Judge invoices

A judge on a paid place can send your festival an invoice from their own pay statement. It is their statement frozen at the moment they sent it — numbered, dated, with your organization's payment terms and a due date — and it lands on the season's Payouts → Invoices tab, where you accept it, return it with a note, or mark it paid. Until it is paid, returned or withdrawn it is also listed on the Ledger, under Invoices to pay.

FilmScorecard moves no money. Marking an invoice paid records a payment you have already made outside the platform, in the same Payments log every other payment goes in.

Finding the screen

Invoices is the middle tab of a season's Payouts screen — Ledger · Invoices · Payments:

/org/<organization>/<festival>/<season>/payouts?tab=invoices

The three tabs are one page, so switching to this one is instant and nothing reloads. The older address, …/payouts/invoices, still works and opens this tab.

The Payouts row in the left navigation counts the invoices waiting on you: an amber number for every invoice that is Sent or Accepted and not yet paid. While that number is above zero, the row opens Invoices rather than the Ledger. With nothing waiting, it carries no number and opens the Ledger as usual. The count is re-read with the rest of the navigation.

Open invoices are on the Ledger too. Every invoice that is Sent or Accepted has a line in the Ledger's Invoices to pay card, above the judges: the judge, the status, "INV-0007 · $150.00 · due Nov 14, 2026", a View button that opens the invoice, and Mark paid. Accept and Return are on the invoice only. Once paid, the invoice leaves that card and is listed here under Paid. See Invoices to pay.

Who can see it, and who can act

The same two questions as the rest of Payouts:

• Seeing the tab and the invoices takes the View revenue and payouts permission. Without it there is no Payouts row, the tab's address sends you back to the season, and an invoice's own address answers "page not found".
• Accept, Return and Mark paid also take being somebody who can change the season. A read-only viewer given View revenue and payouts reads every invoice and finds none of them — on the invoice, or on the Ledger, where their Invoices to pay lines carry View alone.

You are not emailed when a judge sends an invoice. The count on the Payouts row is the prompt.

Payment terms

Your organization's Judge payment terms decide the due date on every invoice your judges send. They are set once for the whole organization, on Organization settings → Payments, by an owner or an org admin:

The invoice date is the calendar date in the season's time zone at the moment the judge sends it.

Judges see your terms before they invoice. One line — "Paid 30 days after invoice", or "Paid on the 15th of the month" — sits beside every rate a judge reads: invitations and their email, your open calls and the replies you send to an application, your public page's Judging tab, their pay statement and their Earnings screen. With terms unset, nothing takes its place.

Changing your terms never changes an invoice already sent. Each invoice keeps the terms and due date it was sent with.

The list

One row per invoice sent on this season, open ones first by the oldest due date, then the rest with the newest sent first.

Above the table, four tabs split the list by where each invoice stands, each with its count: Open (Sent and Accepted — the ones waiting on you), Paid, Closed (Returned and Withdrawn) and All. The list opens on Open, or on All when nothing is open. A tab with nothing in it reads "No invoices here."

The columns:

Numbers belong to your organization, not to the season or the judge: they count up from INV-0001 across every festival and every judge you have, and are never reused. So one season's list will have gaps.

The table scrolls sideways on a narrow window rather than restacking, with the heading row pinned to the top and the Invoice column pinned to the left.

With nothing sent yet, the tab reads "No invoices yet."

Reading an invoice

An invoice opens as a document of its own, outside the tabs, so it prints cleanly:

/org/<organization>/<festival>/<season>/payouts/invoice/<invoice>

It holds the number and status, From the judge, To the festival, the Invoice date, Payment terms and Due, the judge's Payment details if they wrote any, Approved, Paid and Amount due as they stood at the moment it was sent, and a Scorecards page listing every approved scorecard it covers — title, Film or Screenplay, category, scorecard type, rate and approval date — with a total equal to Approved. Download PDF prints it.

An invoice never changes once sent. Your terms changing, a scorecard being voided, more of the judge's work being approved, a payment for something else — none of it moves the figures. Work approved after the send goes on the judge's next invoice, which covers the whole season again, minus what has been paid.

Payment details are for you and the judge only. They are shown to people who can see this season's judge pay and to the judge who wrote them, and they are never put in an email. A judge may have typed bank details there — treat the page accordingly.

A scorecard voided after the invoice was sent

If a scorecard on an open invoice is voided after the judge sent it, the invoice says so above its details, in amber:

2 scorecards on this invoice were voided after it was sent ($16.00). You may want to return it.

The invoice's figures do not move, and Mark paid still offers the amount the judge billed. Returning it with a note lets the judge send a corrected one. The judge's own copy does not carry this line.

Accepting, returning and marking paid

The buttons sit above the invoice, beside Download PDF, and only the ones its state allows are there:

• Accept works at once, with no dialog. It tells the judge you have the invoice and intend to pay it. They are not emailed; their Earnings screen shows Accepted.
• Return opens Return this invoice? with a required Note to the judge, up to 1,000 characters. The judge is emailed your note, the invoice shows it, and they can send a new invoice. Returning works after you have accepted, too.
• Mark paid opens the Ledger's own Log a payment dialog with the invoice fixed in it — see below.

The judge can withdraw an invoice while it is Sent, never after you accept it. A withdrawn invoice stays on your list as Withdrawn.

Mark paid

Mark paid is Log a payment, opened from the invoice — or from the invoice's line under the Ledger's Invoices to pay, which opens the same dialog:

• Amount arrives filled in with the invoice's Amount due.
• A fixed Pays INV-0007 line names the invoice.
• What this payment covers is not asked: the payment covers everything outstanding.
• Date paid, Method, the reference, Receipt and Note work exactly as they do on the Ledger — see Logging a payment.

Press Log a payment. One payment is written, to the Payments log and the judge's statement like any other, linked to the invoice — and the invoice reads Paid. Marking a Sent invoice paid accepts it on the way.

The judge is emailed the amount and the date paid.

Logging a payment from the Ledger can pay an invoice too. For a judge with an open invoice, the Ledger's Log a payment dialog carries a Pays INV-0007 switch, on when it opens. Leave it on and the payment pays that invoice; switch it off for a payment that has nothing to do with it.

An invoice reads Paid as soon as one payment is linked to it, whatever that payment's amount. Check the amount before you press Log a payment — a part-payment linked to an invoice still closes it.

Voiding the payment

Voiding the payment linked to an invoice — from the breakdown or the Payments log, as any void — puts the invoice back to Accepted, waiting to be paid again. See Voiding a payment.

What the judge is told

Nothing names who on your staff did it.

If something is refused

What this does not do

• Move money, or remind anybody when an invoice falls due.
• Email you when an invoice arrives — the Payouts count is the prompt.
• Edit a sent invoice. Return it and the judge sends a new one.
• Set terms per judge or per festival. One set of terms covers the whole organization.
• Hold more than one open invoice per judge per season. A judge with an invoice Sent or Accepted cannot send another until it is paid, returned or withdrawn.

Related guides

• Paying your judges — the Ledger beside this tab and its Invoices to pay card, the pay statement an invoice is frozen from, and logging a payment.
• The payments log — where the payment Mark paid writes appears.
• Organization settings — setting your judge payment terms.
• Judge pay — where the rates on every invoice start.
• Sending an invoice — the judge's side.