Finishing setup

A season starts life as a draft: created, private, and closed to judging until you open it. There is no separate setup screen any more. A draft season's Dashboard is the same Season overview every other season has, with two blocks nothing else gets:

• a Finish setting up strip above the cards, and
• the Open judging card below them — see Opening judging.

Both live at the season's own address, the Dashboard row of the left navigation:

/org/<organization>/<festival>/<season>

The moment you open judging, both blocks go and the page carries on as the ordinary Season overview, with its Needs attention, progress, Submissions and Revenue cards. Nothing brings the two blocks back.

What the page head says while a season is a draft

The line under Season overview and the pill beside it both read the same thing off your progress:

The green pill does not care whether you dismissed the strip. It reads the three requirements and nothing else, so a season you stopped being reminded about still tells you when it is ready.

Where you land after creating a festival

Creating a festival — your first one or any one after it — lands you on a one-off Welcome page rather than on the dashboard:

/org/<organization>/<festival>/<season>/welcome

It is headed with your festival's name — "Riverside Shorts Festival is set up" — and one line underneath: "Your 2026 season is created and judging is closed until you open it. Nothing is public yet."

When you picked a logo on the Add festival form and it did not upload, an amber line follows: "Your festival was created, but the logo didn't upload. Add it on the Festival card." The festival is fine; only the logo is missing. The card it means is the Festival card, on the Festival tab of Festival settings — add the logo there.

Then a Ready for you block, three figures read live at the moment you open the page:

Under the figures, a sentence naming the steps that are actually outstanding — "Import submissions, set your judging dates and connect payouts." at three, "Import submissions and connect payouts." at two, "Import submissions." at one. What follows it depends on whether the season has categories yet:

• With none: "Add categories to this season first, because submissions import into them. The rest are listed on your dashboard and can be done in any order."
• With some: "They are listed on your dashboard and you can do them in any order."

A season with nothing outstanding gets no sentence at all, which is possible: your organization's payout account may already be connected from an earlier festival.

The buttons that finish the card depend on FilmFreeway:

• While FilmFreeway sync is on for your organization and this festival is not connected to FilmFreeway, two buttons sit side by side. Connect FilmFreeway comes first, as the solid button: it opens the FilmFreeway tab of the season's Settings with the setup dialog already open — see Connecting FilmFreeway. Beside it, the import button from the table below, which reads Import CSV here rather than Import submissions. Go to your dashboard is a link underneath the pair. FilmFreeway sync is on for every organization unless FilmScorecard has turned it off for yours.
• Otherwise there are two buttons side by side: Go to your dashboard, as the solid button, and the import button.

The import button follows the same rule as the sentence above it:

Getting categories onto the season

Submissions import into categories, so a season needs some before its first import. A new organization's library holds none, and its first season starts empty. The way in is the library:

1. Set up categories on the Welcome page — or on the dashboard's Import submissions row — opens your library's Categories tab.
2. An owner finds FilmScorecard's preset categories there, in place of the empty tab: "Get started with some of our preset categories or add your own". Tick what you want and choose Import 12, or press Add a custom category to write your own instead. The Awards tab offers preset awards the same way. See Importing from the default list.
3. When the import lands, a line under the tabs says so and offers the way back: "Imported 12. Attach them to Riverside Shorts Festival Fall 2026 →". The link opens that season's Categories tab in Settings, where you attach them to the season.

Importing puts categories in your library, not on the season. Attaching is the second step, and it is the one that gives the season something to import into. The Attach them to… link appears only when you reached the library from a season — from the Welcome page or the dashboard — and names that season.

Only the organization's owner can import presets. Somebody else who lands on an empty library sees it empty, and an owner has to fill it — or an existing library category can be attached from the season's Categories tab by anyone who can open Settings.

Coming back to Welcome

Nothing on FilmScorecard links back to Welcome. Only the two festival-creation forms land there — starting next season from an existing one does not — and if you bookmark it:

• once the season's judging is open, the address takes you to the dashboard;
• someone who cannot change the season is taken to the dashboard too;
• an address that is not a season you can reach answers "page not found".

The Finish setting up strip

Across its header: the title Finish setting up, the meter "2 of 3 done" with three ticks that fill in as you go, a Collapse button, and — for anybody who can change the season — Dismiss.

Below it, two groups: the three steps that decide whether judging can open, and three more that decide nothing.

The three required steps

They are always in this order, and the first one that is not finished carries the solid button; the rest are outlined. A finished step keeps its row, gains a green check, and loses its button — the strip gets shorter as you work through it — and the whole row becomes a link back to where the step was done, where there is one.

1. Import submissions

While FilmFreeway sync is on for your organization and the festival is not connected to FilmFreeway, the not-yet-done rows above that carry Import CSV, Set up categories or Open Imports lead with Connect FilmFreeway, which opens the season's FilmFreeway tab in Settings with the setup dialog already open; the row's own button sits outlined beside it. View import, on an import already running, stands alone. Once the festival is connected, the row reads as the table says — including Import CSV again once its syncs have settled with nothing waiting. With sync turned off for your organization, there is no Connect FilmFreeway and neither of the two FilmFreeway rows above. See Connecting FilmFreeway.

Any submission at all finishes this step, and it stays finished: the count is every submission the season has ever held, withdrawn and disqualified ones included, so it can read higher than the Submissions screen. A rolled-back batch is never the date quoted here, and rolling back your only batch puts the step back to unfinished, because its submissions are removed outright. Undo sync, on the FilmFreeway tab, does the same when the sync's films were all the season had.

A second import running over a season that already has submissions does not reopen the step. It shows on the Import batches card instead.

2. Set judging dates

Unfinished it reads "When the window opens and closes for judges." with a Set dates button that opens the Season tab of Settings, where Judging opens and Judging closes are on the Dates card. Finished, the row is the two dates themselves — "Aug 17 to Sep 12, 2026", with the year printed once when both ends share it and twice when they do not — and links to the same tab.

Both dates have to be there, and that is the whole test. Nothing here checks that the window is in the future; a season being opened late is a season being opened late, not a broken one.

3. Connect Stripe payouts

What the row says depends on who is reading it:

Finished, it reads "Stripe payouts are connected." for everybody, and for owners and org admins the row links to the Payments tab.

Three things about this step:

• It is about your organization, not this season. One payout account covers every festival you run, so it turns green on every draft season you have 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.
• A half-finished or paused Stripe account counts as unfinished, exactly like one nobody has started. The step reads the same payout state the Payments tab does.

Not required to open

A divider, then the heading Not required to open and the line "Nothing here blocks opening judging." Three rows sit under it, and a fourth, Connect FilmFreeway, while FilmFreeway sync is on for your organization — see The Connect FilmFreeway row:

None of these rows is counted in the meter, and none of them decides anything about opening judging; their check marks are for your own tracking.

Two details worth knowing:

• The judges line counts offers you sent. A judge who arrived by applying to an open call was never sent an invitation and is not in either number.
• The scorecards line is organization-wide — the same count as the amber badge on the Library row of the navigation — because scorecards live in your library rather than on one season.

If one of these three lines cannot be read for a moment, that row alone says "This figure is unavailable right now." and keeps its button. The rest of the strip is unaffected.

The Connect FilmFreeway row

The last row, drawn only while FilmFreeway sync is on for your organization. It is about the festival's FilmFreeway connection, so every season of the festival reads the same connection; its buttons all open the season's FilmFreeway tab in Settings — see Connecting FilmFreeway.

If the connection cannot be read for a moment, the row is left out, and the Import submissions row reads as it would with FilmFreeway sync off. Nothing else on the strip changes.

Collapsing it

Collapse hides both groups and keeps the header — title, meter, ticks and the controls — and the button then reads Show steps.

• It is remembered per browser, per season, for a year. Nobody else is affected, and collapsing one season's strip says nothing about the next one's.
• It survives a reload without flickering: the page is drawn collapsed rather than collapsing itself after it appears.
• Everyone can collapse, read-only viewers included. It is a view preference, not a change to the season.

Dismissing it for good

Dismiss opens an amber row inside the card:

Dismiss for good? This will not come back, and opening judging still needs all three steps.

with Keep it and Dismiss for good beside it. Keep it closes the row and changes nothing.

• It is permanent and season-wide. Everybody who opens this season stops seeing the strip, not just you, and nothing anywhere brings it back.
• It hides a prompt, never a requirement. The Open judging card stays exactly where it was and still enforces all three — see Opening judging.
• The strip goes only once the change is saved. If it cannot be saved, the confirm row stays put and the reason appears under its two buttons; nothing has been dismissed.
• The Dismiss control is only drawn for people who can change the season. A read-only viewer never sees it.
• It works while collapsed too — the confirm row appears under the header, and the whole card disappears on success.

When the strip goes by itself

Two ways, neither of which needs Dismiss:

• All three steps are done. There is nothing left to finish, so the strip goes even if you never dismissed it. The head line becomes "Everything is ready." and the pill turns green.
• You open judging. The season is no longer a draft, so neither the strip nor the Open judging card is drawn again.

One payouts prompt at a time

The amber payout banner — "Scorecard sales are paused until payout setup is finished" — is not drawn while the strip is up. The strip's own payouts row is asking for the same thing one card higher.

Dismiss the strip with payouts still unconnected and the banner comes back under its own conditions, as the one remaining nudge.

Who sees what

Everyone who can open the season sees every row and every count. Nothing on the strip is hidden by role — only the three controls above are, and the payouts row's sentence, which tells everybody but the owner who connects them.

One button can send you back where you came from. Set dates opens Settings, which is limited to people who may edit festival settings; a coordinator who presses it is returned to the dashboard rather than shown the Season tab. Ask whoever holds settings access to put the dates in. Review on the categories row and Set up categories go to Settings too, with the same limit — and so does every FilmFreeway button: Connect FilmFreeway, Match categories, Finish setting up, and Review on the Connect FilmFreeway row.

Smaller things worth knowing

• The steps have no order. They are listed in one fixed order and the first unfinished one gets the loud button, but you can do them in any order, leave and come back — except that an import needs the season to have categories first.
• Until someone decides how filmmakers get their first email, a "How should filmmakers hear from you?" card sits directly under the strip — see How filmmakers hear from you. Below it, the only card on a draft season is Import batches, showing "No imports yet." until something lands. Needs attention, Judging progress, Submissions and Revenue appear once judging is open — see The Season overview.
• A route transition draws the dashboard's skeleton, without the strip or the Open judging card. Both appear as the season's figures land.
• The note pinned at the bottom of the sidebar — "Judging window not set. Add dates in Settings." — is fixed text. It does not read your season, and it goes on saying that after your judging dates are set.

Related guides

• Opening judging — the three requirements, the button and every refusal.
• The Season overview — the cards under the strip, on a draft season and after.
• Importing submissions and Imports — the first required step.
• Connecting FilmFreeway — the other way to do it, behind every Connect FilmFreeway button.
• Importing from the default list — the preset categories and awards in your library, and the line that links back to the season.
• A season's categories and awards — attaching library categories to the season.
• Festival settings — the judging dates, on the Season tab.
• Connecting payouts — the third required step.
• Setting up your festival and Adding a festival — what happens before Welcome.