Dealing with Suspense
What is Suspense?
Suspense is income that has been paid to a publisher, but can’t be paid out (yet). The publisher has received income for a Work that they don’t have in their system yet, or that is disputed internally (eg the writer splits are in dispute). Another scenario might be: A society could have paid income to a publisher that’s not meant for them. Some examples of this are:
- A deal term has come to an end but the societies still pay the publisher
- A deal term has not yet started but societies have already paid the publisher
- A publisher has been paid for a territory that's not included in their deal
- A publisher has been paid for a right type that's not included in their deal
- A publisher has been paid for incorrect works (eg a mix-up between two works with the same title, or a subset of works written by a writer they do represent, but only for a specific part of their catalogue)
On Curve, when you have such income that you wish to set aside, you could opt to map this income to a dummy Work or you can opt to add these income lines to your Suspense account. These lines will be given a Suspense status, which means they no longer have an invalid status but also means they will not be reported in any upcoming royalty Periods. Instead, when an income file with lines with a Suspense status is included in a Period, these lines will be available to download in a Suspense report. This report can be reuploaded to be validated and included in a future Period.
Adding income lines to Suspense
When you have income lines with an Invalid status that you wish to put into Suspense, you can go into the respective income file on Curve and use the To Suspense button. You have the option to add to Suspense just your income lines with an Invalid status, or the lines that are filtered or selected (regardless of their status).
Once income lines are added to Suspense, you are unable to remove the Suspense status from these lines. Instead, a Suspense report will be created in your Period which can be downloaded and reimported to Curve to include in one of your future Periods. If you added the income lines in your income file to Suspense in error, you could Reingest the sales file to reset the status of these lines (though please avoid doing so for income files that have been reported and delivered in statements, for reasons outlined here).
Once this income file is included in a Period, its Suspense lines become available in a Suspense report which can be downloaded and reuploaded to Curve.
How to deal with income that is yours but you are not ready to report?
An income file that had been partially reported in a previous Period (being it because the file had invalid lines or because valid lines have not successfully been reported) can be included again in your next period. Curve remembers which income lines have been reported to which Contracts and will not report these lines a second time. Instead, when this file is specifically included in your next Period, Curve will work out which income lines have not previously been reported and try to report these in your next calculation.
Important: once an income file has been reported and delivered in statements, it is important that invalid lines are only resolved through the means of Revalidating a sales file and not through Reingesting it, since Reingesting a file is like reuploading an income file from scratch and would cause the reported status of its income lines to be lost. More information about this concept can be found here.