Reporting AP1 Mechanicals to MCPS ✪
We have created a feature that enables you to deliver your AP1 Mechanical royalty obligations to MCPS in their preferred format. You can set up your AP1 mechanical royalty calculation on the MCPS Config page, available in the Settings directory. With this you can run quarterly Periods to create a statement for MCPS that includes all the necessary data in the format required. Record labels who don’t have an AP1 deal with MCPS can ignore this feature.
Reporting AP1 Mechanicals to MCPS is available to Curve Pro clients only as part of the MCPS add-on ✪
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Set up Your MCPS Configurations
To get started, go to your Settings > MCPS Config.
Overview
On the Overview tab of your MCPS Config, please complete all of the available fields.
Company MCPS ID – Your unique company ID with MCPS. MCPS will have provided this ID Code to you.
Exclude Catalogue Groups – There may be certain releases you don’t want included in your AP1 calculation. If so, add these releases to a Catalogue Group & include the group here. Leave this field blank if all your physical releases are to be included in your AP1 calculation.
International Basis – How should your international price be calculated? Set the basis as the PPD, the Gross Amount or Net Amount.
Minimum Per Unit Rate - You can set a cut-off for any sales below this per unit rate to be excluded from your AP1 calculations. Any sales that are eligible for an AP1 royalty but have a per unit rate below this number (in your home currency) will end up in the Unreported tab of your AP1 statement.
Sales To Target – Use this to target all sales to be included in your AP1 calculation. Do this in a similar fashion as you would with a regular Contract term. Likely you will only need to include your Physical sales. You will also need to differentiate between Sales, Returns & Free Goods & ensure only Sales are targeted in this area. A good solution can be to use Price Categories, but you may prefer a different solution to better match your workflow. A royalty rate does not need to be specified, as just your sales need to be reported to MCPS for which they will invoice you.
Returns To Target – Target all Returns that should be included in your AP1 mechanical royalty calculation. Alternatively, you have the option to enable the "Returns Are Negative Sales" option, which would automatically list all your targeted Sales with a negative Unit count as a Return instead.
Free Goods To Target – Target all Free Goods that should be included in your AP1 mechanical royalty calculation. Free Goods are copies that were given away for free as a promo.
Consignment To Target – Target all Consignments that should be included in your AP1 mechanical royalty calculation.
You may use a different setup & different target terms to differentiate between Sales, Returns or Free Goods. No matter what your setup is, do make sure all your sales, returns or free goods are mapped to the correct Channel, Configuration or Price Category when ingesting your sales into Curve. If you make a specific Price Cat for Returns for example, do make sure all returns are mapped to this price category in order for the AP1 calculation to use the correct source data.
Retentions
Retentions are the equivalent of a reserve. As sales are flowing through your AP1 calculation, Curve will automatically set aside a percentage of sales as a retention, per MCPS’ guidelines, to cover you for any potential returns in the future. These amounts will be logged on your Retentions tab.
Per the MCPS guidelines, Retentions are only taken on releases that have been released in the past 12 months. Please make sure the Release Date data is complete in your Release catalogue for this Retention to be taken.
The logs will detail the Release, Territory, units & in which Year & Period they are to be released to MCPS. You’ll note there are two columns to log the units; ‘Retentions’ & ‘TV Retentions’. For products that are TV advertised MCPS presumes that you will receive more returns, as you are likely shipping more stock into the Supermarkets, & so uses a higher percentage to calculate the retention units. Hence it’s differentiated here. Releases can be marked as TV Advertised on the Release’s page.
It is also possible to create retentions manually, something you’ll need to do for any outstanding retentions with MCPS when setting up your AP1 configuration on Curve. These retentions will have to be created per Release, per Territory & the Year/Period they should be released needs to be specified. The retentions held have to be specified as a positive.
Previous Negatives
In the case of the number of returns being greater than the number of sales in a certain period, Curve will store this negative closing balance as a “Previous Negative”. This Previous Negative will then be used as a starting balance in the next accounting period.
The Previous Negatives will be calculated as you run an MCPS Period. Similar to Retentions, these values will be logged on the Previous Negatives tab & will detail the release, Territory, Units & in which Year/Period they have to be used as an opening balance.
Again, it is possible to create these Previous Negatives manually, which is potentially a necessity when you have any negative starting balances with MCPS the moment you are setting up your AP1 configuration on Curve. These Previous Negatives will have to be created per Release, per Territory and specify in which Year/Period they have to be used as an opening balance. The previous negatives have to be imported as a positive, as Curve will automatically make them negative.
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Run a Period for Your MCPS AP1 License
Once you have configured your MCPS Config in Settings, you can run an AP1 statement. To do so, go to the Period page & create a new Period. Make sure to select “MCPS” as the Period Type. MCPS requires quarterly accounting, so make sure to select a quarterly Accounting Period. Most other functions, such as completing your Start/End/Accounting Date & including Sales Files still function as they would with a regular period.
Once your Period is complete, you can download the statement for MCPS via the Download button at the top right of your screen. This statement is formatted in MCPS’s AP1 template. The “Normal Shipments” tab includes your accountable sales for this Period.
MCPS requires you to run a "Calculate Totals/Validation" macro on the excel statement to make it final for submission to MCPS. The statement created by Curve does not have this macro available, so you may be required to copy the data in this statement to your own statement format provided to you by MCPS, on which you can run the macro.
