of view of having positive cash flow.

It's just scary to realize that at the end of last year, ISFiC Press had a $20,000 inventory. Gleep!

I dug through old e-mails and pulled out a bunch of ISFiC Press info so that I can try to get the books caught up to date. This resulted in my deleting a thousand or so old e-mails, which has greatly improved the condition of my inbox.

Later, we had a SpaceTime rehearsal, which went pretty well. Most of us then adjourned for dinner; daddy_guido and dek9 had to take care of family obligations.

Tomorrow, I'll try to get a bit further on the books.

Yesterday, Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit posted this nice brief review of jeff_duntemann's book, The Cunning Blood. The resulting Instalanche at Amazon.com drove the book into the 2000s on the list of best-selling books at Amazon, which is really quite impressive.

It's working its way back down the charts now, but it was a nice bit of publicity.

We got a short (and favorable) mention of The Cunning Blood in David Beers' blog.

Jeff Duntemann's The Cunning Blood, recently published by ISFiC Press, has shot up the Amazon rankings from #418,636 to #128,349 in one day. At this rate...

I've brought work home in case the forecast snow for tomorrow looks ugly in the morning. They're saying three to six inches, which really isn't a problem, save for the idiots on the road. (I try not to be one of them. The idiots, that is -- I hope to be on the road.)

I successfully installed Cubase tonight on the old laptop, just to prove that it would work. So far, so good. Now if the rest of the parts would just show up.

daisy_knotwise retrieved our snowblower from the shop we'd sent it to for a tuneup just days before the predicted two inch snowfall turned out to be substantially more. Tonight, we went out and got fresh gas and a half-gallon of milk. The gas is for the snowblower, the milk was for hot chocolate, which was a fine thing. Why do I predict that the presence of the tuned-up snowblower will fend off a large snowfall?

And I've written an appropriate cover letter so that Gretchen can send off ISFiC Press' two new books to Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit in search of a review. We'll see how it goes.

I also printed out an invoice so we can send CDs off to Juanita.

That's probably enough for tonight.

Hey, we've gotten a review of The Cunning Blood, Jeff Duntemann's first novel that we're releasing at WindyCon this weekend.

Ok, I think I've gotten the 2004 financials sorted out for ISFiC Press and forwarded to our treasurer so he can file ISFiC's taxes. (I'll wait and see if he has any complaints before I mark this completely done.)

Now daisy_knotwise and I can start on the Dodeka taxes. Oh, joy. Oh, bliss.

Fixed a couple more bugs in the Formula One port today. If I could get it to talk to the Graph module (which appears to compile correctly under Unicode), I'd be just about done with it.

In other news, I have prepared my master list of available Cubs tickets, mere moments before the box office opens tomorrow.

And I have solved some of the mysteries of the WindyCon cash box for ISFiC Press. Which means I'd better get to work on the financials.

Tomorrow, I clean my office. It needs it and I need the buried papers on my desk.

Ok, so tonight -- with help from daisy_knotwise -- I've started to move the ISFiC Press files along. I've also mailed out the meeting schedule and minutes from this year's first WindyCon meeting.

It's not a lot, but it's progress.

If I haven't responded to your post on the preceding thread that posed questions, it's not because I'm ignoring you -- it's just that I'm still pulling the response together.

Meanwhile, we're trying to push a product out to beta test here at work and trying to get the first ISFiC Press book launched.

And I'm treading water. :)

It was a long and complex day.
( Long enough that I think I'll use a cut tag here. )

Rescued from the trashbin: five enormous boxes of a Nimlok trade show booth and two much more reasonably sized boxes of a Skyline trade show booth that were thrown out.

Well, now ISFiC Press will at least look like we know what we're doing. :)