Introduction to Accounting

The accounting module has been designed from the ground-up to integrate with all other areas of your ampsuite account so that most of the preparation work has already been completed. You will be given the opportunity to import sales data supplied to you by your sales partners, digital distributors and content aggregators; and then allocate those sales to artists, labels, or any other third-party.

On this page we will give a brief overview of the process required to generate royalty statements using ampsuite, for more detailed information on each section please refer to that specific page of the accounting help guide.

Definitions

Before we go over the process here are a few definitions of terms used within the ampsuite accounting module:

• Licensor - A generic term for any person, business or other entity for which royalties will be accounted to and a statement will be generated. This can include artists, labels or 3rd parties (referred to as 'External Licensors' in ampsuite).
• Contract - Within the ampsuite accounting module a contract refers to a definition of the percentage splits for a licensor, a contract may or may not be linked to a signed digital contract within ampsuite. Tracks can be assigned to one or more contracts, and licensors may have multiple contracts representing different percentage splits.
• Main Contract - Each licensor should have one contract which is defined as their 'main' contract. This is the contract which tracks will be automatically assigned to for this artist unless manually overridden. Any contract can be assigned to be the 'main' for a licensor, but each licensor can only have one default contract at a time.
• Adjustment - An adjustment (sometimes referred to as 'manual adjustment') is any amount of money which has been assigned to a statement by means other than via a sales statement import. This includes expenses which in ampsuite are treated as 'negative adjustments'.
• Cross Collateralise - Defines whether not negative balances from one contract should be offset by positive balances on other contracts. If a contract is set to not cross collateralise then any negative balance on that contract will be carried forward into future accounting periods even if there are positive balances on other contracts belonging to the same licensor.

Accounting Overview

Below is a brief overview of the general actions required to generate a royalty statement run and the order they should be carried out in. Note that the system allows for a great deal of flexibility in how accounts can be generated, and to avoid over complication some of the more advanced features are disabled by default. We will generally highlight in the user guide when this is the case, but please bear in mind features may differ slightly on your system compared to screenshots shown in this help guide, the most common being that the publishing accounting module options will not be present on most systems.

• 1. Check Your Settings - Before we begin, it's probably a good idea to check the main settings for your accounting module are set as you require them, this includes things such a minimum payout thresholds (amounts under this will automatically be carried forward each period until the amount is exceeded), your system currency, and the type of licensors you wish to account to (e.g. artist or label level accounting). Generally most things should be configured for you during your initial system set up, but if anything needs changing which you are unable to edit please contact us before proceeding. You can check your accounting settings from the Accounting Settings page. You may also want to check your company name and address details (and logo if desired) are correct in the accounts page - as these will be displayed in the statements you generate.
• 2. Catalog Setup - The first thing required before even looking at the accounting functionality in ampsuite is to ensure that all releases and tracks you will be processing sales for are set up correctly in ampsuite. Note that completeness of catalog is important, for example if a release does not contain the full track listing on ampsuite as it appears on stores, then any bundle sales for that release may be incorrectly divided between the licensors on those tracks. It is also of vital importance that all Catalog Numbers, UPC's and ISRC's are correctly entered, as it is these codes which will be used to match up each sales row within the imported store statements to the correct release and/or track(s) on ampsuite.
• 3. Licensor Setup - As mentioned previously, a licensor is any person or entity who you need to account out to. By default ampsuite is set up to account to artists, and as such will automatically generate a licensor for each artist you create on the system. As such in many cases your licensors will already be created for you, and you will simply need to enter their email addresses before sending statements. This can be done from the licensors screen, where you can also create additional licensors who may not already be on the system, for example remixers or third party licensors.
• 4. Contract Setup - The next thing is to ensure that all contracts have been set up with the correct percentage splits on each track, and that the correct tracks have been assigned to each contract. We advise that contracts are set up at the point that the release / track is added to ampsuite, to avoid anything being missed, this also avoids the situation where large amounts of extras setup work in regards to contract splits is required prior to running your accounts. See the 'Assigning Contracts for Accounting' section of the release setup help page. It is also possible to create and assign contracts from the licensors screen, this can be useful in cases where you need to make a lot of changes to a number of licensors / contracts in one go.
• 5. Import Accounts - Once all your catalog and contracts are in order, it's now time to import your sales statements, this is done from the Import Accounts screen. For ampsuite distribution clients we will email you your statement each month, you must then import this statement into ampsuite before you can generate your artist royalty statements. If you use a third party distributor or have your own store deals in place you will need to let us know which formats of statement you will require importing, so that we can add the corresponding import format to your ampsuite system. In general we can import any file that can be opened in Excel (e.g. csv, txt, xls, xlsx) so long as they contain enough information to identify which track / release the sales belong to (e.g. Catalog Number or UPC for bundle sales, and ISRC for track sales).
• 6. Error Correction - After you have imported your sales statements, in some cases you may find the system flags some 'errors' on the import, for example they may contain an ISRC which isn't present on ampsuite, in these cases you may need to manually correct this line to tell ampsuite which track it belongs to. Once you have done this the correction will be remembered for future uploads so you don't need to do it again.
• 7. Add Expenses / Adjustments - If you have any expenses or other amounts you need to add to the statements (such as advances or opening balances from a previous accounting system) now would be a good time to do this (or you can add them when you set up the release they relate too so they are already present ready for your next statement run). There are a number of ways in which adjustments can be added, including a bulk import option, see the Adjustments & Expenses section of the help guide for more information.
• 8. Generate Statements - Once all the above has been done it's now time to generate your statements, this is generally as simple as setting a from and to date for the period and clicking generate! For more information see the Creating Statements section of the help guide.
• 9. Send Your Statements - Once your statements are generated it's important to check them carefully to make sure everything is correct, at this point you still have the chance to make any changes if you spot something you've missed. Once you are happy with them you have the option to quickly email them out to all of your licensors in one go with a single click!

While the above might sound like a lot of steps, in reality a lot of the work, in terms of catalog, licensor and contract setup, will have already been done when creating your releases ready for distribution - and in many cases has been automated in the background so requires minimal manual input. Making sure things are correctly set up, with all data entered correctly as you go along will greatly increase the ease with which you can generate statements each period, and avoid the need for large amounts of manual correction of data.

Publishing Accounts

ampsuite allows users to run both recording / royalty accounts and publishing accounts via a single system. Depending on your requirements your system may be configured for either one, or both of these accounts types.

For the most part generating publishing accounts works in much the same way as recording / royalty accounts within ampsuite. The majority of this help guide is written from the point of view of generating recording / royalty accounts, but is equally applicable to generating publishing accounts. Differences between generating the two types of accounts will be highlighted at relevant points within the help guide.

As such you may also notice slight differences in terms of available options between your own system and the one shown in screenshots within the help guide. If you require any of these options adding to your system if it is not currently present please speak with your ampsuite representative.