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Creative Works

New Project Forms

Information about your project that we need to know

Frequently Asked Questions About New Projects

Information you will need to know to fill out our new project forms

  • BYU Financial Services uses a chartblock to track university monies. A chartblock contains 3 sets of characters, like this:

    20202555-4755-RSRCH

    Operating unit: the first section is 8 characters long and may contain one or two letters at the beginning. Our form requires operating units for developers' research contributions and for the associated college's portion of the distributions. Please have those ready before filling out the form. The first two characters of an operating unit designate the type of operating unit it is and is called the fund. For research, fund 19 and fund 20 are permissible. College operating units into which we can deposit royalties are usually fund 19's. We cannot deposit royalties into fund 11 (budgeted) operating units.

    Account: the second section can only be 4 numbers long and is set (standardized) by Financial Services. It classifies what the money is used for. This is not variable in the context of project distributions.

    Class: the third section is an alpha-numeric string 5 characters long. Your controller may want a specific class used to tag money coming in from your project, so check with them before filling out the form. If no class is provided, our defaults will be used: RSRCH for research funds and COLLG for college funds.

  • Developers on a project share 45% of the net project funds (revenue less expenses). The remaining 55% is divided between the University, as represented by the Creative Works Office, and the developer's college.

    Here is an example with two developers. Note that the sum of the developers' percentages is 45%. This is called the Project Participation % and does not necessarily have to be equal but oftentimes is. Developers decide these percentages between themselves. Our form requires a Project Participation % for each developer so that information should be on hand before filling out the form.

    EntityProject Participation %
    Creative Works Office27.5%
    Developer College27.5%
    Developer 130%
    Developer 215%

    When a developer opts to put some or all of their portion of the distributions into a faculty research account, the University will match that amount. Here is an example with the same two developers.


    Entity    		Project Participation%Royalty Take-Home %Research Account %
    Creative Works Office15%
    Developer College15%
    Developer 130%20%20%
    Developer 215%0%30%

    Please note that the Royalty Take-Home % is also a quantity that our form requires and should be assessed for each developer before submitting that information.

    Royalties received as a personal check or deposit are taxed as income.

  • If a developer opts to personally receive royalties, a direct deposit account has to be set up through a system called PaymentWorks. This system manages personal contact information, W-9 submissions, and direct deposit details.

  • For each new project, we need developers to fill out our online New Project Information Form. This form gives us the information we need to set up:

    1. A project account to handle incoming and outgoing funds
    2. A record in our database to track project information
    3. Project files
    4. Income distribution agreements
    5. Contracts

  • Royalty distributions are made the month after the end of each quarter. For quarter 1 (January, February, March), quarter 2 (April, May, June), and quarter 3 (July, August, September) distributions will be made on balances of $1000 or more if the project is not anticipating a major expense. For quarter 4 (October, November, December), distributions will be made on balances of $100 or more if the project is not anticipating a major expense.

  • Royalties that are not put into research accounts are taxable as income. A 1099 form is issued when royalty money is received during any given year. This income must be included in your taxes for that year.

    If you received royalties from BYU but did not receive a 1099 form to include with your tax filing, contact Financial Services to get a copy (and to make sure they have your correct address).

  • Because royalties are taxed and money deposited into your research account is 1) matched by University funds and 2) is not taxed, there is no way to legally reverse the deposit made to your research account to pay you directly.

    You may change the portion of your royalty take-home % at any time by emailing that request (list project name and % change) to cwsec@byu.edu. This request cannot be retroactively applied to funds already distributed but will take effect with the next distribution.