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Royalty Producer and OFFICER CBS Update to version 6.2 available

We worked hard for the last couple of months to bring in dozens of ameliorations to our royalty systems. We present all details of our new version 6.2 of Royalty Producer and OFFICER CBS on this page. This is a paid update for all users. Please contact OFFICER support for more details.

The main changes affect these subsystems:

• introduction of “saved” imports: users can now import digital sales reports, set the field order (import order) just once and then let the system remember the import order in the future. This feature is available for up to 5 different sales report formats.
• support for Withholding Tax (WHT) processing for digital sales. Withheld tax can be set up per country and per licensee (download store). A new, general WHT report is available for all download sales, as well as WHT reporting and deducting on royalty statements
• all royalty systems now include support for US mechanicals. Due to the world wide situation regarding download sales in the US, record labels may be forced to calculate and distribute mechanicals to US publishing right holders. While european collecting societies claim to be in charge for collecting and redistributing mechanicals for US download sales, the situation is much more complex in our view.
• Royalty Producer and OFFICER CBS are now “Transporter Ready”. With our new tool, Transporter, royalty statements can be automatically send via email in PDF and Excel format. Transporter can be purchased separately.

• general bug fixing and improvement of user workflow in several modules

Introduction of saved imports

With version 6.2 of our royalty systems, we extend the import possibilities for downloads sales in a substantial way. Users were already able to import any kind of sales report, as the import system allows to rearrange and assign columns from the file to import to the fields in our solutions:

We extended this function by allowing user to set the importer order once for up to 5 different sales report types (formats) and letting the system remember the import structure in the future. We call this function “custom imports” and you can set up the names for each import in the system preferences:

The new, custom imports can be assigned to existing licensees (download store) via the known popup menu:

Support for withholding tax (WHT)

Several countries withhold taxes for digital download sales. For instance, Apple’s iTunes service automatically deducts from your income and pays withheld tax to the governments of the UK, US, Japan, New Zealand and Australia. As our royalty systems allow for the adaptation of the real income, versus the reported sales in the royalty journal, all royalty calculations were already correct, as you only payed royalties based on real income. The newly added support for WHT aims at the possibility to claim back taxes from governments, depending on your or your licensor’s residence. Please understand, that it is not necessary to activate the WHT options in our software for royalty calculation reasons. It just enables you to know about withheld taxes and to eventually claim back taxes, or, if displayed on royalty statements, to enable your licensors to do so.

Setting Up Countries that withhold taxes
You can open a country in the preferences (Territories) to switch on the withheld tax option and to enter the tax rate:


Next, open a licensee (download store) and select the countries, where tax is withheld. Please note that this depends on the download store, so please make sure you know exactly from which download store/aggregator you receive sales reports that include deducted amounts, because of withheld taxes. Click on the link “Edit Countries For Withheld Tax” to open the country setup for a particular licensee and select the countries where the licensee is withholding taxes:


Running a withheld tax report (WHT report)
Without further interaction you can now run a WHT report in the Reporting (Royalty Producer) or Monitoring (OFFICER CBS) tools. You can filter the data as you are used to (date range, selected labels, releases, etc.) Click on the WHT report button to create the report. The report will be shown and can then be printed or exported

Showing withheld tax on royalty statements
You can show the withheld tax for every statement line on a royalty statement, as additional information. The tax amount is always shown in the original currency, as the main aim of the WHT functions is to claim back withheld taxes from certain countries. The WHT info is added to the territory information on a statement:

You can activate the WHT functions for royalty statements in the “Advanced Statement Options” for every licensor:

The additional “Deduct Withheld Tax” option is not recommended for the typical user, as most of our customers already enter their real income for every royalty journal to reflect all possible deductions for an original sales report: exchange rate, bank fees and possible tax withholding. So please understand, that when you activate this option, you should then enter the amount incl. withheld taxes as the real income for the concerned royalty journal. Feel free to ask us for more assistance on this matter.
For each royalty statement that is displaying withheld taxes, a separate WHT report can be printed on a per statement level. The report shows all items with withheld tax, sorted by distributor, country and currency, so that it can be used by a licensor for eventual tax claims.

Support for US Mechanicals

The US Mechanicals option is now available to all users, even the european labels. The legal situation is tricky and we have encountered the first cases, where US publishers are seeking mechanical compensation for US download sales of EU companies, even when the EU companies are paying a flat fee to their collecting society in Europe. We checked the iTunes contracts and these contracts clearly state, that the label is in charge when it comes to paying mechanical rights holders in the US. Please check your legal situation carefully. We can not provide legal assistance concerning this problem. We just added the ability to enter US Mechanical right holders, their share and the mechanical rate per track, so that you are enabled to generate US Mechnical reports to US rights holders. You can activate this new option in the Prefences:

The US mechanicals module is prepared to handle physical and digital mechanicals. The reports can be addressed to collecting societies like Harry Fox or directly to authors and publishers. Beside the statutory rate that can be easily changed in the preferences, every song can emit a special rate, depending on your deals. Mechanical rates can be capped if induced by the sale of full product (physical or digital). The included export features will make your partners really happy as they can easily post-process your statements. The resulting reports include all song information that is needed to identify each line, as well as the source of the underlying sale, e.g. the download store that sold an MP3.

All products are now “Transporter Ready”

With the introduction of our new Transporter tool, user of our systems can now automatically create and email statements in PDF and Excel format. This add-on tool is a standalone software that handles the generation of PDFs and/or Excel sheets of your royalty statements from Royalty Producer and OFFICER CBS. The emails can be send out by Transporter itself (integrated email engine) our via your standard email client. Our legacy software solutions are now “Transporter ready”. You can set up the options for email generation in the advanced statement options for a licensor:

The royalty statements module now offers support to select and filter statements easily for further processing in transporter. You can mark/unmark any set of found statements and export all necessary data with one button click on the “Export Marked To Transporter”.

Screenshot for the mark/unmark and export options from Royalty Producer:



Read more about our new Transporter Tool here. Special Offer: Please note that we give away the Royalty Producer / OFFICER CBS update 6.2 for free, when you purchase a copy Transporter.

General bug fixes and ameliorations

Here is a list of the most prominent changes in our new version 6.2 (RP=Royalty Producer, CBS=OFFICER CBS):

• RP/CBS: MetaData Import from iTunes Producer works with the latest iTP version.

• RP/CBS: Sales import from iTunes has been enhanced. Apple’s “Product Type Identifier” is now imported into our “Content Type” field, so you now can identify different content types and treat them differently for the royalty calculations, when needed. here is a

• RP/CBS: The automatic detection of Ringtones (Product Type Identifier: “R”) in iTunes sales for US mechanical reporting has been extended by the new type “Precut Ringtone” (Product Type Identifier: “PR”)

• RP/CBS: Compression: A new Auto Compression Feature allows the automatic compression of  single songs slaes (e.g. streams) if the unit price is below a threshold that you can set up manually in the Preferences. Please understand the difference of this function to the already exisiting "Implode sales" function. The exisiting function can only work on identified download formats (as set up in the preferences).

• RP/CBS: When selecting a bundle/sublicense in the main screen, you can jump to the original position in the list by clicking the “Show In List” link, even after opening a bundle or track.

• RP/CBS: Expenses can now be imported into a Expense Royalty Journal. The Expense Type can be imported. too (the imported text info must be the same as in the System Settings). Additionally, the country of the expense and the expense type can be set automatically for all entries of the import.

• RP/CBS: Corrected an error when generating a label copy for a release/product. When the number  of songs in a playlist exceeded 10 songs, the order was not shown correctly.

• RP/CBS: The number of contracts attached to a song now show up correctly in the playlist of a product

• RP: Added the possiblity to search for tracks without contracts in the track library

• RP: Added the possibibility to copy an ISRC (previously, one could only paste the ISRC)

• RP/CBS: The "Assign Contracts" screen in the track module has been extended. Previously, a user had to select a licensor from a popup menu first, then all contracts for this licensor where shown
for selection. You can now search for a licensor name and then select the licensor from a reduced list. This comes handy for companies with a lot of licensors. Here is a screen shot of the new “Assign Contracts” layout:


• RP/CBS: This one is for record labels that have to deal with major companies. A new function now allows  to identify price types (e.g. budget, low budget, etc.) in sales reports, based on codes or other textual
 information. The corresponding deduction can then be applied, based on the contract information.  Previously price types could only be calculated by the system, when comparing a defined high price
 to the imported price (e.g. low budget if sales price was less than 70% of the hig price, as defined in the product)

• RP/CBS: Enhanced display of royalty statements with profit split calculations. Previously, the total of all income was displayed, next eventual advance payments and ultimately the total to pay. An intermediate summary step (sub Total) was now added after the income and advance totals, so a possible amount of 0 royalties to pay is now better understandable.

• RP: Added the possibility to add manual entries to a royalty statement total. These entries are only visible on the Cover Sheet. They do not affect any successive statement generation in the future. Here is a screenshot of the new entry fields:


• RP/CBS: Enhanced the export possibilities for statement lists. You can now choose if you want to export a list of all statements (main info and totals) or a table with all statement lines of the currently found set of statements. The latter function was requested by a customer for accounting reasons. You can use the “Export” button as before, the kind of export can be chosen in the following dialogs.

• CBS: Enhanced address import. You can now import licensors and automatically add new contracts, based on a template.

• RP/CBS: US Mechanicals: Added the possibility to set a rate share for statutory rates. Previously, a special rate share (beside 100%) was only available for “special rates” setups. This addition allows you todepict a deal like: “We are paying you 90% of the current statutory rate”. The statutory rate is held centrally, in the system preferences.