Introducing My Fanbox Data Manager

Since I started paying attention to my Fanbox account a few months ago, I’ve always wanted to be able to download my work to my computer, like could be done with Facebook. My Fanbox Success Coach said this feature wasn’t there. Also, Fanbox sends me these emails every day telling me how much I earned on the day before yesterday. The first time I checked the details on the “My Balance” screen of Fanbox, the totals for earnings didn’t agree with what was quoted in the email. My Coach explained that they sent the emails before updating the list on “My Balance” and some items got placed there later, like the following day. It sounded confusing, and I wanted a way of automatically grouping the items on the “My balance” screen so their totals matched what was emailed. There were also charges on the “My Balance” screen that Fanbox didn’t bother to mention in their emails. And there were the IPL processing and late fee charges somewhere else.

Being the professional computer scientist that I am, my solution was to program it, to create a Fanbox module in our MoneyBooks Data Manager application to do what I wanted. By studying items on My Balance screen, I figured out the ones that were added the next day as they had the same descriptions. Now I have a ready tool to keep track of my work on Fanbox and easily make sense of their accounting. If you’re like me that wants a local record of what you do on Fanbox, then this tool will definitely benefit you! Here is how it works for now. Other things will probably be added later as needs arise.

Here are several Fanbox data windows open simultaneously within the Data Manager application.

Let’s begin with the My Balance screen at the Fanbox website. Here, some transaction rows have been selected on the screen.
My Balance window

Here are the data rows that were copied, after being pasted into the Data Manager, using one keystroke.
My Bank Transaction List
The year and month columns Yr, Mth at the left make it easy to show only the items for a particular month or year. The Value Date and Category column values are assigned by the application based on the description and amount.

A similar copy-and-paste can be done with IPL processing fees and late charges, giving us a list like this:
IPL Fee Transaction List
The blue amount in parenthesis (40.67) is a payment to Fanbox that was entered manually in the list. Notice the total line at the bottom, showing the amount outstanding for both IPL processing fees and late charges, taking into account the payment made.

Now we check the Fanbox Daily Summary List:

The amount for the Earnings column will correspond exactly with the amounts emailed by Fanbox for those days. The Net column shows exactly if a profit or loss was made on each day. These figures are calculated as the transactions are saved in the local database.

We want to see exactly why there was a loss of $5.75 on February 28. Simply, double-click on that row and we see the complete earnings and charges report for that day.
Fanbox Earnings Summary Report
Each earnings and charge amount is accompanied by its percentage share of the total. This report can also be generated to show summarized totals for any period at any time.

The previous areas show how the accounting data can be recorded locally and tracked. For postings made on Fanbox, there is the following window in the application to help with taking notes.
Fanbox Post List

To modify most details on the list, or when adding a new post, the following form is used.
Fanbox Post Form
The middle and bottom sections of the form adjust depending on the type of post.

Chris Emejuru, March 6, 2015. A version of this post originally appeared at Fanbox.