Connecting payouts

Before your festivals can be paid for anything, your organization needs a payout account. That account lives on Stripe, and the whole of your side of it is one card on one tab: Organization settings → Payments.

One account covers your whole organization — every festival you run and every season of each of them. There is no per-festival account and no per-festival payout setting anywhere.

The card shows a status, a date, the account's Stripe reference and the platform fee terms, and offers one main button — with a quieter Disconnect beside it once an account exists. It never shows bank details, balances, a payout schedule or payout history — those live in your Stripe dashboard, and the card says so when there is a dashboard to open.

Connecting payouts is now one of the three things a season needs before you can open judging — see Opening judging. Whatever your scorecards are priced at, including nothing, the account has to be connected.

Finding the screen

Organization settings is the last row of the top block of the left navigation. Payments is the fifth tab along:

People · Pending invitations · Roles and permissions · Organization profile · Payments · Audit log

Its own address, which you can bookmark or send to your co-owner:

/org/<organization>/settings?tab=payments

The tab carries no count and never turns amber, whatever state the account is in. Payouts asks for your attention on a season's screens instead: the Connect Stripe payouts row on a new season's setup strip, the Payouts connected requirement on its Open judging card, and the amber banner on a season's dashboard — all three further down this guide.

Who can open it, and who can act

Two different questions, with two different answers.

Opening the tab is the same gate as the rest of Organization settings: owners and org admins, while their access is active. Everybody else — members, the hidden Finance role, anyone suspended, anyone outside your organization — gets an ordinary "page not found" from the whole settings screen. Judges and submitters never reach it at all.

Acting on it is the owner's alone. Only an organization owner can start Stripe onboarding, open the Stripe dashboard or disconnect the account.

An org admin gets the same card with the status, the date, the account reference and the fee line, no button at all, and one quiet line where the button would be:

Only the organization owner can manage payouts.

No greyed-out button, ever. An org admin's page does not contain the owner's button in any form — it is absent rather than disabled, so there is nothing to press hopefully.

Two of the five states also read slightly differently for an org admin, because "your" would be untrue of somebody who has no Stripe dashboard of their own:

The other three states say the same thing to both.

The card, state by state

The card is always the same shape: the label PAYOUTS over the title Payout account, a status pill on the right, a sentence or two, a row of small facts, the platform fee line, and one action — with Disconnect beside it for the owner on every state but Not started. The title never changes, so the card reads as one thing moving between states rather than five different screens.

The copy on each, word for word:

• In progress — "Onboarding was started but the details have not been submitted yet. Progress is saved on Stripe, so resuming picks up where you left off."
• Action needed — "Stripe needs more information to enable payouts."
• Payouts enabled — "Payouts are running. Bank details and payout history live in your Stripe dashboard."
• Payouts paused — "Payouts are paused. Stripe has restricted the account, usually a bank account problem or an account review."

Paused is the only state with a second, heavier line under the copy:

Scorecard sales are unavailable to submitters until this is resolved.

Nothing else on the card ever says that, because in the other four states nothing that was working has stopped.

Only "Payouts enabled" sells anything. In the other four states a released season's submitters see the price and what they would get, no button, and the line "This festival is not set up to accept payments yet. Check back soon." — see Selling scorecard access. Your promo codes do not work in those states either.

And only "Payouts enabled" opens judging. The other four states — the half-finished ones included — read as not connected to a season's Open judging card, so a festival waiting on Stripe's verification is a festival that cannot open judging yet.

"Action needed" and "Payouts paused" are not two words for the same thing

This is the one distinction worth learning, because the two states can look identical from Stripe's side and mean opposite things to you.

• Action needed means payouts have never been switched on. Stripe is still waiting on something from you — an identity document, a business detail, a bank account. Nothing has been taken away, because nothing had been granted.
• Payouts paused means payouts were on and Stripe has restricted the account. Something changed after the fact: a bank account stopped working, or Stripe put the account under review.

The difference is your history, not your data. An organization that never finished onboarding will never see "Payouts paused", however long it sits half-done — FilmScorecard will not tell a host that their account was restricted when it was never enabled in the first place. If you are reading "Payouts paused", the account connected now was paid-ready at some point. A disconnect clears that history: the next account you set up starts again from Not started.

The small facts under the copy

Every state except Not started carries a row of labelled facts. Not started has none, because there is nothing to report yet.

Dates are shown in your browser's own format, one per card — never more than one, since a card is only ever in one state.

A date can be missing for a moment. Immediately after you finish on Stripe, the card can show the new state with only the ACCOUNT fact beside it, until Stripe's confirmation reaches FilmScorecard. Reload a minute later and the date is there.

The platform fee line

Above the button, on all five states and for both an owner and an org admin, one line headed PLATFORM FEE says two things: what FilmScorecard keeps from each order, and who pays Stripe's processing fee. On an organization that FilmScorecard has not changed, it reads:

PLATFORM FEE FilmScorecard keeps 20% of what each order pays, at least $2.00. You pay 50% of Stripe's processing fee, estimated at 2.9% + 30¢ an order.

The first sentence follows what your rate is charged on:

The second sentence follows your share of Stripe's processing fee:

Your rate and your share are the two figures printed in monospace. What they mean in practice:

• They are your organization's own terms, not fixed numbers. An organization on negotiated terms sees its real figures. The rate carries no trailing zeros — 20%, 17.5%, 17.25%.
• On what is paid, a promo code lowers the fee too. The rate is taken on what the filmmaker actually pays after the code, so a code is shared between you and the platform. On the full price, the rate is taken on the price before any code, so the whole discount comes out of your share. See Discounted sales.
• No paid order is charged less than $2.00 of platform fee. At 20% that minimum is never reached on a full-price scorecard, because 20% of $29.99 is $6.00; it matters on a low rate, or on an order a deep promo code has made cheap. A rate of 0% takes nothing, minimum or not.
• Your share of processing is an estimate made when the order is placed — 2.9% of what the order pays plus 30¢, rounded to the cent, and then your percentage of that. On a $29.99 order at the usual terms that is $1.17 of processing, and your share is $0.59. It is kept back from the order along with the platform fee, and FilmScorecard pays whatever Stripe's real fee comes to — more for some international cards — so the estimate is all you ever pay. It applies to every paid order, coded or not, and at a rate of 0% too.
• A fee is never more than what the filmmaker pays. The platform fee and your processing share together are capped at the order's price, and the most a code can take off is set so that a lone scorecard still covers both — see How deep a code can go.
• There is no way to change them on any screen. If your terms are wrong, that is a conversation, not a setting.
• Disconnecting your account does not touch them. The next account you set up is paid on the same terms.
• The line never states your share in dollars. Everything the fee and the processing share do not take is yours, and the product does not do that subtraction for you on this card — the season's Revenue card does, per season, and so does Orders, order by order.
• The terms are taken at the moment of each sale, and each sale keeps them. Terms renegotiated later do not reach back and re-figure sales already made.

Setting up payouts

You need to be the organization owner. Have your business details and a bank account to hand — Stripe asks for all of it, this screen asks for none of it.

1. Open Organization settings → Payments.
2. Press Set up payouts. The button reads Opening Stripe… while it works, and will not take a second press.
3. Stripe opens in the same tab. Answer their questions — this is Stripe's own hosted flow, and it usually takes a few minutes.
4. Stripe sends you back to the Payments tab when you are done. The card re-reads your status on arrival and shows whichever of the five states is now true. There is no confirmation screen, and there is nothing to press to finish.

Things worth knowing about the trip:

• You can leave in the middle. Close the tab, come back tomorrow: the card reads In progress, your answers are saved on Stripe's side, and Resume onboarding picks up where you stopped.
• A stale Stripe link fixes itself. If you come back to an onboarding link hours later, Stripe hands you back to FilmScorecard, which quietly issues a fresh one and sends you straight back in. You should never see an "expired link" page.
• Nothing is written when it fails. If Stripe cannot be reached, the card stays exactly as it was and one line appears under the button — see If something is refused.
• Every owner and org admin is emailed when you press Set up payouts. The Stripe account is created and connected to your organization at that press, so the notice goes out as Stripe opens, not when you finish there — see Who is emailed when the account changes. Resume onboarding and Continue in Stripe carry on with the same account and send nothing.

Opening your Stripe dashboard

Once payouts are enabled, Open Stripe dashboard takes you into Stripe's own Express dashboard in a new tab, so your settings screen stays where you left it. Resolve in Stripe, on the paused card, does exactly the same thing — that is where a restriction is explained and cleared.

That dashboard is where bank details, balances, the payout schedule, payout history and individual transfers live. None of them is in FilmScorecard, and that is deliberate: only Stripe holds them, so only Stripe can show them to you.

If Stripe declines to open a session — which it does for an account that is not finished — you land back on the Payments tab rather than on an error page, and the card explains the state you are actually in.

Disconnecting the account

Disconnecting unlinks your organization from its Stripe account, so that you can set up a different one. It is the owner's alone, like everything else on this card.

Disconnect sits beside the main button on In progress, Action needed, Payouts enabled and Payouts paused — every state that has an account. It is not on Not started, where there is nothing to disconnect, and an org admin's card does not carry it at all. While FilmScorecard support is acting as the owner in a support session it is greyed, with "Not available in a support session." under it, as the onboarding buttons are.

1. Open Organization settings → Payments.

2. Press Disconnect. A confirmation opens:

   Disconnect this Stripe account? Scorecard sales stop, and draft seasons can't open judging, until you set up a new payout account. A checkout a filmmaker has already started can still complete for up to 24 hours and pays this account. This can't be undone.

3. Press Disconnect account — or Cancel, which changes nothing. While it works, a spinner joins the label and neither button can be pressed; the dialog does not close until it has an answer.

4. The dialog closes and the card reads Not started, with Set up payouts. The ACCOUNT fact goes with the account, and so does any link to its Stripe dashboard.

What stops, and what carries on

At once, your organization reads as not connected everywhere:

• Scorecard sales stop. A released season's submitters see the price, no button, and "This festival is not set up to accept payments yet. Check back soon." A filmmaker who already had the checkout dialog open gets the same sentence when they press Continue or Apply.
• Promo codes stop working, and Email this code is refused with "Set up payouts before emailing a code — filmmakers can't buy a scorecard until you can be paid." See Promo codes.
• A season that has not opened judging cannot open it. Its Connect Stripe payouts row and the Open judging card's Payouts connected go back to unmet.
• The amber payout banner comes back on your seasons' dashboards, on the rules in The banner on a season's dashboard.

And these carry on:

• Scorecards already unlocked stay unlocked.
• A checkout a filmmaker had already started can still complete, for up to 24 hours, and that sale is paid to the old account.
• The old Stripe account is not closed or deleted. Its balance and payouts finish on Stripe as usual, and a refund on one of its orders still comes back out of it — refunds are FilmScorecard's to issue, as ever; see Refunds. The Payments tab no longer links to it.
• Your fee terms, your orders and your revenue figures. A disconnect changes the payout account and nothing else.

Setting up the next account

Press Set up payouts on the Not started card, exactly as the first time — see Setting up payouts. It creates a new Stripe account, and Stripe can reuse the details you gave for the old one. Sales and opening judging come back when the new account reaches Payouts enabled.

A disconnected account can never be connected again — not to your organization, and not to any other. That is what "This can't be undone" means. If you disconnected by mistake, set up payouts again, or write to [email protected]: FilmScorecard support can put the old account back.

Every owner and org admin is emailed about the disconnect, and again about the next connection — see the next section.

If the disconnect is refused, the dialog stays open with one line in it:

The account could not be disconnected. Try again in a moment.

Nothing was written; press Disconnect account again. If the account had already been disconnected — from another tab, say — the dialog simply closes on the Not started card.

Who is emailed when the account changes

Every disconnect and every new connection emails every active owner and org admin of the organization — the person who made the change included. A new connection is made each time somebody presses Set up payouts on a Not started card, the very first time included. Members and anyone suspended are not emailed, and an address two people share gets one message.

The email is marked Security notice. Under its opening come four facts — Organization, Changed by (their name and address), When, and Stripe account (the acct_ reference: the old one on a disconnect, the new one on a connection) — then:

If you don't recognise this change, contact FilmScorecard support at [email protected] right away.

and an Open Payments settings button. Its last line says why it came: "You're receiving this because you're an owner or admin of your organization."

When is written in your organization's time zone, from Organization profile — "October 7, 2026 at 9:05 AM PDT" — or in UTC while the time zone is Not set.

Treat a notice you do not recognise as urgent. A connection nobody in your organization made means somebody signed in as an owner has pointed your scorecard money at a new account.

Status keeps itself current

Two things keep the card honest, and it is worth knowing which is which.

• Opening the tab asks Stripe directly. The state you see when the page loads is Stripe's answer at that moment.
• Stripe also tells FilmScorecard whenever the account changes, without anybody opening anything. This is what turns a green card amber. An account that was enabled on Friday can read Payouts paused on Monday because Stripe restricted it over the weekend — nobody had to visit the screen for that to happen, and nobody is emailed about it by FilmScorecard.

The season screens can lag behind the card by a moment. The dashboard banner, the setup strip's payouts row and the Open judging card all read the last status Stripe sent us, rather than asking Stripe themselves — they are drawn on screens that must not wait on another company's network. So in the minute after you finish onboarding, the Payments card can already say Payouts enabled while a season's dashboard still shows the banner, or the Open judging button is still greyed. Reload; it clears itself.

If Stripe cannot be reached when you open the tab, nothing says so. The card falls back to the last status Stripe sent, which is almost always the same answer, and you are not shown an error about a background check you could do nothing about.

The "Connect Stripe payouts" row on a new season

A season that has not opened judging yet carries a Finish setting up strip on its dashboard, and Connect Stripe payouts is the third of its three required steps — see Finishing setup.

• Not started, half-finished, action-needed and paused all read the same. The row asks one question: can this organization be paid.
• The row reads your organization, not this season. One payout account covers every festival you run, so it turns green on every season's strip at the same moment.
• Only the owner is given the button, because connecting payouts is the owner's job. An org admin, a festival admin or a coordinator reads who connects them instead.
• It counts towards the strip's "N of 3 done" meter and towards the Payouts connected mark on the Open judging card below it. Those are one figure, not two.
• The row says nothing about judge pay, because Stripe has nothing to do with it — judge compensation is tracked in FilmScorecard and paid outside it.

Dismissing the setup strip does not remove the requirement. The Open judging card stays where it is and still refuses with "Payouts are not connected. Connect Stripe payouts before opening judging."

The banner on a season's dashboard

When a season has a price on its scorecards and your organization cannot be paid, an amber banner sits at the very top of the Season overview, above Needs attention:

● Scorecard sales are paused until payout setup is finished — Open Payments settings

• It appears when both things are true at once: the season has a scorecard price set, and the organization's payouts are not fully enabled — not started, in progress, action needed or paused, any of the four.
• Every season carries a price, so in practice the banner is drawn on every season's dashboard until payouts are enabled, and disappears from all of them at once when they are.
• It is not drawn while that season's setup strip is up. The strip's payouts row is already asking for the same thing; two prompts for one action is how a screen teaches people to ignore both. Dismiss the strip without connecting and the banner comes back as the one remaining nudge.
• It is not dismissible, and there is no control to hide it. Finishing payout setup is what removes it.
• One banner per dashboard, never one per season row.
• You see it if you hold View revenue and payouts on that festival — owners, org admins and festival admins by default, and anyone else the capability has been ticked for. See Festival access. Anyone without that permission sees no banner at all.
• The button is narrower than the banner. It appears only for owners and org admins — the people Organization settings will actually let in. A coordinator with revenue permission reads the line, and is not handed a link that would answer them "page not found".

The banner is about new sales only. A scorecard somebody already unlocked stays unlocked whatever happens to the payout account afterwards.

If something is refused

The onboarding buttons have exactly one error message. Any failure to reach Stripe — whichever of the three you pressed — puts one line under the button:

We could not reach Stripe. Try again in a moment.

When you see it: nothing was written, the card is in the state it was already in, and the button still works. Press it again. If it keeps happening, Stripe is having a moment, not your organization.

The two new-tab links behave differently, because they are links rather than buttons:

Disconnect has a sentence of its own, shown inside its dialog — see Disconnecting the account.

What this does not do

• You do not set what a scorecard costs. The price is the platform's, the same at every festival, and there is no price field on any of your screens — see Selling scorecard access.
• There is no way to change the platform fee terms from any screen of yours — the rate, what it is charged on, and your share of processing are set by FilmScorecard.
• Promo codes are not on this tab. They have a screen of their own, for owners and org admins — see Promo codes — and what a discounted sale earns you is in Discounted sales.
• No refund control, anywhere. Scorecard purchases are final; nothing on your screens or a submitter's asks for a refund or grants one.
• No bank details, balances, payout schedule, payout history or individual transfers, and there is no plan to put them here. Stripe's dashboard owns all of it.
• No plan, no seats, no invoices. There is no billing screen; the Payments tab is the payout account and nothing else. The invoice Stripe writes for a scorecard sale goes to the filmmaker with their receipt, not to you.
• Judges are still not paid through Stripe. Judge pay is money you move yourself and record by hand — see Paying your judges.
• The Finance organization role still cannot reach this tab. It is hidden everywhere in this release, and un-hiding it is a change to who may open Organization settings at all.
• Only two things about payouts are emailed: a disconnect and a new connection — see Who is emailed when the account changes. Nothing Stripe does is: a paused account announces itself on the card and on the dashboard banner, and nowhere else. Nothing emails you when a scorecard sells, either.
• No reconnecting an account you disconnected, and no closing or deleting a Stripe account from here. A disconnect unlinks it; the account itself stays on Stripe.

Related guides

• Selling scorecard access — what this account is for: the price, what you earn, discounted sales, comping, and refunds.
• Promo codes — your organization's own discount codes, which work only while this account is fully enabled.
• Orders — every sale, with its platform fee and processing share, order by order.
• Organization settings — the rest of the screen the Payments tab lives on, and the three organization roles.
• Finishing setup — the setup strip the "Connect Stripe payouts" row belongs to.
• Opening judging — the three requirements payouts is now one of.
• The Season overview — the dashboard the payout banner appears on, the Revenue card, and the revenue permission that decides who sees them.
• Releasing scorecards — what a submitter gets, and the unlock they are offered.
• Paying your judges — the other money in the product, which does not go through Stripe.