ABACUS-15 Survey Opens May 26

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Unique opportunity for booksellers to receive critical information on financial operations

The ABACUS-15 financial survey for ABA member bookstores will open on Thursday, May 26.

ABACUS is a yearly, members-only survey that gathers key information on financial operations and provides benchmarking goals and insight. The participation of hundreds of ABA members results in valuable data that helps improve business operations and profitability. ABACUS also provides valuable insight for ABA education programs.

The first step in joining the ABACUS community is to be on the lookout for an e-mail from the National Association of College Stores’ (NACS) OnCampus Research. The e-mail announcement to ABA members has the subject line “Ready, Set, ABACUS — Survey Now Open,” and the sender is Martha Love. The e-mail will include introductory information from ABA Senior Strategy Officer Dan Cullen; instructions and FAQs; and links to the secure, online ABACUS submission form.

By submitting their store data for ABACUS-15 via a secure and confidential electronic form, stores will receive both the ABACUS executive summary and a customized report that analyzes their financial results, including comparisons with other stores based on multiple criteria (such as sales level, store size, and profitability). Along with a summary and graphs of the aggregate data, the ABACUS report puts a store’s finances within a fully intelligible industry framework, providing owners and managers with context, insight, and essential benchmarking guidelines to improve the bookstore’s performance.

Recipients of the e-mail are requested to forward it to an appropriate colleague, if necessary, as soon as possible.

“ABACUS is unique: There is no comparable data source or analytic tool for independent bookstores. Booksellers nationwide, in markets of all sizes, have found ABACUS to be an essential key to strategic and business planning, access to capital, negotiations with landlords, and much more,” said Cullen, who added, “ABA is pleased to be working again on ABACUS with the National Association of College Stores’ OnCampus Research.”

The ABACUS-15 Survey deadline is July 1, 2016.

Booksellers with questions about submitting data to the survey can contact Love at OnCampus Research via e-mail at [email protected] or call (800) 622-7498, ext. 2448. Booksellers who have general questions about ABACUS can contact ABA’s Lisa Winn via e-mail or at (800) 637-0037, ext. 7557.

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