Statements in a spreadsheet: where it gets hard
If you do your statements in Excel, Google Sheets or Numbers, you know the routine: twice a year, copy the reports, dig out the contracts, carry the balances over. A spreadsheet has real strengths. Here, plainly, is where it costs you time and invites mistakes, and what Labelmate changes.
The starting point
What goes into a statement
A royalty statement tells an artist what their music earned over a period, what the label recouped from their advance, and what they are still owed. In France, as soon as a contract pays the artist according to revenue, article L. 212-15 of the Intellectual Property Code requires the producer to report to the artist every six months on how their pay was calculated, explicitly and transparently.
The basic calculation fits in one sentence. Start from the net receipts, meaning what the label actually received after the distributor's cut, apply the rate set in the contract, then deduct what is left to recoup on the advance: the money paid to the artist before their music earned anything, taken back later out of their royalties.
In a spreadsheet, that calculation becomes a routine: a statement template, a tab per distributor report, a file per artist, and formulas tying it all together. As long as nothing moves, it works.
To be fair
What a spreadsheet does well
The spreadsheet is not the problem. It has real strengths, and it makes sense that you started with it.
Everyone knows how to use it
Filtering a column, adding up a total, printing a page: your team already knows how. Nobody needs training, and the file opens almost anywhere.
It adapts to anything
An unusual contract, a one-off cost, a rule negotiated separately: you add a column and carry on. That flexibility is its great strength.
Everything is in plain sight
Every figure sits in a cell, every formula can be read. Nothing is hidden, and you can redo a calculation by hand to check it.
You already have it
No extra tool to install or learn. For one or two artists, it is often enough.
First pitfall
Copying reports, copying formulas
Each distributor sends its report: the file that says what each track earned, by platform, by country and by month. It can run to thousands of rows, and each distributor has its own columns, its own headings, sometimes one file per month. To get it into your template, you copy, paste and put the columns back in order.
Then come the formulas. A formula dragged one row short, a reference that shifts when a column is inserted, a filter left on: the spreadsheet calculates anyway, because it cannot know what you meant to do. The mistake shows up later, when an artist or their manager asks a question.
The next half-year, it all starts again with new reports. And every copy is one more chance to get it wrong.
- A different format for each distributor
- Rows to copy and paste every six months
- Mistakes that do not show
Example
The figure copied by hand
An advance is not always recouped in a single statement. What is left to recoup at the end of one half-year becomes the starting point of the next. In a spreadsheet, that figure is carried from one file to the next by hand: one typo, and every statement after it is wrong.
| For one artist | First half | Second half |
|---|---|---|
| Net receipts from the report | €12,000.00 | €20,000.00 |
| Artist's royalties (18%) | €2,160.00 | €3,600.00 |
| Left to recoup on the advance | €5,000.00 | €2,840.00 |
| Recouped this period | €2,160.00 | €2,840.00 |
| Still to recoup | €2,840.00 | €0.00 |
| Payable to the artist | €0.00 | €760.00 |
A made-up example: an 18% rate on net receipts and a €5,000 advance. The €2,840 still to recoup at the end of the first half is the figure to carry over to the next statement.
Second pitfall
The invoice that came too late, the contract to reread
A recoupable cost is an expense the label pays for an artist, such as mastering or a video, that the contract lets it take back out of their royalties. You still need the invoice in time. When it arrives after the half-year is closed, it gets forgotten, or added to a period already sent to the artist.
Contracts raise the same problem. For every statement, someone reopens the PDF to check a rate, the size of an advance, what can be recouped and what cannot. The contract sits somewhere in the inbox, and an amendment, meaning a change signed later, sometimes changes the rule.
None of this is hard. It is time, twice a year, and just as many chances to get something wrong.
- Invoices to dig out one by one
- Rates and advances reread for every statement
- Amendments filed away from the contract
Third pitfall
A file per artist, and several versions of each
When the work is spread across files, consistency is what gets lost.
A file per artist
The template is duplicated for every artist. A fix made in one file has to be made again in all the others, and missing one is enough.
Three versions of the same statement
“statement_final”, “statement_final_v2”, a copy sent by email, another in a shared folder: which one is right?
Who changed what?
A corrected rate, a deleted row: once the file travels as several copies, nobody knows any more who changed what, when, or why.
Only one person finds their way
Sometimes only one person really understands the file. When they are away, the statements wait.
Questions before you switch
Do I have to give up my spreadsheet?
No. Keep it for the rest of your admin. Labelmate only handles your royalty statements: the reports, the contracts, the recoupable costs and the calculation.
Can I bring my current file over?
No: Labelmate does not read your statement template. You import your distributors' reports as they arrive, and each contract is entered once, or proposed by the AI from the signed document. During early access, we prepare your next statements with you and check every figure by hand.
Does it work with my distributor?
Yes, if it gives you a report in CSV, Excel or ZIP. Each distributor's format is described once: during early access, we set yours up with you, from one of your real reports.
What if several of us work on it?
Everyone works on their own computer, and each of the label's computers keeps an encrypted, synced copy of the same database: there is no file to send around any more. A new computer joins the label with a twelve-word invitation. Labelmate keeps a signed record of every change, but has no screen to browse it yet: what it shows you is where every figure comes from.
With Labelmate
The same half-year, with nothing to copy
Labelmate takes on each of these pitfalls, in the order they come up. You approve what goes into the calculation, and the calculation is never handed to the AI.
- 1
Reports come in as they are
Labelmate spots distributor reports in the label's mailbox, which it reads without moving or deleting anything, or you drop the file in yourself. CSV, Excel or ZIP, exactly as the distributor sent it. Labelmate checks that the rows match the report's total and flags a file already imported.
- 2
Each contract is read once
If you turn the AI on, it reads the contract and proposes the rate and the advance, each with the exact passage it comes from. You accept, the contract form opens already filled in, you check it and save. Without the AI, you enter those terms yourself, just once. From then on, every statement uses them.
- 3
Invoices become recoupable costs
With the AI, invoices found in your email are proposed as recoupable costs; without it, you add a cost in a few fields. A late invoice, dated in a period already issued, counts on the next statement instead of being lost, and keeps its real date.
- 4
The engine does the maths
Rates, advances, recoupable costs, carried balances: a tested engine does the maths, never the AI, and gives the same result every time. What is left to recoup moves from one period to the next without anyone copying it, and every figure points to the report row it came from.
- 5
You issue the statements
One PDF per artist, with the line-by-line detail and the reports behind it, archived as PDF/A with the calculation's data attached. Once issued, the period is locked: its figures never change. The payment then leaves from your bank, as it does today.
Read next
All resources
MethodAdvances and recoupment
How an advance and costs are recouped from an artist's royalties, statement after statement, with a worked example.
Read
MethodReading a distributor report
What each line of your distributor's sales report says, and what to check before you turn it into statements.
Read
MethodThe end-of-period checklist
Ten steps to close a six-month period, from distributor reports to the archive, by hand or with Labelmate.
Read
Your next statements, without spreadsheets.
Free early access for 10 independent labels.
Photos Kampus Production, RDNE Stock project, Kaboompics, Zulfugar Karimov on Pexels.