Royalty statements

• Importing rights
• Matching rights
• Viewing rights
• Royalties
• Agreements
• The statements

Importing rights

The rights imports allow you to integrate the statements of PROs and your sub-publishers.

The rights are linked to a rights provider, called a third party in the Sage.

When importing the file, you must know the sender in order to indicate it in Third Party, as well as choose the appropriate filter. The filter is named after the rights provider. A Third Party may have more than one file type. This is how we have four filters for SACEM, for example, as they can send several different formats. If you do not find a filter corresponding to your rights provider, please send us the file with the name of the provider.

Unlike catalog imports, rights imports are done in two stages to allow you to manage the time allocated to matching:

The pre-import

1/ Indicate the Third Party   

2/Select your file (s) to import    

3/Choose the appropriate filter (this can be preconfigured in The Sage configuration)    

Next

1/ Rights dates: allows you to force a date of reception of rights on all imported lines and indicate one when the file doesn't contain the information. It is always a good idea to indicate a date.  

2/Currency: if nothing is entered, the currency will be the default currency indicated in the Settings.    

3/ Share to keep: if you want to deduct a percentage on all the lines of rights   

4/ Counter value: this is the amount actually received, in your currency if the file is in a foreign currency.

5/ Filter on a condition: by indicating a condition you can only import the lines of rights that answer that condition.    

6/ Force a rights tag: forcing a rights tag then allows you to create a rights condition to pay the imported lines of right.    

Next

If an error message appears and the file analysis remains blocked, please send us a screenshot, the file being imported, as well as the name of the filter you have selected. The files of your rights providers evolve and we have to adapt the filters accordingly.

A summary of the number of imported lines as well as the amount present in the file appears. ActiveZone is the zone used inside the filter to import the data of your file. It is important to make sure that the amount found matches the amount indicated in the PDF file sent by your rights provider. Otherwise, do not hesitate to contact us to make sure that it is not an error in the filter but an error in the file transmitted by the third party.

Next

Import completed

Matching rights

The import of the rights at this stage is not complete. You cannot analyze them, output your statements, or simply view them as they are. It is necessary to establish the correspondences between the imported rights and lLe Sage database. To do so, you have to go to the list of imports.

1/ The import we just made is red. It indicates that the rights collected are not usable by the system for the moment.  The system does not know yet how to read the information from the file.

2/ The status indicated summarizes the matching lines that are to be made for this file in order to be able to payout, analyze and extract the rights collected.

In the example: 2/2/2/2 should be read as follows: 2 types of rights / 2 families of rights / 2 lines of rights concerning territories / 2lines of rights concerning works  without correspondence. In order to get a precise information on how many works and territories have to matches you can click on "Detailed status".

To start the matching, double click on the import line.

The matches are always made as follows:

The tabs "types of rights", "Matched works" and "Songbooks" must be matched in order to use the information from the file. The "families of rights" and "territories" tabs allow you to give a more precise information to your beneficiaries on their statement but are not mandatory.

The Matched Works Tab

In this example there is only one work in the distribution file.

Start by establishing the already known correspondences : Le Sage will analyze the codes linked to the works: if the codes in the file match with the codes in Le Sage, the rights will be automatically associated with the works.

If works did not find matches after the first analysis, you will :

The information in the first box-1- is the information contained in the file. Depending on the files you will have more or less details.

Box 2 is your database. It will be a question of identifying if the work which arrives via the file is to be compared or not to a work within your database.

If it is  :

All works matched manually will be listed in the "Matched works" tab. If you made a mistake in a match, all you have to do is select the line with the wrong match and click "Delete" (trash can icon). It will be necessary to start again "Start works match" to match it with the good work or to create  new one. All created works will be listed in "Created works". This will allow you to create a group to process them.

The songbook tab

The songbooks must be created within the Sage in "Songbooks" to then establish the matching.

Viewing rights

Once the rights have been integrated into the system, you will be able to view them in "View rights".

View rights is a menu that allows to read, analyze, and extract data of collected rights. The quantity of rights imported or entered manually in the system rarely makes it possible makes it possible to visualize all of them. It is therefore important to restrict the search by:

Viewing tools

List templates

It is interesting to establish different list templates depending on the rights analysis to be performed. A lot of columns are available, depending on the information available in the files you have imported. List templates are displayed and adjusted by right-clicking on the list of rights. Once the columns have been chosen, each can be filtered to keep only certain information: origins, types of rights, etc.

Sum of rights

The sum of the rights is displayed by right-clicking on the bar at the bottom of the list at the level of "amount paid pressing "Add".

It is also possible to set up subtotal bars to group the rights according to certain characteristics (Right click on the column headers). You will select the column on which you want subtotals and place it above on "Drag a column".

Export

An export of the rights wiewing in xlsx format is available by right-clicking on the column headings.   

Associate a tag

Tagging rights allows you to isolate certain lines of rights to treat them differently from traditional payments.

Example: you have obtained a new catalog. A work is paid to you, whereas it should be paid to the previous sub-publisher given the start date of your contract. You can tag these rights lines to say that those with this tag must be, regardless of the type of rights paid, paid to the previous sub-publisher. We will see that for this same example, it will not necessarily be useful to tag the rights but to explain in the contract that before a certain date we do not pay for the rights received and the date we pay the actors.

Royalties

Pay out the rights received

One of the primary functions of Le Sage is to allow to pay out the rights collected. In order to give you maximum flexibility in the way you manage these payments, Le Sage offers two complementary operating levels: the “contract” mode and the “work” mode. In both modes, the definition of payouts is done in the same way: you define one or more beneficiaries and the splits (percentages) that will be paid to them according to different criteria.

In the "contract" mode, you create a contract and indicate the payout information (the "royalties"). You attach this contract to a group and all the works of this group will be subject to the payout provided for in the contract.

This mode is to be preferred because:

In the "works" mode, the royalties (payouts) are defined directly in the work. The payout information defined in the work takes priority over that of the contracts. If you modify the percentages in a contract and your statements do not change, it is likely that the rates taken into account are those defined directly in the work. This operation makes it possible to define a general case and exceptions: if a work in a group must be subject to special payments, it is not necessary to remove it from the group (and this group can continue to be used for other treatments - such as analyzes).

Agreements

Payout agreements allow you to create payment rules, royalties, and apply them to a group of works.

They are created from "Agreements" in the "Main Menu".

From this screen, you can:    

The agreement form

To have access to the royalties box, you must fill in a description and a type of agreement and press Create (2)

You can then enter how you want the contract to work.

Style

Styles make it easier to read royalties when they are complex. Different repayments for the same types of rights under certain conditions can be easily red through the colors and styles of text. Styles are set in Le Sage Settings (Styles).

Actors

Royalty basis

The royalty base (by default at 100%) makes it possible to adjust the amount received. For example, if you collect the share of two co-publishers and you need to pay 90% of the rights to each, you should indicate a payout of 45% to each (50% of 90%). Your customers may not understand the reason for this fancy rate. By indicating a royalty base of 50% and a repayment of 90%, the amount collected will be divided by 2 and the accounts will show 90%. The amounts will be the same, of course.

Conditions on rights

Selection of a condition on rights, among those created in the Settings of Le Sage.

Distribution key

The payout key uses a column in the copyrights to pay out the royalties. The key is associated with the special actors described in Special Actors. The "Special sharing" column makes it possible not to use the statutory distributions.

Controlled by

This field allows you to force the headers and footers of a different company from the one listed in the work or in the contract. This is often useful for catalogs in management. The called field is a company. The companies are to be added in Settings of Le Sage (Companies).

Payments by type of rights

Use of contracts

A royalty contract applies to a group of works. Once the contract has been entered in the list of contracts:    

The statements

The "Royalty Statements" screen allows you to calculate and print the royalties statements. Before going to the"Royalty Statements"  tab, you will need to go back to "Settings" to define one or more periods that you want to calculate.

You can create as many periods as you want. Once your periods have been created, you can go to the "Royalties statements" menu.

Choose the period and press "Calculate". You will be redirected to the estimate tab which shows you the actors for whom there are payments over the period.

The columns

The actions    

Closing and payment

The closing of the accounts moves the balances. This allows gross balances to be carried out to the next statement and transform into a net balance if necessary. 

Two options: select the account (s) to close it (them) or to close it (them) by exporting it. If you do not close a statement, on the next statement, the unpaid gross balance will not carry out and you will lose visibility of the status of pending payments for the actor.

The payment will be automatically checked if the sum exceeds the payment threshold you have indicated for the company. The latter can also be forced. This checkbox shows the net balance payable on the statement that you send to your actors.

To enter the actual payment for the amount due, click on Pay:        

To resume :

Verification

The verification's tab reports all works for which there are payment errors. This will enable you to analyse the rights paid and going back to the work to check the rules that apply.

We have a work for which we have received money (1253 €) but for which the payment rule defined does not add up to 100% (Min rate 55% and Max rate at 55%). To understand why this work is not paid out correctly, you can start by clicking on see the detail

We see that we have received rights, whose entitlement type is ETDEP for an amount of € 1,253 and for which there is 55% payed out. It is therefore a question of closing this verification and double clicking on the problematic work. By opening it we see that there is a contract attached to the work. But if we look closely, there is only 5% instead of 50% in the foreign performing splits.

To modify the contract you can double click on the name of the contract attached, modify the split and save.

The work will disappear from the verification tab after recalculating the statements.