Bookkeeping for artists and musicians

What the books involve

• Gig and performance fees: invoices to venues, festivals and event organisers matched to their payments, with cash takings and door splits recorded against the show they came from.
• Royalty statements from collecting societies, publishers and music distributors entered line by line, so streaming, broadcast and performance income can be read separately from the fees each payer keeps.
• Artwork sales and commissions: gallery consignment statements reconciled, with the gallery's commission recorded as a cost, and commissioned pieces invoiced with any deposit set against the final amount.
• Merchandise and online sales: shirts, records and prints sold at shows or online matched to payouts from the payment platforms, with stock orders entered as bills.
• Project grants: grant payments recorded in an account of their own and spending on the funded project coded to it, so money received and money spent can be compared.
• Production and touring costs: studio time, mixing, printing, framing, materials and travel entered against each release, exhibition or tour, which shows what every project cost to make.