This article is part of our Complete Guide to Royalty Management.
You just wrapped up a royalty run. Every rights holder’s statement of account has been calculated, advances have been deducted, and the bills are sitting there ready to go. Now comes the part that makes most publishers groan: getting those numbers into your accounting software. If you are still typing each bill into Xero or QuickBooks by hand, you are doing unnecessary work and introducing errors along the way.
The better approach is a royalty bills CSV export. One download, one import, and every bill lands in your accounting software exactly as calculated. Here is how the entire flow works from start to finish.
What happens after a royalty run completes
A royalty run does the heavy lifting of allocating sales to the correct rights holders based on their contract terms. Once the allocation step is done, you create the bills. One bill is generated per rights holder, and each bill represents the net total across all of that rights holder’s statements of account.
The bill factors in everything: royalty earnings, advances being recouped, adjustments, and any residual balance carried over from previous runs. By the time a bill is created, it reflects the actual amount you owe that rights holder for the period. There is nothing left to calculate manually.
Downloading your bills as CSV
Once bills are created, exporting them takes about 30 seconds:
- Go to Royalty Runs in the main menu.
- Click the name of the royalty run you just completed.
- Open the Bills tab.
- Click Download All Bills.
- In the pop-up, choose your options and click Download.
The CSV file contains one row per bill, which means one row per rights holder. Each row includes the rights holder’s contact name, the bill amount, and the relevant reference details tying it back to the royalty run.
Before downloading, you will see a few options in the pop-up form. For example, rights holders with a payment status of “paused” are excluded from the CSV by default. This is useful when an author has asked you to hold payments temporarily or when you are waiting on updated banking details. You can override this setting if needed.
What fields are in the CSV
The CSV is structured so that each row gives your accounting software everything it needs to create a supplier bill. The key fields include:
- Contact name of the rights holder (this is how your accounting software matches the bill to the right supplier)
- Bill amount reflecting the net total from that rights holder’s statements of account
- Reference information linking the bill back to the specific royalty run
- Date fields for the bill and due date
The format is intentionally clean. There are no extra columns to strip out or reformat. For Xero users specifically, the CSV is already structured to match Xero’s bill import format, so you can upload it without any column mapping.
Importing into Xero
Xero is probably the most common accounting software among independent publishers, and the CSV workflow here is about as smooth as it gets.
In Xero, navigate to Business > Bills to Pay > Import and upload your CSV. Xero reads each row, matches the contact name to an existing supplier, and creates a bill. The whole import takes seconds.
The one thing you need to get right is contact name matching. Xero matches bills to suppliers by name, not by ID. So “Maria Lopez” in your royalty software needs to be exactly “Maria Lopez” in Xero. Not “M. Lopez,” not “Maria López.” A dedicated Xero Contact Name field in your royalty software makes this easy to manage. For a deeper look at setting up this integration, read our guide on Xero royalty integration for publishers.
Importing into QuickBooks
QuickBooks Online handles CSV bill imports through its built-in import tool or through third-party connectors. The process is similar: upload the CSV, map the columns to QuickBooks fields (vendor name, amount, date), and let it create the bills.
QuickBooks uses vendor names for matching, just like Xero uses contact names. Make sure your rights holders exist as vendors in QuickBooks before you import. If you are setting this up for the first time, create all your rights holders as vendors in one batch so future imports go smoothly.
The royalty bills CSV gives QuickBooks what it needs to populate each bill correctly. Once imported, the bills show up in your accounts payable and are ready for payment through QuickBooks Bill Pay or your preferred method. For more on this workflow, see our QuickBooks book royalties guide.
Importing into FreeAgent
FreeAgent does not have a native CSV bill import in the same way Xero does, but there are workable options. You can use FreeAgent’s API or a third-party integration tool to push bills in from a CSV. Some publishers use a simple automation that reads the CSV and creates bills through FreeAgent’s API endpoints.
Even if you end up entering bills manually in FreeAgent, the CSV still saves you time. Instead of flipping between your royalty software and your accounting screen, you have a single reference file with every amount, contact name, and reference you need. It cuts the task from a multi-hour chore to a focused 15-minute session.
How this eliminates double-entry
The core problem with managing royalties in one system and accounting in another is the handoff. Without a CSV export, someone on your team has to look at each bill in the royalty software, switch to the accounting software, and type the same numbers again. Every manual entry is a chance for a typo, a transposed digit, or a missed bill entirely.
With a CSV-based workflow, the numbers flow directly from your royalty calculations into your accounting system. The bill amount in QuickBooks or Xero is the same number your royalty software calculated. There is no interpretation, no rounding differences, no “I think it was $1,250 but let me double-check.” If you want to download our free guide, it walks through more ways to connect your royalty and financial workflows without duplicate data entry.
For a publisher paying 40 rights holders each quarter, this saves hours per royalty period and eliminates an entire category of reconciliation headaches.
How Royalties HQ handles bill exports
Royalties HQ builds this workflow into the royalty run process. After allocation completes and you click Create Bills, one bill is generated per rights holder based on the net totals of their statements of account. The bills documentation covers the full details of how bills are calculated, including how advances, adjustments, and carried-over balances factor in.
The CSV download is formatted for direct import into Xero, and the system includes a Xero Contact Name field on each rights holder’s profile to make name matching reliable. For QuickBooks and other accounting tools, the CSV provides a clean, one-row-per-bill format that maps easily to any import template.
Payment status filtering means you can exclude paused rights holders from the export automatically. And because every bill ties back to a specific royalty run, your audit trail is clear from royalty calculation all the way through to the accounting entry.
Getting the most from your exports
A few small habits make this workflow even more reliable over time.
Set up your rights holders in both systems at the same time. When you sign a new author, create their profile in your royalty software and add them as a supplier or vendor in your accounting software on the same day. This prevents import failures down the road.
Spot-check after each import. Pick two or three bills at random and verify the amount in your accounting software matches the royalty run. After a few clean imports, you will have full confidence in the process, but the occasional check keeps you honest.
Keep a consistent naming convention. Decide early whether you use legal names, pen names, or company names, and stick with it across both systems. Consistency here is what makes the entire CSV workflow reliable.
The shift from manual entry to CSV export is one of the simplest changes a publisher can make, and one of the highest-impact. It turns a tedious, error-prone task into a two-minute file upload.