“The time you spend filling out the ABACUS survey will pay off exponentially for your business.” –ABA Board of Directors in an email to members
The 2021 ABACUS survey is open through June 16. Begin the submission process in the ABACUS online portal [1]. If you have previously participated, your account information has been carried forward. If you are a new participant, you will need to create an account to access the site, and we recommend using an ID and password that is different from your ABA login credentials.
As bookstores rethink strategies and operations in a post-COVID world, the insight from the ABACUS financial survey showing how your store compares with others — whether in terms of key expense categories or sales performance — has never been more important.
ABACUS is a free annual report filled with detailed information highlighting where your store falls across a range of areas, including profitability, productivity, and financial management. Using the ABACUS report is like adding a financial officer to your staff; it clearly highlights areas that need improvement, areas in which your store is succeeding, and everything in between.
This ABACUS reporting cycle will cover both 2019 and 2020 financial results, providing participating stores with a user-friendly overview of an economy impacted by COVID-19, informative graphs, and interpretive information.
The ABACUS submission period is now open, and the deadline for submitting to ABACUS is Monday, May 31.
Questions about ABACUS? Email ABA Senior Strategy Officer Dan Cullen [2].
Much of the information needed to fill out the survey will come from a store’s income statement and balance sheet, and all data shared through the ABACUS survey is confidential. Booksellers have several weeks in which to complete the survey, and the survey can be saved in progress and returned to at any time.
Participating stores will receive:
- Industry-wide reports for 2019 and 2020, including an executive summary, detailed survey results, and multi-year trend comparison tables,
- Individual company performance reports — confidential, individualized reports shown alongside appropriate industry comparatives (for instance, net sales and profitability, etc) that give stores an easy way to interpret their ABACUS results and provide actionable feedback on the success and/or improvement areas for each respondent.
- Excel data tables of the aggregated ABACUS results for 2019 and 2020, to which stores can add their data for analysis.
For more information about ABACUS, check out the members-only materials on the ABA Education Resources page [3] (under "filter results by tags," select "ABACUS").