Royalty statements

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

Importing rights

The Import rights module allows you to ingest royalty statements, sales reports, and digital performance distribution files. This data is linked directly to a specific third party or collection society to process income data across your catalog.

1. Interface Overview

The interface requires you to specify accountability links alongside your file and parsing filter selections:

• Left Section (Accountability & Files): Dropdowns to assign who sent the money/data, and the file uploader tool.

• Right Section (Filtre): The template list specifically calibrated for rights and financial data structures (e.g., LyricFind, MCPS, Maestro).

2. Step-by-Step Configuration

Step 1: Define Accountabilities (Third Party & Company paid)

Before choosing files, you must tell the system how to assign the incoming funds:

1. Third party: Click the dropdown and select the external client, publisher, or sub-publisher who provided the statement (e.g., Asia Sub Publisher).

2. Company paid : Select your internal company that received the payment described in the statement.

Step 2: Upload Royalty Files

1. Find the Files section below the dropdowns.

2. Click the + icon at the bottom left to browse your computer and upload your statement files (CSV, XLS, TXT, etc.).

3. Note: Multiple files from the same provider can be added at once if they share the identical file structure. Use the Trash bin icon to clear accidental selections.

Step 3: Map the Royalty Structure (Filter)

1. Scroll or search through the Filter column on the right side.

2. Select the filter matching the source organization or format layout (e.g., choose MCPS CRD4 if processing an MCPS statement).
   

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.

3. Action Buttons & Navigation

The navigation buttons at the bottom facilitate the wizard sequence:

Button	Action
Back	Returns to the previous menu dashboard (disabled during initial step).
Next	Starts parsing the financial values and advances to the preview and calculation step.
Cancel	Wipes the current setup selections and closes the Import rights module.

Options

 

After selecting your statement file, third party, and parsing filter, clicking "Next" opens the Options page. This screen allows you to configure financial variables, apply currency conversions, and set up metadata rules for the incoming royalty entries.

1. Setting Up Financial and Administrative Options

Configure the parameters to align with your distribution rules:

• Rights date: input the accounting/distribution period relevant to this statement (e.g., Q1 2026, H2 2025). This ensures royalties are allocated to the correct financial period.

• Currency: Defines the base currency of the incoming document. By default, it is configured to currency defined as the default one in the Stettings. Modify this code if your statement uses a different source currency (e.g., USD, GBP).

• Share to keep: Determines what percentage of the incoming money is retained by your company before sub-distribution. By default, it is set to 100,00% (meaning your company retains the entire gross amount, or commission calculations will follow default contract rules).

• Counter value: If the statement currency differs from your system's main accounting currency, enter equivalent value in your currency accurately.

• Filter on a condition: Use this dropdown to apply a specific logical rule to the import, parsing only the line items that meet a custom set criteria.

• Force a rights tag: Allows you to automatically apply a specific tag to apply a special rule to the payout of the rights. 

Debug: Located at the bottom of the window. Exclusively for us. 

Statement Summary

Once the software finishes parsing your rights or royalty statement file, it advances to the Compte rendu screen. This stage provides a breakdown of the imported sheets, data volume, extracted financial sums, and parsing warnings before committing the records to your live ledger.

1. Interface & Grid Layout

The main table acts as a structured tree menu. Clicking the small Minus ($-$) or Plus ($+$) square icon on the far left expands or collapses individual sheets found inside your uploaded file.

Main File Attributes

• File name: Displays the path of the processed spreadsheet (e.g., Z:\Downloads\GRANDS DROITS V2.xlsx).

• Nb lines: The total count of data rows successfully scanned (e.g., 70 lines).

• Amount / Amount in currency: The total aggregate financial royalty sum extracted from the document (e.g., 184 214,37).

2. Reading Error Messages and Workbook Sheets

When expanding a multi-sheet spreadsheet workbook (e.g., Excel files with several tabs), Le Sage evaluates each tab independently:

• Successful Tabs (e.g., Feuil1): * Displays the subtotal financial Amount parsed specifically from that single sheet.

  • The Active zones column indicates which named script or data layout template successfully mapped the rows.

• Tabs with Errors/Warnings (e.g., Feuil2):

  • Message / Last error: Displays parsing flags such as Headers not found.

  • What this means: This alert indicates that a specific sheet inside your Excel file (like Feuil2) does not contain the expected data columns or is an empty layout tab. If the financial totals on the successful sheets match your physical statement statement balance, this warning can safely be ignored.

3. Investigating Logs & Interactive Details

💡 Pro-Tip: As noted in the subtitle instruction, you can double-click directly on any row or sheet line item to trigger a drill-down window displaying a detailed row-by-row view of the data.

• Logs Button: Click the "Logs" button next to the navigation bar to open a raw text file detailing the exact data conversion metrics, skipped lines, or column mapping details for structural troubleshooting.

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.