Royalties & settlement
The settlement engine
Collecting the revenue is the easy half. The hard half is proving, eleven months later, that what you paid a partner was what you owed them — at the rate that was in force then, on the basis that was agreed, converted at the rate that actually applied.
A worked example. It shows a period closing end to end: ingestion, revenue share, variance, invoice, payment run and reconciliation. No partner has been onboarded and no period has been closed on this platform yet, so these are illustrative figures showing the shape of the output — not live data. The channel, view and claim counts elsewhere on this site are real.
- Period lines
- 90
- Partner payable
- $643,662
- Flagged lines
- 43
- Rate rows locked
- 35/42
- Advances outstanding
- $180,852
August 2026 close
before advance recoupment
negative variance beyond $10
against settled periods
6 entities holding
An illustrative August 2026 close, showing what the engine produces and in what order. Once a partner is onboarded these become that partner’s figures.
Revenue share
One rule, applied in one order, shown every time
Most disputes are not about the rate. They are about which rate, and in what order the adjustments were applied.
final % = (channel % if set, else partner %) + incentive % − management fee %
- 1
Channel rate supersedes partner rate
A partner has a contracted rate across their estate. Where a specific channel carries its own rate, that rate wins — the partner rate is not averaged in, it is superseded.
- 2
The incentive is added on threshold
Slabs are tested on the partner’s whole month, not per channel. Testing per channel would split one slab across an estate and hand the same partner two different rates in the same month. A slab ceiling is a real bound: above it, the incentive stops applying.
- 3
The management fee is deducted last
Internally managed channels carry a management fee, taken off after the incentive rather than before, so the fee is charged on the agreed share and not on the bonus.
Revenue share · Lifestyle Lane
August 2026The share resolves to 72.00%, but Divo TV carries an unrecouped advance. The month recoups $6,656.59 against the balance and the payout is held at zero — held in full, never reduced to a part payment.
Immutability
Rates lock forward. A settled period cannot be rewritten
A rate change applies from its effective date onwards and never backwards. Once a period is settled, the rates that produced it are frozen with it.
- 35 of 42 rate rows are currently locked. An attempt to edit one is refused with the period that locked it, not silently ignored.
- Correcting a locked rate means superseding it from a future effective date, which leaves both rows in the record — the one that paid, and the one that will.
- Contract addenda work the same way: an addendum rewrites the term from its own effective date forward, and the base contract stays legible underneath it.
- The resolution components — base, incentive, fee, final — are stored on the line, so a settled invoice reproduces itself without re-running today’s rules against yesterday’s revenue.
Period ledger
6 periods- August 2026Open — rates editable
- July 2026Settled — rate-locked
- June 2026Settled — rate-locked
- May 2026Settled — rate-locked
- April 2026Settled — rate-locked
- March 2026Settled — rate-locked
Ingestion · August 2026
4 sources- YouTube CMSMerged
176,884 of 177,040 rows accepted · 156 unmapped
- YouTube Studio APIVerifying
170,504 of 170,504 rows accepted
- OTT DistributorNeeds Review
63,577 of 63,643 rows accepted · 66 unmapped
- DSP DirectQueued
174,156 of 174,250 rows accepted · 94 unmapped
A job carrying identifiers that map to no channel or entity cannot merge. The unmapped keys are listed and must be resolved first.
Basis and variance
Two sources disagree, so the platform says which one paid
The Studio API and the CMS report different numbers for the same month. Pretending otherwise is how a reconciliation becomes an argument.
- The default payable basis is the Studio API figure. Operations can override to CMS per partner — 9 of 90 lines are on the CMS basis this period, and each line states which basis paid it.
- Every line carries both figures and the variance between them. A negative variance beyond $10 is flagged for review: 43 lines this period.
- Ingestion runs from four sources a period — YouTube CMS, the Studio API, OTT distributors and DSP direct. Rows whose identifiers do not map block the merge instead of becoming somebody else’s revenue.
- Period close is blocked until the mandatory checks clear, so a period cannot be settled with an unresolved ingestion behind it.
The two things that quietly break a payout
Advances and currency
Both are simple rules that go wrong the same way: applied inconsistently, they produce a number nobody can explain.
An advance holds the payout at zero
While an advance is unrecouped the monthly payout is zero — held in full, not reduced to a part payment. The month’s earnings recoup against the balance, and the balance is shown wherever the payout is shown, so nobody has to ask why the number is zero.
Advances outstanding
6 entitiesTwo rates per period, and the platform labels which is in use
The incoming rate values revenue as reported. The outgoing rate — a weighted average of what the payment actually cost — prices the payout. They differ, and the difference is not an error to be smoothed away. August 2026 is fixed at 88.59 in and 88.09 out.
USD → INR by period
RBI reference rate| Period | Incoming | Outgoing | Fixed |
|---|---|---|---|
| August 2026 | 88.59 | 88.09 | 28 Aug 2026 |
| July 2026 | 87.95 | 87.72 | 28 Jul 2026 |
| June 2026 | 87.60 | 87.72 | 28 Jun 2026 |
| May 2026 | 87.39 | 87.09 | 28 May 2026 |
| April 2026 | 87.07 | 87.06 | 28 Apr 2026 |
| March 2026 | 86.56 | 86.30 | 28 Mar 2026 |
Approval
Finance reviews. Then the CEO signs. Neither can be skipped
An invoice is one partner, one period. It carries the share, the incentive, the management fee, the advance recouped, TDS and GST, and it moves through two approvals in a fixed order.
- 1
Generated at close
One invoice per partner per period, built from the closed lines rather than re-computed, so the invoice and the period agree by construction.
- 2
Finance review
Finance approves, rejects with a reason, or puts the invoice on hold. A held invoice stays visible in the period rather than dropping out of the totals.
- 3
CEO signature
The second stage cannot be reached before the first is cleared, and cannot be bypassed for urgency. Both stages record the approver, the timestamp and the comment.
- 4
Into a payment run
Only approved invoices enter a run. Everything else is still sitting in a queue that names who it is waiting on.
Invoice queue
40 invoicesA contract can direct part of a payout to a second entity. Both legs are shown on the invoice — the payee and the split payee — rather than one net figure.
Payment runs
2 runs- August 2026 · 12 invoicesDraft
₹1,74,03,699 · scheduled 02 Sept 2026 · bank file not yet generated
- July 2026 · 18 invoicesExecuted
₹3,46,06,868 · scheduled 03 Aug 2026 · payout_2026-07.txt
Returning payments
18 recordsPayment and reconciliation
A bank file out, a UTR back, matched to the invoice that caused it
Approved invoices are batched into a run. The run generates the bank file; the bank returns UTRs; the platform matches them and classifies whatever does not match.
- A run holds only approved invoices, and states its total in INR at the outgoing rate before the file is generated.
- Returning payments are classified as matched, partial, duplicate, over-payment or unmatched — 8 of 18 are currently anything other than matched.
- A partial failure inside a run is reported at the record level, so one failed transfer does not invalidate the batch.
- Ad-hoc money — advances, reimbursements, bonuses, corrections — is raised against an entity with a document reference and goes through Finance in the same way.
- Paid invoices carry the UTR and the payment date, so the invoice, the run and the bank record all point at each other.
- The period total, the invoice total and the run total are derived from the same lines, not typed in three places.
What an auditor gets
Every payable line answers the same six questions
On what revenue?
Gross for the period, with the source and the basis that produced it, and the opposing figure alongside.
At what rate?
Base, incentive and management fee as separate components, resolving to a final percentage — 70.00% on the first line of this period.
Under which agreement?
The contract or addendum in force on the effective date, with the rate row that was locked when the period settled.
In which currency?
Valued at the incoming rate, paid at the outgoing rate, both fixed for the period and stated on the line.
Approved by whom?
The Finance approver and the CEO, each with a timestamp and any comment left at that stage.
Paid how?
The run, the bank file, the UTR and the reconciliation state of the payment that came back.
August 2026 is open; July 2026 and earlier are settled. Revenue is reported at T-15 throughout.
Open the settlement back office
Period close, variance, contracts, rate rows, FX, invoices, payment runs and reconciliation — all live with the platform's own August data.