13 June 2026 · 6 min read

Tour settlement explained: how to read a venue settlement sheet

The number on the offer is rarely the number that lands in the band account. Between the headline guarantee and your take-home sits a settlement: the conversation at the end of the night where you and the promoter reconcile what actually happened. If you've ever finished a great show and wondered why the payout felt smaller than promised, this is where the gap lives. Here's how to read a settlement sheet so you walk away knowing your real number, not just the poster number.

What a settlement actually is

A settlement is the math of reconciling one night. It starts with the gross — the money the show brought in — and works down through every deduction until you reach your net take-home. Promoters do this so both sides agree on what's owed before anyone leaves. You should do it so you can check their math and track what you actually earned.

The basic shape almost never changes:

Gross → minus venue cut → minus support → minus production costs → minus agent commission → your net.

Everything else is detail. Once you can see that spine, any settlement sheet becomes readable, no matter how it's formatted.

Where the gross comes from: guarantee vs door deal

The gross is built one of three ways, and knowing which deal you're on tells you what to watch.

• Flat guarantee. You're paid a fixed fee regardless of attendance. The "gross" for your purposes is just that number. Simplest to settle — there's little to argue about.
• Door deal (straight split). No guarantee. You split ticket revenue with the venue by a set percentage, often after costs. Higher ceiling, higher risk.
• Guarantee versus percentage (the "v. deal"). You get the guarantee or a percentage of the door, whichever is greater. This is the most common touring structure, and it's where the math gets interesting.

For a v. deal you need three figures to check the night: tickets sold, ticket price, and the agreed split percentage over a threshold. That threshold — sometimes called the "nut" or "breakeven" — is the venue's costs that come out before any split kicks in.

Door-deal math: the split over a threshold

Say you're on a "$2,000 versus 80% over the nut." The promoter declares expenses (the nut) of $3,000. The room holds 400 at $25.

• Gross box office: 400 x $25 = $10,000
• Less the nut: $10,000 − $3,000 = $7,000 split pool
• Your 80%: $7,000 x 0.80 = $5,600

Your $5,600 percentage beats the $2,000 guarantee, so you take $5,600. If the room had only done 150 tickets ($3,750 gross), the pool after the $3,000 nut is $750, your 80% is $600 — below guarantee, so you fall back to the $2,000.

The single most important line to scrutinize on a door deal is the declared expenses. That's where a settlement quietly shrinks. Ask for the breakdown. A reasonable nut is documentable; a vague "$3,000 in costs" with no itemization is a number worth questioning before you sign off.

Reading the sheet line by line

A typical settlement sheet, top to bottom:

1. Capacity and tickets sold. Tickets sold (and comps) at each price tier. This sets the gross.
2. Gross box office receipts. Everything the door took in.
3. Venue expenses / the nut. Rent, staffing, insurance, sometimes ticketing fees and credit-card processing. On a door deal these come out before the split.
4. Production costs. Sound and lights, backline rental, stagehands, and hospitality (the rider — food, drinks, towels). Read closely: hospitality you thought was comped sometimes appears here as a charge-back.
5. Support act payments. What the opener(s) are guaranteed, deducted before headliner pay if the deal says so.
6. The split or guarantee calculation. The line where percentage-over-threshold or flat fee is resolved.
7. Adjustments. Merch fees the venue keeps, a sound-engineer charge, a deposit already wired to you (subtracted so it isn't paid twice).
8. Net to artist. What you're actually owed tonight.

Then, off the sheet, comes the cost the venue never lists: agent commission, typically 10% to 15% of your gross fee. Your agent bills you separately, but it's a real deduction from take-home, so fold it into your own number even though it isn't the promoter's line.

Why you track the settled number, not the guarantee

The guarantee is a marketing figure for your tour budget. The settled net is what funds the van, the hotel, and the people standing next to you. Tracking the guarantee gives you a fiction; tracking the settled number gives you a business.

This matters most across a run. One night beats its guarantee on a door deal, another gets eaten by an inflated nut and a hospitality charge-back. Average the guarantees and the tour looks healthy. Average the settled nets and you see what touring actually paid — which tells you whether to play that market again, renegotiate the deal, or cut the date next cycle.

This is the gap ArtistHQ is built to close. On each show, the Finances tab resolves real take-home: gross fee minus venue cut, agent split, and deductions, so the figure you keep is the figure your reports use — never the headline fee. Group dates with Plan Tour and Money's reports give you per-tour profitability on settled numbers, not optimistic ones. If you'd rather not build a sheet from scratch, ArtistHQ can generate a Settlement sheet straight from your show data, sharable by secure link with optional password and expiry — handy for sending the promoter a clean copy or filing it for the accountant.

A couple of practical habits the tooling supports:

• Record income and expenses against the specific show, not a tour-wide bucket, so each night's net stands on its own. The Money guide walks through quick-add and how settlement resolves take-home.
• Keep the show moving through its pipeline to settled so completed dates don't sit half-reconciled. The Shows guide covers the advancing-to-settled flow.

The short version

A settlement is just gross minus deductions equals net. Know which deal you're on, scrutinize the declared expenses on door deals, account for agent commission even though the venue won't list it, and record the settled number every time. Do that consistently and your tour stops being a hopeful spreadsheet and starts being numbers you can trust.

When you're ready to track it properly, head to your shows and open the Finances tab on your next date — or read more in tracking money.