A knowledge base for tenants running royalty operations on CleaRoyalty and creators receiving statements through it. We'll grow this as questions come in. Anything missing, send it to contact@clearoyalty.com and we'll add it.
If you're the business paying creators, these are the questions that come up most often as you set up and operate the platform.
The contract wizard walks you through eight questions about your deal: revenue base, deductions, royalty rate, recoupment, holdback, payment terms, objection window, and recipient splits. Answer once, the system builds the formula, and that frozen formula runs every period that contract applies. Most tenants build a default template that covers their standard deal, then adjust per-contract for one-offs.
On the cadence you chose (monthly or quarterly), the period closes itself. CleaRoyalty pulls sales, expenses, ads, bank, and payouts from every connected source, applies each contract's formula, produces draft statements, and notifies you that there's a draft to review. Nothing ships until you approve. You walk in to a draft already prepared.
While the contractual objection window is still open, yes — corrections ship as a signed amendment that sits alongside the original. The original record stays intact forever. After the objection window closes, the period locks permanently. Locked periods can't be altered by anyone, including CleaRoyalty platform admins, by design. If a correction is genuinely required after lock (legal settlement, mutually agreed restatement, tax adjustment), you export an audit package and handle the correction outside the platform.
During onboarding, you can import up to 24 months of historical sales and expense data so past periods are accounted for from the start. Backfill is available for the first 90 days after tenant account creation and runs through a separate flow from the regular ingestion pipeline. After 90 days, all periods go through the normal flow.
In-period refunds net against gross receipts in that period — the normal sales-platform behavior. Refunds or chargebacks that surface after a period has been published are recognized as adjustments in the next open period; published periods are never retroactively restated. If a contract has a holdback reserve configured, the reserve absorbs adjustments first, and any excess flows into the carry-forward bucket.
If a late expense doc or supplementary report arrives after a period has been drafted but before publish, the engine recomputes the period and shows you the diff before anything ships. If the period is already published but still inside the objection window, the recalc produces a proposed amendment with the same diff and the same trace; you decide whether to publish it. Once locked, late items flow into the next open period.
Contracts are non-fungible once committed. If terms change, the existing contract is superseded at a period boundary and a new contract is created with the new formula. Closing balances (advance, expense debt, holdback reserves, cumulative earnings) carry forward from the old contract to the new. The old contract stays in the record forever, with a link to the contract that superseded it. The artist always knows what was true on every date.
CleaRoyalty calculates what's owed and creates payable instructions in your connected payout system (Bill.com, PayPal Payouts, Stripe Treasury, Wise, and others). The actual transfer happens between your bank account and the creator's account inside that payout system, with you approving. We're the brain, not the bank. This is a deliberate choice — the moment a platform sits between a business and its creators' paychecks, the incentives get complicated.
If you receive royalty statements through CleaRoyalty, these are the questions that come up most often.
Tap any line on your statement. It expands to show the sale that drove it, the clause in your contract that authorized it, and the split that landed. The full trace is on every figure — gross receipts, every deduction, the rate applied, the final amount. Nothing is hidden behind "trust us."
The statement still shows the math. The most common reasons: (a) the period's net receipts after expense allocations were negative or zero, (b) you have an outstanding advance balance that the period's earnings didn't cover, (c) a reserve was withheld against potential refunds and will release in a later period, or (d) recoupable expense debt from a prior period exceeded this period's earnings. Whichever applies, the lines on your statement show it.
From the artist portal: open your account settings, edit your payout method, and save. Every change is logged with a timestamp. Multiple payout methods can be on file; you flag one as default. Provider-specific details (PayPal email, bank token, mailing address) are encrypted before storage.
Yes. Every contract specifies an objection window — a period of time after a statement is published during which you can raise an objection. Objections are submitted by emailing the tenant directly (look for the contact in your statement footer). Once an objection is filed, the statement carries an "under objection" status until it resolves. If a correction is needed, the tenant publishes a signed amendment; both the original and the amendment stay in your record permanently.
The period locks permanently inside CleaRoyalty. The numbers on a locked statement can't be altered by anyone — not the tenant, not CleaRoyalty platform admins. If a correction is genuinely required after lock (legal settlement, mutually agreed restatement, tax adjustment), the tenant handles it outside the platform with a signed audit package as the evidence base. CleaRoyalty's record of a locked period is definitive and never changes.
From the artist portal: any statement (current or historical) has a download button that produces a branded PDF. Every download is logged. If a statement has been amended, you can download every version — the original always stays available.
If a tenant sells multiple products together as a bundle, the bundle's revenue is allocated to the component products using their standalone selling prices. Each component receives a share proportional to its standalone price divided by the sum of all components' standalone prices. Discounts on the bundle apply uniformly to every component. The line on your statement shows the bundle, the allocation, and the resulting share.
A negative balance usually means one of two things: (a) you have an outstanding advance against royalties that hasn't been recouped yet, or (b) refunds/chargebacks tied to a prior period exceeded that period's earnings, with the deficit carrying forward. Both are normal mechanisms in royalty deals; the balance reduces as future periods earn through it. Your statement shows the carry-forward line every period until the balance clears.
No. If multiple brands using CleaRoyalty share a parent organization, you log in once and see all your statements grouped by brand in one place. Each brand's statements remain calculated independently — there's no cross-brand netting or shared expense allocation. The portal just consolidates the view.