From Manual to Automated Royalty Accounting
(And Why You Should Consider Making the Switch)
In the unique accounting environment that royalty accounting presents, it made more sense to manually operate a spreadsheet. There is an obvious problem with this for music businesses - filtering a sales statement by the artist and using formulas to apply splits is extremely time-consuming.
Luckily, Reprtoir’s suite of music biz-specific software is allowing industry pros to automate their royalty accounting, saving time, money, and costs related to human error. Let’s take a closer look at what makes this such a game-changer—it all begins with a big problem being faced by the industry today.
Why is Manual Accounting Set to Disappear from Music?
The answer is very straightforward. It’s becoming too costly and overwhelming to manage. As streaming sites send over larger and larger data files, the risk of human error goes up. Let’s face it, this kind of time-consuming, tedious administrative task is either being carried out by an independent artist’s team member, if not the artist themselves.
If it’s a record label or a publishing company, then this is still becoming a massive drain on your most crucial resources: your team members. These kinds of mundane, yet accuracy-critical tasks are ideal for automation, and we are working to build the software that allows this. Obviously, the benefits here are huge–let’s examine the difference that an automated accounting system makes.
Automation Using Reprtoir's Royalty Accounting system
Our Royalty Accounting solution was created to automate your accounting. Through its ability to take on statements that are sent from the digital platforms that broadcast music. First of all, this software is compatible with a very long list of digital broadcasters. Find out which music services we are interfaced with, and if we’re missing one, let us know so we can add it for you!
Automating the tedious, previously spreadsheet-dependent tasks is quite easy, and allows users to take advantage of the other features. Teams can create both incoming and outgoing contracts that contain automatic royalty-sharing percentages.
These can be applied to digital and physical licensing, as well as applied to mechanical, performance, and sync licensing. It eliminates work, and vastly reduces the chances of human error. That is actually very important to recognize.
Humans make mistakes. We always have and we always will, but the problem for manual accounting in regards to music royalties is the capacity it has to damage relationships. In other words—music has always been an industry tied to strong emotions, and when mistakes are made, they have the potential to cause massive rifts which can damage businesses and their reputations.
This is possibly the strongest argument for automating royalty management, however, it is an extreme circumstance. Still, Royalties Manager packs many features that are felt in day-to-day operations.
With licensing and royalty-splits automated, team members will find themselves with more time for other tasks. That doesn’t mean that accounting is not on the schedule—it just looks a little different, more streamlined, efficient, and effective.
That’s because team members are now freed up to view analytics that Royalties Manager provides. Automating the software allows you to reutilize your valuable and all-too-often very limited resources to analyze trends at a higher level to make better-informed decisions.
Through tracking your catalog's performance in what amounts to microscopic or macroscopic detail, your music business is gaining a competitive edge that is vital. The music industry is evolving and viable, but it has always been competitive and every bit of information that you can use to help your organization succeed is important to get.
Essentially you are freeing yourself or your team of a tedious, manual task. This kind of data entry truly amounts to accounting labor work. By empowering yourself or your team with tools to operate at a higher level you are making the right moves to set your music business up for success.
How Reprtoir Functionally Achieves Transparency
When you’re dealing with royalty splits and shared assets, transparency is crucial. This has always been something that has been a struggle for music businesses, and mishandling or mistakes combined with a lack of transparency leads to mistrust.
To that end, Reprtoir is working to help its own customers to be more transparent without sacrificing security or even usability. The key to this is the Rights-Holders Portal. This is a portal that allows your rights holders (yes, as the name implies) to track all of the information related to their works.
That means you’re enabling the artists and team members, collaborators, and anybody else who might be on the contract to view vital information to which they are entitled. Anybody can see their payments, where they are coming from, and when they will receive them. This kind of transparency is vital to maintaining positive long-term business relationships.
The kind of thought that went into this solution is a fantastic example of what you can expect from the rest of the suite as well. It’s just one of a whole range of software solutions Reprtoir has tailored to music industry challenges.
