Getting Started: The Onboarding Process & Demo Files
In this guide, we will walk you through the entire platform in the order that will make the most sense for you to onboard your data and create your statements.
The Onboarding Process
To onboard your business & create your first statements, there are eight steps you will need to walk through. Every step in the process builds onto the next one, so it’s important to following this order so you don’t waste your time putting the cart before the horse!
- Customise your Client’s Settings – Here you configure your client & specify the building blocks for your data. More info
- Create a Payee for every songwriter – Each Payee represents a statement beneficiary. By creating a Payee, you essentially create an artist portal. More info
- Create a Contract for every songwriter – Here you define your songwriters deals and their terms. Each songwriter will need their own Contract, and each Contract will be mapped to a Payee. More info
- Add your Catalogue – This is where you build your Works, Composers & Publishers. Each Work is associated with one or many contracts, so you will need your Contracts in place in order to complete this step. More info
- Import your Income data – When dropping your statements onto our Income page, Curve will instantly recognise, import & map down your sales data. Our Templates handle hundreds of different statement formats from an equal amount of sources. More info
- Run your Period & Create Statements – After all of your income and costs are ready, you can now pull it all together as part of a Period & create your Statements. More info
- Give songwriters access to their portal – When creating Users, your songwriters will instantly receive an invitation to the Curve platform & gain access to their royalty statements. More info
Onboarding Metadata via Excel
In step 2 to 4; adding your Payees, Contracts and Catalogue via Curve’s user interface is one way of doing so. But more efficiently for large datasets, you can import data using the available Excel templates. For the best user experience, we advise using Microsoft Excel rather than alternatives.
At the top right of every Payee, Contract and Catalogue page in Curve you will see an Import & Export button. Using the Import button will allow you to upload large sets of data at once using our Excel templates. Using the Export button will again export this data in our Excel format, ready for you to make changes to and reimport. The green ‘Download Template’ button will provide you with a blank template.
There is a different template depending on which page of Curve you are looking to set up. To import metadata in bulk, the concept is simple and the same for each import template. Simply fill in the columns as specified in the column headers, save your file, and upload it to Curve using the Import button at the top right of your screen. The system will import the file in the background & send you a notification once complete.
If an Excel template looks daunting at first, try building a complex example using the web interface. Then export these examples to Excel, so that you can replicate the structure for other similar examples for your business. Curve uses exactly the same excel structures to both export & import data.
More info
Take a Look at Our Demo Data
Sometimes the best way to learn is to learn from example. That's why we have a "Demo Mode" on Curve. Simply enabling this mode, you will view a client which has pre-populated data for you to look at as a reference. Whilst in demo mode you will be unable to save any changes.
Simply turning off "Demo Mode" will bring you back to your own client, where you can add, update and process information as usual again.
Now, let’s get started. Please follow us to step 1 of using Curve:
configuring your Settings.