Advances and recoupment

Project Mode is for deals where you paid the creator up front. Until that advance is earned back, the royalty is reduced or suspended; after it, the full rate applies.

The settings

• Advance amount. The pot to be recouped.
• Mode. Reduced pays a lower rate while the advance is outstanding. Zero pays nothing at all while it is outstanding.
• Pre-recoup rate. The rate used before the threshold, in reduced mode. Ignored in zero mode, where the pre-recoup rate is always nought.
• Post-recoup rate. The rate used once the advance is recouped.

Project Mode is set on the agreement, so the whole deal recoups one advance, and a rule can override the mode and the two rates if one format earns back at a different rate than another.

What recoups

The basis, not the royalty. A sale with a basis of $40 moves the advance $40 closer to being recouped, whatever rate is being paid on it. That matches how advances are normally written: they recoup against the revenue the deal produces, not against the creator’s cut of it.

A sale that straddles the threshold

The app does not round a sale to one side of the line. If $12 of an advance is outstanding and a sale has a basis of $50, the basis is split: $12 earns at the pre-recoup rate and the remaining $38 earns at the post-recoup rate. That produces two ledger rows for the line, one marked pre and one marked post, whose gross and net amounts are apportioned in the same proportion so they still sum to the line.

The advance is then credited by the pre portion, capped so it can never be recouped past its own amount.

Shared advance pools

Real deals often pay one advance against several formats: a print rule and a digital rule both earning back the same money. An advance pool is that single pot. Each rule keeps its own pre and post rates, but they all read and move the same balance, so the threshold flips for all of them at the same moment and the pot cannot be over-recouped by two sales landing at once.

Refunds

A refund of a sale that recouped part of an advance releases that recoup again, floored at zero. The advance goes back to being outstanding to that extent, which is the honest answer: the revenue that earned it back did not happen.

Historical imports

The two history tools read the advance balance but never move it. A historical order pull applies the right pre or post rate for each replayed order against the balance you seeded, and leaves the balance where it is. Recoup progress is something you set from your own records, not something an import rewrites.

Limits

The number of Project Mode configurations you can run at once is capped by plan. See the App Store listing for the current limits.