What each article costs
A newsroom knows what it publishes. It rarely knows what each article cost it. The organization’s new Costs space works it out as you go, from your own rates.
A rate grid is written the way you would say it: a price per article or per page, then the moments that change it. Evenings, weekends or bank holidays take their own price, and the highest of the moments that apply wins. A bonus rewards long articles. Per page, a minimum and a cap bound the amount. Rates that change apply from a date, without rewriting past months.
What remains is saying who is paid by which grid, and the most precise rule wins. A grid attaches to a site, or to one of the site’s content types, which you can also declare unpaid. An author can have their own rate for a type, and a staff writer is not paid per article. Bonuses and flat fees are fixed monthly amounts, set on the author’s profile.
Each published article becomes a cost line, with the detail of the calculation. An article without a rate says why: no grid, author without a profile, unpaid type. It does not wait until the end of the month to be noticed.
Freelancers’ billing statements
At the end of the month, Poquelin closes it and prepares a billing statement per freelancer: a numbered PDF, in your name, listing their articles, their amounts and the rule that set them. It carries your newsroom’s logo, uploaded in one click from the organization’s settings. Statements go out by email as they are, or after you approve them, as you choose. A recap tells administrators what went out, what is waiting and what deserves a look.
As long as no statement has gone out, a month can be reopened to fix a rate or an author. An article published late joins the next statement. And each author finds their statements in their account, along with what the next ones will hold. They see their own amounts, never the newsroom’s loaded cost.
The profitability of each site
The Profitability screen sets, for a month, the revenue measured by Analytics against the costs. The total is exact to the cent. The detail goes down by site, by author and by article, with the margin per 1,000 views and six months of trend. An author’s fixed amounts are spread across sites according to their articles. Whatever belongs to no article stays visible apart, on an “Unallocated” line.
So that each article lands with the right author, Editor now lets you choose an article’s author.
A new site, ready to write in a few steps
Creating a space on Poquelin takes one conversation. For a new organization, you give its name, then the outlet’s and its domain. An outlet can also be added to an existing organization.
A setup then takes over, in six steps in the order that matters for a first article: connect the CMS, set the editorial line, install the Analytics tag, invite the team, follow monitoring sources and connect social networks. Each step can be done or skipped, and on the dashboard, a card shows where you stand. It all fits on a phone too.
For monitoring, themed packs are followed in one click: their feeds join the Reader, filed in a folder named after the pack.
The CMS connected without being technical
Poquelin recognizes your site’s CMS from its domain and offers it first. When the site describes itself, as WordPress and Drupal do, a “Here is what I propose” screen sums up what will be done, in one click: the content type that will publish your articles, the authors, the sections and the other vocabularies, where images go. When the API does not describe itself, Poquelin guides you step by step, starting from a standard Article type.
If the CMS access is in other hands, “Delegate this step” copies a message ready to send to the right person. It holds the guide to follow and what to send back to you.