Pre-Allocations are a way to automatically set your preferred allocation for a royalty. However, in some cases you may have created deals with third parties based on the store, territory, or method of sale.
For this purpose, we created the concept of 'Splits'. Splits are a way to set an alternate set of pre-allocations for a track that will be used when a royalty matches a certain set of criteria - so for example you may decide that you want all royalties from downloads sold by iTunes in the USA should be kept by the label, or that a portion of all ringtone sales need to be allocated to a third party.
The first step to using splits is to create the split criteria. Head to the 'Splits' page and add a new Split. Then specify which media type, territory and store you wish to set. If the store that you wish to add is not listed or is spelled differently in your royalty statements, then you can add your own custom store names towards the bottom of the page.
The Split can then be saved and used for any track that you wish.
Next, head to the accounts section for the track you wish to set the Split for and edit the Pre-Allocations (if the track has been distributed make sure you click the warning to allow editing). Select the Split you wish to add from the dropdown towards the top of the page and click 'Add Split'. You will then have the option to set the Pre-Allocations for the selected Split in addition to viewing stats for the Royalties allocated according to that Split.
When it reads in a royalty statement, Label Engine will try to group royalties together by track, and so each royalty that you see in the statement may contain more than one actual royalties. You can view this information by editing each Royalty. If this is the case, when applying a Split Label Engine may need to divide a Royalty into multiple Royalties. For this reason, if you wish to apply multiple Splits to a track then the ordering of them becomes important. Let's say you have two Splits to be applied:
Beatport Split: All Territories, Beatport Only, All Media Types
Australia Split: Australia Only, All Stores, All Media Types
Your Royalty contains for example:
1. Austalia Beatport Download $2.49
2. Australia Itunes Download $5.98
3. USA Itunes Download $3.45
Applying the Beatport Split first would allocate Royalty 1 using the Beatport Split, Royalty 2 using the Australia Split and Royalty 3 using your default allocations.
Applying the Australia Split first would allocate Royalty 1 AND 2 using the Australia Split and Royalty 3 using your default allocations.
As you can see, Splits are complicated but fortunately most accounting customers will not need to use them. If you need help creating Splits for a track, please feel free to contact us.