The Onboarding Cheat Sheet for Labels

New to Curve? Before you can start using Curve to create your royalty statements, you will need to onboard your metadata to your Curve client. A detailed description of how to onboard your metadata is found in our Getting Started Guide. Whereas this cheat sheet gives a quick overview of all the steps you will be walking through when onboarding your metadata to Curve.

1

Configure Your Settings

The Settings allow you to configure the building blocks of your metadata setup & statement design. The below video will give you a quick introduction to how to configure your Settings.

Further Reading

Checklist Prior to Moving on to Step 2

2

Import Your Payees

For each person or organisation that you wish to send statements to, you will need to create a Payee. The use of a Payee is that (1) you can link multiple Contracts so that all the statements from these different Contracts are collected in the same portal, and (2) you can link multiple Users to this Payee so that multiple people such as managers, employees or additional band members can all have access to the same portal with their own Curve account.

The only mandatory field when creating a Payee is the name. All the other fields are for your own references. If you are intending to create self-bill invoices on behalf of your clients, you may need to specify tax information.

You can create Payees either via the interface on Curve, or in bulk via the Payee template.

Further Reading

Checklist Prior to Moving on to Step 3

  • Every beneficiary I wish to send statements to has a Payee with a clear name.
  • If I will be creating self-bill invoices on behalf of my clients, I have specified tax info where necessary.
3

Import Your Contracts

In the Contract you will specify which rate you will pay as a royalty to your artists. You will also specify how often you want to create a statement for this Contract, if there currently is an outstanding balance for the Contract, which Payee you want to account the royalties to, & if you want to create self-bill invoices on behalf of the artist.
You can create Contracts either via the interface on Curve, or in bulk via the Contract template.

Further Reading

Checklist Prior to Moving on to Step 4

  • All Contracts have a Payee.
  • All Contracts have sales terms picking up all possible royalty streams.
  • All sales terms consider the hierarchy of sales conditions.
  • All Contracts have a cost term.
  • All Contracts are linked to an Accounting Period.
  • All Profit Share contracts don’t just have a profit share rate specified, but also have a sale & cost term specifying which sales & costs are included in the profit share pool.
  • The Opening Balance of each Contract considers any outstanding royalties or advances.
  • When reserves are taken, a Reserve Release schedule is specified.
  • Any reserves taken on the previous royalty accounting setup that are set to be released in the upcoming period are created as a Transaction on the Contract.
4

Create Your Catalogue

Your Release & Track page will hold all the metadata of your catalogue. You can create Tracks & Releases either (1) via the interface on Curve, (2) via DDEX delivery, or (3) via the Track & Release templates. If you are interested in delivering your catalogue to Curve via DDEX, we will need to set up an integration between your delivery platform (eg AudioSalad, Fuga, …) and your Curve client. For more information on how to set up an integration like this, please reach out to your Client Manager.
In your catalogue, you will also specify which Contracts the revenue of a particular Track or Release needs to be shared with. For more information on how to attach Contracts to catalogue, please visit this chapter in our documentation. Two useful tools that may simplify this task are the Pro Rata From Tracks feature & the Labels feature. With Pro Rata From Tracks, you can automatically flush all Contracts from the Tracks to the Release. It will essentially automatically pro rate the revenue of your Release evenly across all the Tracks on the Release. You will only need to make sure all Releases have the Tracks attached, and all Tracks have the Contracts attached; the Contracts can then be flushed automatically to the Releases. The Labels feature will generally only be useful for Distributors, but allows you to automatically attach Contracts to all Tracks & Releases in your catalogue with a given label value.

Further Reading

Checklist Prior to Moving on to Step 5

  • All Tracks & Releases have at least one Contract attached
  • The Sales Participation Rates work out so that the royalties are split correctly between all clients & yourself
  • The Costs Participation Rates work out so that costs are not recouped fully from all parties involved, but shared accordingly
  • When flushing Contracts from Tracks to Releases via the Pro Rata From Tracks feature, all the Releases had their Tracks attached
  • All Tracks have a Default Release specified. This is mainly important to consider for Distributors using Curve, as a royalty statement with complete Release data is often expected from their clients
  • When a Contract with a PPD term is attached to the Release, a PPD value is specified
5

Upload Your Sales

Please note; our tutorial video currently uses the Single File upload tool rather than our improved Bulk Import tool. For more information on how to use our Bulk Import tool, please read the How To Upload Sales chapter in our Getting Started Guide.

If our Bulk Upload tool does not recognise your sales file, it may be you need to create your own Template or adjust an existing Template from our Library. For more information on how to create Templates, please visit the How To Create Templates in our Getting Started Guide.

Further Reading

Checklist Prior to Moving on to Step 6

  • I have tagged all sales files with a consistent Target Period
  • All the sales have a correct combination of Channels & Configurations
  • All sales lines have a Sale & Transaction Date
  • I have dealt with Incomplete lines via adjustments & Calculations in the Template. Manually editing sales lines should be a solution of last resort
  • All sales files are brought down to zero invalid lines where possible
6

Upload Your Costs

Costs are managed under the Sales directory. This is where you can add expenses to be recouped from your artists’ royalties. Costs are created either within the application or via the cost Excel import. You can match costs against the catalogue, or directly against a contract.

Further Reading

7

Create Your Period

Now that Curve holds all of your metadata, and all of your sales & costs data, you can start creating statements. A Period allows you to select which Contracts to create a statement for, and which sales and costs to include in the royalty calculation.
When creating your first Period, you may consider doing a parallel run with your previous royalty accounting setup. In this parallel run, you can create statements for the latest accounting period on both Curve and your current setup. Comparing the results of these parallel runs often proves to be an effective way to flag any discrepancies that crept in during the onboarding process.
Once you are satisfied with your final Period, a Curve Client Manager will perform a Healthcheck. Here we will go through your setup, dig for any common mistakes & give feedback on how to make your royalty data as accurate & complete as possible for you & your clients. This will allow you to make final changes prior to sending out your first statements via the Curve platform.

Further Reading

8

Deliver Your Statements

Curve allows you to deliver the statements to your beneficiaries via the platform. When creating a User, you can grand people access to their own artist portal, where they can view their statements & access their data.

Further Reading

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