Invites sent

Every judging offer this season has sent, whoever sent it and from whichever screen. It is where you chase an offer nobody has answered, withdraw one you no longer want, and invite somebody new without leaving the screen.

It is the third of three tabs on a season's Judges screen, beside the Roster and Judge requests.

This tab moved, and its contents narrowed. It used to sit on your organization's Judges screen and list every roster row every festival had, offer or not. It is now on the season, the old address no longer exists, and it lists offers only — see What is on this tab.

Finding the screen

Judges in the season block of the left navigation opens the season's Judges screen; this is its third tab. Its address is:

/org/<organization>/<festival>/<season>/judges?tab=invites

The three tabs are one page, so switching to this one is instant and nothing reloads. The season's older address, …/judges/invites, still works and opens this tab.

The old organization-wide address is gone. /org/<organization>/judges/invites now shows "page not found", and so does /org/<organization>/judges/requests. /org/<organization>/judges still works and sends you to the Judges directory.

There is no longer one screen showing every festival's offers at once. An offer belongs to the season it was made for, and you read it there.

Nothing but the tab is kept in the address — your search, the filter, the sort, your row selection and the record you have open all reset when you leave. The three tabs and the way they are counted are described in Judge requests.

The tab count

The number beside Invites sent counts offers still out — every invitation whose judge has not answered.

• It is always quiet grey, never amber. An open offer is a fact about the season, not something waiting on you; nothing on this tab asks you a question.
• Zero shows no badge at all.
• It keeps up with this list. While you are on this tab it moves the moment one of your own actions has been re-read — a revoked offer drops it by one, a fresh invitation lifts it — and within a minute of a judge's answer, without a reload. While you are on another tab it moves with your own actions there and otherwise stands as it was when the page last loaded or as this list last read it, whichever is newer; a judge's answer shows when you come back. See The list keeps itself up to date.

Who can work here

The same permission as the Requests tab beside it: managing judges on this season. Organization owners and admins, festival admins and coordinators have it by default; programmers and viewers do not, and per-person overrides on Festival access are honoured either way. Somebody without it sees the Roster with no tab strip, and this tab's address opens the Roster for them instead.

Full detail — including why a viewer who is given the permission can read this tab and still commit nothing — is in Judge requests.

Anybody who can invite from this tab can set what the judge is paid, one category at a time — and can invite somebody as a volunteer instead — whether or not they can open the festival settings screen where the season's own rates live. What they cannot do from here is change the season's own Paid or Volunteer setting. See What an invitation pays.

Judges cannot open this screen, and nothing on it reaches them except their own offer.

The list keeps itself up to date

The season's offers are read once and then held in your browser. The search box, the Status filter and every column sort are worked out from what is already loaded — each applies as you press it, and nothing reloads the page.

And the list re-reads itself in the background, so a tab you left open after lunch is not a lunchtime's worth out of date:

• Whenever you come back to the tab. Switch to another window or another application and back, and the list re-reads itself as you return — a glance away of a few seconds is too short to bother it.
• About once a minute while the tab is in front of you.
• Never while the tab is behind something else. A forgotten tab asks the festival's records for nothing.
• Straight after anything you change here — an invitation sent, resent or revoked. Each of those waits for the server and then re-reads the list before the dialog lets go, so when it closes the row behind it already agrees, and the message at the bottom of the screen reports something that has already happened.

What arrives that way is what other people have been doing: a judge who accepts or declines moves their row off Pending, an offer a colleague sent from the Roster or the Judges directory appears as a new Pending row, a resend moves a Sent date — each within a minute, in place, under whatever search, filter and sort you are working in. The header's "3 offers still out" line, the Status filter's counts, the footer and the tab's own count all move with it.

A refresh never moves you. Your search, your filter, your sort, the rows you have ticked and an open record all survive it. The one thing it takes away is a tick on a row that has been answered — a judge who accepts while you had their offer ticked drops out of your selection and out of the count on the bulk bar, because there is nothing left there to resend or revoke.

An open record follows its row. A judge's answer, a resend by a colleague, a change to their roles or scope on the Roster — each reaches the panel within a minute, in place. A row that leaves your filter takes the panel with it: an offer you have open under the Pending filter closes when the judge accepts.

When the list cannot refresh

A refresh that fails is retried a few times before anything is said. If all of those fail, one message appears at the bottom of the screen:

Couldn't refresh the list. Showing what was last loaded.

The rows stay exactly where they are. Nothing is emptied, nothing is greyed out and nothing you were doing is lost — what you are reading is simply the last version that arrived, and the next refresh that works replaces it. When that refresh lands the message goes away on its own, because it has stopped being true; you can also clear it sooner with Dismiss. Search, the filter and the sorts keep working over what was last loaded.

If your session has ended, this is where you find out: you signed out in another tab, or somebody took away your access to this festival — or the permission to manage its judges — while you had the tab open. The screen does not leave you on rows you can no longer act on: it sends you to the log-in screen, to the Roster, or to an ordinary "page not found".

What is on this tab

Offers, and only offers. A row appears here when somebody sent this judge an invitation for this season — from this tab, from the season's Roster, or from the Judges directory — and it stays here whatever the judge did about it.

A judge who joined by having their application accepted is not here. Nobody made them an offer; they asked, and you said yes. They are on the Roster like everybody else, and their record is on Judge requests.

One case does show up here, and it is worth recognising. A judge you invited once, who then declined or was removed, and who later applied through an open call and was accepted, keeps the row their invitation created. It reads Accepted, and the Categories column shows the scope their application asked for, not the one that invitation carried — accepting an application replaces the scope on the place it revives. It replaces the pay terms too: a judge who was invited as paid and later accepted as a volunteer applicant reads Volunteer, no payout on this tab afterwards.

That is the change worth knowing about: this tab used to mirror the roster, and now it answers one question — what have we offered, and what came back.

The header

Under the Judges heading and the tab strip, two lines of this tab's own:

Northern Lights Festival, 2026 Season

3 offers still out ● Call budget $6.00 to $14.00 per film

• "Offers still out" is the unanswered ones — the Pending rows. It is the same number as the tab's badge, and it is a count of the whole tab, not of what your filters have left.

The call-budget pill is about this season's open calls, not about invitations. It is the same pill the Requests tab carries, and it is absent when no call on the season posted a range. Nothing on this tab is checked against it.

Reading a row

Festival and Sent by are no longer columns. Every row belongs to the festival named above it, and the sender is in the record panel. Role took their place, because on one season the festival is the same on every row and the role is not.

The Role column

One pill per role held — Creative judge, Technical reviewer, or both. A row with no role yet shows an em-dash. Roles are changed on the Roster tab, not here.

The Categories column

What they may be given, in the same shorthand the Roster uses: All, or a count such as 3 when the scope has been narrowed. A row with no role yet shows an em-dash here too — a place with no role is assigned nothing.

Every invitation names its categories, so those rows read a count rather than All — even when every category on the season was picked. And an accepted application names its categories too, so a revived place that came back through one reads a count as well.

"All" here means somebody widened that judge's scope afterwards, on the Roster tab — or, on a place revived by accepting an application, that every category the application named had been detached from the season before it was accepted. It is not what any invitation writes.

The column follows the roster, not the offer. Change a judge's scope on the Roster and this column changes with it; the offer that was sent is unchanged and is still spelled out in the record panel, whose Scope row says the same thing in words — "All categories" or "3 categories".

The offer column

An offer is no longer one figure. It is a technical rate and a creative rate for each category the invitation named, so this cell shows one span across every rate that judge will actually file:

Volunteer, no payout is a fact about the row, not about the tab. Since a season's Paid or Volunteer setting became a ceiling rather than a rule, this cell can sit in a column of real figures: the judge on that row was invited unpaid and the two above them were not. Nothing on this screen distinguishes "volunteer because the season is" from "volunteer because you chose it for this judge" — both are the same fact about the same offer, and the season's own setting is on Festival settings → Categories.

A span is never a sum. The two ends are two of their rates, not their rates added together, and nothing on this tab ever adds them.

A judge invited to file only one kind of scorecard is spanned over that kind only. Their other figure is stored, and it is not money they will earn.

The whole of an offer — every category, both figures — is in the record panel and in the two dialogs that act on it. See What an invitation pays.

The four statuses

They are worked out from the invitation, not stored on it, which is why there are four here and seven on the roster.

Accepted covers active, paused and removed places alike. For this tab they answer the same question — the offer was taken — and what happened to the roster afterwards is history, which the record panel's Latest row carries. A judge who accepted and was later paused reads Accepted in the table and "Paused Aug 14" in the panel.

Accepted also means the terms are fixed. Nothing on this screen or any other can change what an accepted judge is paid — or move them between paid and volunteer. Both are frozen by the same act for the same reason.

Declined and Revoked rows sit on a muted background. Nobody is waiting on them.

Revoked is not Removed. Withdrawing an offer nobody answered and taking an accepted judge off a season are different facts, and this tab exists partly to tell them apart.

A judge no longer needs your email to move a row off Pending. Every invitation is also listed inside FilmScorecard, on the judge's own Invitations screen, where they accept or decline it — so a Pending row can settle even though the message you sent was never opened. See Your invitations.

Nothing sits under the pill. What happened last is in the record panel's Latest row — see Opening a record.

The table scrolls sideways

Rows stay rows at every width. When the card is narrower than the table it scrolls sideways inside its card rather than restacking. The heading row stays pinned to the top and the checkbox and Judge columns stay pinned to the left, so you always know whose offer you are reading. The scroll region takes keyboard focus so the right-hand columns can be reached with the arrow keys.

Searching, filtering and sorting

Everything on the toolbar applies immediately, over the rows already in your browser.

• The search box is headed "Search judge" and matches the judge's name, their email address and their JDG- number, as substrings, ignoring capitalisation. Escape clears it, and so does the ✕ inside the box.
• Status is the only filter — a tick-box list of all four, each with a count measured over your search. Ticking two means "either of these". With nothing ticked the trigger reads "Open invites" and the list shows Pending only — the offers still out. Accepted, Declined and Revoked are hidden until you tick them, and ticking one shows exactly that status. The Festival filter retired with the Festival column.
• Clear filters appears as soon as anything is set, the search included.

There is no filter for paid against volunteer offers. Sorting by Your offer is what groups them — see below.

Changing the search or the filter clears your row selection.

Sorting

All six column headings sort. Clicking a new one sorts it descending first; clicking the one you are on reverses it, and the judge's name breaks every tie. The list arrives sorted by Sent, newest first.

Sorting by Your offer uses the low end of the span — the figure the cell leads with. Volunteer offers and offerless rows sort together at the bottom, because neither carries a figure and inventing one to separate them would misrepresent the column. Sorting by Role groups judges wearing the same roles together. Sorting by Categories puts All above every count, with the em-dash rows last.

The footer

Under the table, one line reporting what you are looking at:

Showing 12 of 16 invites, filtered, sorted by Sent, descending.

"Filtered" appears only while something is narrowing the list. The "of" figure is the statuses you are looking at before the search narrows them — the open offers with nothing ticked, or the declined ones with Declined ticked — never the hidden rows. There is no paging and no Load more.

Under the card, the standing note:

Every offer this season has out, whoever sent it.

The rates you type into an invitation are checked against nothing but the $0.00 rule and the $10,000.00 ceiling; nothing on this tab reads a festival's judge budget.

When nothing is listed

• Nothing has ever been sent — "No invites sent" / "Every offer this season has out appears here, whoever sent it." No Clear filters button, and Invite judges stays in the toolbar.
• Every offer has been answered or withdrawn — "No open invites" / "Every offer has been answered or withdrawn. Tick a status in the Status filter to see them." No Clear filters, because nothing is set.
• Your filters exclude everything — "No invite matches these filters" / "Widen the status filter, or clear the search.", with Clear filters.

Invite judges

Invite judges is this tab's primary button, and it opens a two-step dialog over the screen. Nothing navigates anywhere — you stay on this tab, the dialog holds until the list has been re-read, and the new row is in the table when it closes.

Step 1 — choose a judge

Headed Choose a judge, with the line "Anyone in the judge directory can be invited to this season." above a searchable list of every judge who has listed themselves in the Judges directory.

• The search matches a name or a JDG- number. It does not match an email address, because the directory pool deliberately carries no contact details at all.
• Each row ends in Paid or Volunteer — the judge's own answer, with no figure — so you know how they judge before you price anything. Nothing compares it to what you offer — see Paid or Volunteer is not compared to your rates.
• Judges who already hold a live place on this season are listed but disabled, annotated Invite pending, Already judging or Paused.
• Judges whose only place here is declined, removed or revoked stay pickable. Re-inviting somebody who said no last year is normal, and it revives that place with the new offer.
• The list is re-read when you come back to the window, and after any invitation you send from here — so a judge who listed themselves a moment ago is offered, and one a colleague has just invited is already marked Invite pending. It is shared with the Requests tab's View judge profile, which reads the same pool.
• Escape clears the search box first, and closes the dialog on a second press.

This picker can only reach judges who have listed themselves in the directory. To invite somebody by email address — anybody at all, listed or not — use Invite judges on the Roster tab instead.

Step 2 — make the offer

Headed Make an offer, with the chosen judge's name and JDG- number under it. There is no season picker: the season is the one you are on.

It is the same form the Judges directory opens, and it is written up field by field in What an invitation pays. In short:

• Roles — Creative, Technical, or both. At least one. The pair starts from the judge's own answer on their profile — a judge who reviews technical work alone arrives with Technical on and Creative off — and you can turn either on or off before you send; picking a different judge sets it from their answer instead. This is what the judge's roles become, and those two are the only judging roles there are.
• How this judge is paid — Paid or Volunteer, and on a paid season the choice is yours. Paid is selected when the dialog opens; pressing Volunteer drops the Pricing choice, the rate boxes and the summary and invites this one judge unpaid, changing nothing about the season or about anybody else on it. On a volunteer season the control is read-only on Volunteer — a volunteer season admits volunteers only, and paying somebody there means switching the season to Paid first, on Festival settings.
• Pricing — on a paid offer, Festival pricing (selected when the dialog opens: the season's posted rates, shown read-only on each row) or Custom pricing, which makes them editable.
• Submission categories — a searchable list of every category attached to this season. Under Custom pricing each row carries two rate boxes, prefilled from what the season posts; tune any of them for this judge. Reset to posted rates appears once anything differs.
• A summary of what you have built — one range per scorecard type, and a count of the categories and submissions in scope. A volunteer offer on a paid season shows no summary at all; what Volunteer means is in the ⓘ beside How this judge is paid.
• FilmFreeway access — one switch, off when the dialog opens, with the line "Lets this judge receive submissions that can only be viewed on FilmFreeway." On, a submission whose only screener is on FilmFreeway can be offered to this judge like any other; off, it is not offered to them at all. Under it sits the judge's own answer, read-only — "Judge says: has a FilmFreeway account" or "Judge says: no FilmFreeway account" — and the switch is never set from it. It does not hold up Send. Once the place exists the switch lives on the Roster.
• Note to the judge, optional, under 500 characters. It is sent with the invitation email and appears on the judge's own copy of the invitation inside the app, but not on the page the emailed link opens.

Back returns to the picker; Send invite commits. Send stays off until a judge type and at least one category are picked, and — on a paid offer — until no picked category sits at $0.00 on either of its two rates. A volunteer offer is never held to the $0.00 rule.

The old single-figure offer is gone: there is no amount, no Per film / Flat for the season choice, no Match asking rate button and no amber "below their asking rate" line.

Paid or Volunteer is not compared to your rates

A judge does not name a figure anywhere. Their profile says Paid or Volunteer and nothing more, so there is nothing for an offer to be compared against: nothing warns you that an offer is low, and nothing offers to match anything. The word is shown on the judge picker, on their directory card and in their profile panel, and the Compensation filter sorts paid judges from volunteers.

A judge whose profile says "Volunteer" is not the same as a volunteer offer. Theirs is how they judge; yours is what this place carries. Either can be set without the other.

What sending does

• A place is created on this season as Invited, with the roles you ticked — Technical reviewer, Creative judge, or both. This is a change: it used to be Creative judge alone whatever you had in mind.
• The place is paid or volunteer as you chose, and that is stored on the place rather than read off the season afterwards.
• The scope is exactly the categories you picked, so the Categories column reads a count such as 3 rather than All.
• The rates you were looking at are written onto the invitation. On a volunteer offer the season's posted figures are written anyway — inert, owed to nobody, and there so the record is complete.
• The invitation email is queued as a background job and carries the ranges and the link — or, for a volunteer offer, "Compensation: none. You are invited on a volunteer basis and no payout is created." and no figures at all.
• The offer also appears on the judge's own Invitations screen, immediately, whether or not they open the email.
• The row appears on this tab as Pending, with your name recorded as the sender.
• A message names what was sent, and it names the terms, not the season: "Invite queued for Ada Reyes for Northern Lights Festival 2026, technical and creative on 3 categories." — or "…, as a volunteer." for a volunteer offer on a paid season, or "…, volunteer season." on a volunteer season.

If it is refused, the dialog stays open with the reason inside it and nothing is written. The full list is in What an invitation pays; the ones you are most likely to meet:

Opening a record

Clicking a name, or Open invite in the row menu, slides a panel in from the right over the table. Escape or a click on the darkened background closes it.

It follows its row. The panel is drawn from the row it was opened on, and that row re-reads itself with the list — so a judge's answer, a colleague's resend, or a change to the judge's roles or scope on the Roster reaches an open panel within a minute without your closing it. See The list keeps itself up to date.

Its header carries the status pill, the name, and the JDG- number and email address in monospace. Under that, one Offer card:

The panel and the column cannot disagree, because both are built from the same figures — the column collapses them to one span for scanning, the panel spells them out per type.

Under the card, the per-category breakdown, headed Category rates: one row per category the invitation named, with the figure for each scorecard type this judge will file, per scorecard filed. Rows you priced differently from the season come first, under an amber line counting them — "2 of 6 categories were priced differently from the season for this judge, and they are first below." On a volunteer offer a sentence takes the table's place: "This judge holds a volunteer seat on this season. No scorecard they file carries a payout, so there is no rate to break down." An invitation with no rates, or one with no scorecard-filing role, says so in a sentence too.

Then, when that judge is listed in the directory, a Profile block: Based in, Credits, Past festivals, and their bio as prose.

The judge's note block never appears on an invitation. That block is for something an applicant wrote to you, and an invitation is something you wrote to them.

The panel's footer carries the same actions as the row menu, minus Open invite — on a Pending row, Resend invite then Revoke invite in amber. A decided record gets a single Close.

Sent by

The name of whoever sent the invitation, with what they are:

The two organization-wide roles answer first: an owner who also holds a coordinator grant still reads Festival host.

An em-dash means nobody is recorded — either the invitation was created without a sender, or that person's account has since been deleted. It is never a guess.

The judge sees this name too. Their own copy of the invitation is headed "Invited by your name", or "Invited by the festival team" when nobody is recorded. Your role is never shown to them.

The judge's profile panel

View judge profile, the second item in every row menu, opens the same panel the Judges directory opens — Profile, Seasons and References — without navigating anywhere. The directory's private-note field is not on this mount, and the footer is Close, then Open invite, which goes back to that judge's record.

It is offered only for judges who are listed in the directory, and it reads the same directory pool the Invite judges picker does — re-read when you come back to the window, so a profile a judge has just changed is what you see.

The row menu

The three-dot menu opens with the judge's name and a monospace line — JDG-2041, [email protected].

Everything except the two reading items opens a dialog first, and the two reading items stay usable for somebody who cannot act.

Selecting rows, and acting on several at once

Pending rows carry a checkbox; answered ones do not. The checkbox in the heading row selects every unanswered row on screen.

Any selection raises a bar at the foot of the screen:

✓ 3 selected Clear selection Resend · Revoke

• Nothing commits from the bar. Each button opens one confirm dialog naming the count, and the dialog holds until the list has been re-read.
• Bulk Revoke sends no note. The single-record Revoke dialog offers an optional note to the judge; the bulk one does not ask for one, so the judges are told the offer is withdrawn and nothing more.
• A row that was answered while it was ticked is counted rather than silently skipped, so a selection that raced a judge's answer reports "2 resent, 1 could not be resent."
• A mixed selection of paid and volunteer offers is fine. Both bulk actions work on the offer as it was sent, whatever that was.
• At most 200 records at a time.

Records commit one at a time and there is no rollback, exactly as on the Requests tab — see A bulk action is not all-or-nothing.

Resend invite

The dialog names who it goes to, who sent it and what the offer is — the same per-type rows the record panel shows:

Ada Reyes was invited Aug 11 and has not answered.

The same offer is sent again as a background job. The offer itself does not change.

What resending does:

• The same offer goes out again. Nothing about the rates changes — not even if you have edited the season's posted rates since. The figures already sitting in that judge's inbox are the figures they get again.
• Nothing about paid or volunteer changes either. A volunteer offer is resent as a volunteer offer, and a paid one as a paid one, whatever the season has done in the meantime.
• The roles do not change either.
• A fresh link is minted, and the earlier one stops working. Always tell a judge to use the newest email.
• The 14-day window restarts, and the Sent column moves to today — a resend that left the old date would misrepresent when the judge was last asked.
• The judge's own Invitations row moves with it, keeping its place in their list and taking the new deadline.
• The dialog holds until the list has been re-read, then closes, and the message at the bottom of the screen reads "Invite queued again."

To send different money — or to move an offer between paid and volunteer — revoke and invite again. That is the only way to change what an unanswered invitation offers.

A judge who cannot find your email does not need a resend. Point them at their own Invitations screen instead — see Your invitations.

Revoke invite

The amber action, offered on any unanswered invitation. The dialog restates what was offered, per scorecard type, who sent it and what the offer was for, takes an optional Note to the judge under 500 characters, and says:

The offer stops being acceptable and the judge is told. You can invite them again later.

That sentence used to add "No payout obligation is created." It no longer does, because saying no obligation is created implies one would otherwise have been — and nothing in FilmScorecard creates one. See Money on this tab.

What revoking does:

• The status becomes Revoked and the row goes quiet.
• The link in the judge's inbox stops working. Opening it shows them "This invitation is no longer acceptable", with no Accept and no Decline.
• It disappears from the judge's own Invitations screen too, entirely — a revoked offer is not listed there, and its address gives them "page not found".
• The judge is emailed — subject "Your invitation to the festival has been withdrawn" — and your note is quoted in it if you wrote one.
• Nothing about the offer is erased. A revoked row keeps its rates, because that is the record of what was offered.
• The dialog holds until the list has been re-read, then closes, and the message at the bottom of the screen reads "Invite revoked."

Revoking a paid offer also stops it locking the season at Paid. An unanswered paid invitation is one of the three records that keep a season from being switched to Volunteer — see Volunteer to Paid is always allowed. A volunteer offer never locked anything.

You can invite the same judge again afterwards, from this tab, from the season's Roster or from the Judges directory. A revoked place is revived by a fresh invitation, and the new invitation's rates replace the old ones entirely — including its category list, its roles and whether it pays at all, so revoke-and-re-invite is how a paid offer becomes a volunteer one or the other way about. Accepting an application from them revives it too, at the rates, the scope and the pay terms that application carried.

A revoked place is also on the Roster, marked Revoked — hidden there until Revoked is ticked in its Status filter, because that list shows only the judges who are on the season. See Judges.

Money on this tab

• An offer is a set of rates, not a figure. Two per category — technical and creative — each paid per scorecard filed. What the cell shows is a span across them. See What an invitation pays.
• Or no rates at all. A volunteer offer carries no money, and can sit beside paid ones on a paying season: the season's setting caps what an offer may be, and each offer decides for itself underneath it.
• Amounts are exact. Two decimal places, no rounding, no thousands separators — $1500.00, not $1,500.00.
• Nothing is ever summed. Not the two rates against each other, not the categories against each other, and not a rate against a submission count.
• The rates are a record, and nothing more. No payout, obligation, invoice or Stripe object is created anywhere in this release, and no screen in FilmScorecard pays anybody. The dialogs on this tab used to say a payout obligation was created; they were corrected, because it was a claim about machinery that does not exist.
• The judge's own emails say who pays. A paid invitation says the judge is paid by the festival directly; a revocation and a volunteer invitation say "no payout is created".

Dates

Sent shows a month and a day and no year — Aug 11 — and it is measured in UTC rather than in your festival's time zone. Invitations from a previous season therefore look like this year's; sort by Sent if the order matters.

An unreadable or missing date shows an em-dash.

Nobody can counter an invitation

No screen lets a judge reply to an invitation with a different rate. The page the emailed link opens offers Accept and Decline; the judge's own Invitations screen offers Accept, Decline and blocking your festival. Neither has a counter, and this tab has nothing to review: there is no Counter received status, no Review their counter action, and the tab's badge is never amber.

Nor can a judge ask to volunteer on an invitation. Whether an invitation pays is your decision when you send it; a judge's own choice about it exists only on an open-call application — see Applying to an open call.

Negotiation happens on the Requests tab, not here. An open-call applicant names a figure per category, you can counter it category by category, and they can accept or send back another set — see Judge requests. An invitation is your terms, taken or left.

If something is refused

Nothing here is optimistic. A change is written when you commit it and the list is re-read from the server before the dialog lets go; if it is refused, nothing was saved and the table never moved.

What the judge is emailed

Everything on this tab that reaches a judge goes as a background job, at the address on their place. Only two of these messages carry a link.

Replies go to your organization's support address when it has one — set it on the organization settings screen.

The email carries ranges; the link carries the breakdown. The page a judge opens lists every category with both figures — see What an invitation pays. A volunteer invitation carries neither: the email says compensation is none and the page says "Volunteer — no payout", on a paying season exactly as on a volunteer one.

The email is no longer the only way they can answer. Every invitation is also on the judge's own Invitations screen inside FilmScorecard, with the same figures and the same two answers — so a bounced message, a deleted one or a lapsed link no longer strands an offer. See Your invitations.

What the judge sees at the other end is written up in Your judging invitation, which is the guide to send anybody who asks.

What you are emailed when a judge answers

One answer sends you a message, and it is Accept.

The acceptance email:

Subject: Ada Reyes has accepted your invitation to Northern Lights Festival

Ada Reyes has accepted your invitation to judge Northern Lights Festival Spring 2026.

They are on the season roster now, on the rates the invitation offered.

Nothing is needed from you. Their roles and category scope are on the season's Judges screen if you want to change them.

Who gets it, and when:

• It goes to the people who can reach that season — owners and organization admins, and anybody whose staff grant covers the festival or the season. Suspended members are not written to. It is the same rule the pause and leave notices follow.
• Not necessarily the person who sent the invitation. It goes by current access, so whoever sent it gets it only if they still hold that access, and colleagues who never touched the invitation get it too.
• It is a background job, so it arrives on the next run rather than the instant the judge presses Accept.
• One per person, naming only the festival they can see.
• Replies go to your organization's support address when it has one.
• Once per invitation, whichever route they answered from — the emailed link and the in-app screen cannot both send it.

Nothing needs doing when it arrives. The judge is already on the roster at the rates the invitation named, and those rates can no longer be changed by anybody. The same is true of a volunteer acceptance, though the sentence about rates is then about rates nobody owes.

There is no setting for it. It cannot be switched off, and it is not on any preferences screen.

What does not work yet

• Judges replying to an invitation with a counter, and answering one here. See Nobody can counter an invitation.
• Judges asking to volunteer on an invitation. The choice is yours when you send it.
• Inviting somebody who is not in the judges directory, from this tab. Use the Roster tab's Invite judges, which takes email addresses — and which sets one set of terms for the whole batch rather than tuning them per judge. That includes the pay terms: one batch is all paid or all volunteers.
• A note on a bulk revocation. One at a time takes a note; several at once do not. A batch invitation from the Roster carries no note either.
• Editing an offer in place. The only way to change what a judge is being offered — the money or whether there is any — is to revoke and invite again. There is no way at all to change what an accepted judge is paid.
• Changing roles or scope from here. Both live on the Roster tab — and note that widening a judge's scope there does not price the categories you add.
• Un-revoking. Invite them again instead.
• Any record of what a judge was emailed. The row's history says a reminder was sent; it does not keep the message.
• Being told when a judge declines. Only an acceptance emails you — though the row itself turns Declined within a minute while you are on this tab.
• Nothing announces what a refresh brought in. Rows change under you quietly — there is no "1 offer accepted" notice and no highlight on a row that has just changed.
• Payments. Rates are recorded and shown. Nothing charges, collects or pays.

Related guides

• What an invitation pays — the offer form field by field, inviting one judge as a volunteer, what the judge is shown, and when the figures stop being editable.
• Judge pay — the season's posted rates every paid offer starts from, and the ceiling its Paid/Volunteer setting places over each one.
• Judge requests — the tab beside this one: judges who applied to you, including the ones who applied as volunteers, and the one place a rate is negotiated.
• Judges — the Roster tab: roles, scope, pausing, removing, inviting by email address, and the Pricing card on a judge's own panel.
• Judges directory — the organization-wide pool this tab's picker draws from.
• Your judging invitation — the email and the page it opens, from the judge's side.
• Your invitations — the judge's in-app list of your offer, and the three answers they can give it.
• When a judge pauses or asks to leave — the other things a judge's own decisions send you.