Keeping your own records

The single biggest obstacle to checking residuals is not arithmetic. It is that nobody has a reliable list of their own credits.

Four fields is enough

• Title, exactly as credited. Including any alternate or production title, because reporting may use either.
• Year of first exhibition. It determines which agreement governs the credit for its whole life.
• Your role and episode count. Series work is calculated per episode, so the count matters.
• Anything you know about where it has played. Territories, platforms, syndication — even informally.

Keep the statements themselves

Statements are the only primary record of what was reported and when. Keep them as files, not as a memory of having read them. Scanned paper is fine; the format matters far less than having them at all.

Update it once a year

Not continuously — once. New credits get added, episode counts get corrected, and anything you learned about where a title is playing goes in. Fifteen minutes a year is the whole discipline.