Settlement night: a quick checklist

Settlement is the five minutes that decide whether a show actually made money. Do it the same way every night and it stops being a guessing game. Here's a routine you can run in the venue office before you load out, so the numbers are fresh and nobody's chasing receipts a week later. For the full walkthrough of every field, see Read and settle a show.

Before you settle

Open the show and go to its Settlement tab. That tab wakes up once the show is day-of, completed, or settled — if it's greyed out, flip the status first.

• Check the deal is on the show. Guarantee, door percentage, versus, or guarantee-plus-split — whatever you advanced comes through automatically, so you're not re-keying terms from memory. If you skipped advancing, do it now: Advance a show with the venue.
• Close out the merch table. Reconcile what you sold against starting stock so the merch number is solid before it folds in. See Run the merch table.

The settlement, step by step

1. Enter the ticket tiers. Price, sold, and comps for each tier — that's what builds the gross box office. No single "gross" field to fudge; the count does the work.
2. Let the deal apply itself. ArtistHQ takes your net box office and runs the advanced deal against it automatically — guarantee, the percentage, whichever is higher, the split point. You'll see the payout and a one-line explanation of how it landed.
3. Add every deduction line by line. Venue cut, support, production, catering, commission — each gets its own row so the math is auditable later, not buried in one "fees" number.
4. Confirm the merch fold-in. This show's kiosk sales appear as their own line, split by whatever venue merch cut you set. Nothing to type.
5. Split the take-home. Your band split runs on artist payout plus merch net — the real "what did we pocket" figure. It shows each member's cut per your split rule (see Split income and pay your band).
6. Mark as Settled. This freezes the whole sheet — tiers, deductions, merch, and splits lock. Your Money reports now use this settled take-home, not the headline fee, so tour profitability reflects reality.

Close it out

Hit Export Settlement Sheet to generate a PDF or DOCX, or a secure share link for the promoter or your accountant. Assigned crew and their day rates ride along as a cost — they don't touch the band split; that's the deal's take-home only.

Settled a tricky one and not sure where a number should land? Email us at hello@artisthq.app — we'll walk through it with you.