This article is part of our Complete Guide to Royalty Management.
Each month, a stack of compensation spreadsheets arrives in your inbox from Lightning Source or IngramSpark. A few weeks later, deposits appear in your bank account. But the numbers do not match at first glance, the currencies are all over the place, and it is not obvious which spreadsheet belongs to which deposit. You are not missing something obvious. The system genuinely takes a bit of unpicking.
This article walks you through how the reports and payments connect, so you can reconcile them with confidence.
Why matching reports to payments feels confusing
A single sales month can produce up to five separate compensation reports. Each one covers a different region, and they arrive in different currencies. Then, weeks later, the bank deposits land, and there are only four of them, not five. Some reports are converted to your payout currency at an exchange rate you have to hunt down. And to top it off, three of the five reports are all in USD, making it hard to tell them apart at a glance.
Once you understand the structure, it clicks. But before it does, it can feel like a puzzle with half the pieces missing.
The five sales compensation reports
Each report covers a print region, and Ingram emails it as two attachments: a PDF you can read at a glance, and an XLS spreadsheet that holds the actual data. The XLS is the one you import. Every XLS uses the same layout, with a “market” column that tells you exactly which region the sales came from. Here is what to expect.
United States report: market reads “United States”, USD currency. This is Lightning Source’s core US print region.
United Kingdom report: market reads “United Kingdom”, GBP currency. Another core Lightning Source region.
Australia report: market reads “Australia”, AUD currency. Core Lightning Source region.
Sharjah report: market reads “United Arab Emirates”, USD currency. This is a core Lightning Source print region (not a separate programme), fulfilled by Lightning Source Sharjah in the UAE. It is paid by a separate entity, Lightning Source Sharjah.
Global Connect report: market reads things like “Global - Brazil”, “Global - Germany”, “Global - India”, and so on. Also USD currency. Global Connect is a separate Ingram programme covering around 11 additional international markets (Brazil, China, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Singapore, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, and more), fulfilled by local print-on-demand partners.
The all-USD confusion
Three of the five reports (US, Sharjah, and Global Connect) are all USD currency. Currency alone cannot tell you which is which. To distinguish them, look at the email subject line (the Global Connect report usually says “Global Connect” in the subject) and always check the “market” column inside the file. That column is the reliable identifier.
Some months you will have fewer than five reports. If there are no Sharjah sales in a month, there is no Sharjah sales comp report and no Sharjah deposit.
How the payments work: five reports, four deposits
Payment arrives approximately 90 days after the end of the sales month, in your payout currency, via “Automatic Deposit Remittance” advices. These advices show you exactly what you are being paid for.
Ingram runs each of its four core print regions (US, UK, Australia, and Sharjah) as a separate operating unit, which is effectively a trading arm or subsidiary in its own right. Each operating unit pays you separately, which is why the money lands as deposits from four different entities. Global Connect is a programme rather than an operating unit, so it does not pay you on its own; its compensation travels with the US deposit.
The four operating units that send the deposits are:
- Lightning Source (La Vergne, Tennessee): pays the US region and Global Connect together on one remittance advice
- Lightning Source UK: pays the UK region
- Ingram Content Australia: pays the Australia region
- Lightning Source Sharjah: pays the Sharjah region
That is why five reports produce only four deposits. The US and Global Connect compensations are combined into a single bank transfer from Tennessee. If you are wondering why a deposit seems larger than one report would explain, that is usually why.
On the remittance advice from Tennessee, you will see two compensation type codes on separate lines. PCOMP is the standard print-on-demand wholesale compensation, covering the US region. ODICOMP is the Global Connect compensation. Both lines carry a "US " prefix in the description (“US PCOMP” and “US ODICOMP”), which makes them easy to identify.
The Sharjah line on its own remittance advice has no region prefix, just the PCOMP type. So if you see a USD line with PCOMP and no "US " prefix, that is your Sharjah payment.
Here is how the five sales compensation reports map to the income payments (deposits):
| Sales comp report | Sales currency | Line on the payment report | 4 income payments |
|---|---|---|---|
| United States | USD | US PCOMP | 1. Combined US and Global Connect deposit |
| Global Connect | USD | US ODICOMP | 1. Combined US and Global Connect deposit |
| United Kingdom | GBP | PCOMP | 2. UK deposit |
| Australia | AUD | PCOMP | 3. Australia deposit |
| Sharjah (UAE) | USD | PCOMP (no region prefix) | 4. Sharjah deposit |
The top two rows share a single bank transfer, which is how five reports become four deposits. Every deposit lands in your payout currency, converted from the report currency at the exchange rate printed on that advice.
Whichever reports are already in your payout currency are paid as-is, with no conversion. Every other report is converted to your payout currency at an exchange rate shown right on the remittance advice, so you always have the rate on record.
For more context on how payment timelines work across different distributors, see our article on distributor payment timelines.
How to reconcile reports to payments
Once you have both the reports and the remittance advice in front of you, reconciliation is straightforward.
For each line on the remittance advice, find the matching report. If the report is already in your payout currency, its total should match the deposit line directly. If it is in a different currency, multiply the report total by the exchange rate shown on that advice line. The result should match the deposit to the penny.
Work through each line in turn: US PCOMP against the US report, US ODICOMP against the Global Connect report, the UK line against the UK report, and so on. If one of the reports is missing (no Sharjah sales that month, for instance), there is simply no matching line on the advice and no deposit from Sharjah.
Keep the remittance advices alongside the reports. They are your paper trail for the exchange rates used, which matters for your accounts.
Where to download the reports
If you missed an email or need a past file, you can download everything directly. There are two things you might want: the sales compensation reports (the sales data you import) and the payment reports (the advices that show what you were actually paid).
Sales compensation reports
Lightning Source: log in to the Lightning Source dashboard and go to Reports > Compensation > Compensation Statements. Pick the year and month, and download each report type listed (there are usually several per month, so grab them all). Avoid the “Reporting - Classic” option for these; those files use a different format.
IngramSpark: log in at myaccount.ingramspark.com and go to the same Reports > Compensation > Compensation Statements area. Download each report type individually (there is no bulk download). Again, skip “Reporting - Classic”.
If you use both Lightning Source and IngramSpark, they are separate accounts with separate dashboards, so you download from both.
Payment reports
To pull the payment advices themselves, the route is the same on both platforms: go to Reports > Classic > Publisher Compensation. On Lightning Source the direct link is myaccount.lightningsource.com/ClassicReports/PubCompPayments/Criteria. Select a date range, tick all of the operating units, enter your email address, and click submit. The payment reports are then emailed to you, though sometimes there is a short delay before they arrive.
Royalties HQ makes processing Lightning Source sales easy
Every one of these XLS files can be imported into Royalties HQ exactly as it arrives, with no editing needed (the XLS holds the data; the PDF is just for reading). The importer handles all five report formats, and the currency conversion is automated: Royalties HQ applies the exchange rates from your remittance advice so you do not have to work them out by hand. For step-by-step import instructions, see how to import Lightning Source sales files and how to import IngramSpark sales files.
If multi-currency sales are a bigger piece of your publishing business, our guide on multi-currency royalties covers the broader picture.
Once you understand the structure, the monthly reconciliation becomes routine rather than a puzzle. The free guide covers more of the practical side of running royalty accounting as an independent publisher.
