Judge pay

What a season pays its judges is now a property of its categories. Each category carries two rates — one for the technical review, one for the creative scorecard — and each is paid per scorecard filed. A season either prices all of its categories or none of them: that is one choice for the whole season, not one per category.

That season-wide choice is a ceiling, not a rule. A paid season may hold volunteer judges beside its paid ones; a volunteer season holds volunteers only. See Paid or volunteer is a ceiling, not a rule.

Nothing in FilmScorecard charges or pays anybody. These numbers are written down, carried forward, and recorded against each scorecard as it is filed. Paying a judge still happens outside the platform — see Nothing is charged and nothing is paid. What the records add up to, judge by judge, and the payments you make against them, live on the season's Payouts screen — see Paying your judges.

The rates on this screen are where a judge's pay starts, not where it finishes. Every invitation copies them and may tune them for that one judge — or decline them entirely, if that judge is invited as a volunteer. See What an invitation pays.

The two screens

Who may change them:

• Season rates and the season's Paid/Volunteer setting — owners and organization admins, the same people who can open Festival settings at all. A coordinator whose access is limited to a festival or a season cannot open the screen.
• Library defaults — organization owners only, like everything else in the category library. Reading them is wider: the two library columns are visible to every member of your organization.

Note the asymmetry: a coordinator who cannot open this screen can still set a judge's rates — and can still invite somebody as a volunteer, one invitation at a time, from an invite dialog. What they cannot do is move the season. See What an invitation pays.

How a rate travels

Four places hold a number, and each one is a copy taken at a moment:

1. The library default — what a category is worth by default, anywhere.
2. The season's posted rate — copied from the library default when the category is attached to the season. From that moment it is the season's own number.
3. The invitation's rates — copied from the season's posted rates when a judge is invited, and tunable for that one judge. Fixed for good the moment they accept. See What an invitation pays.
4. What a scorecard was worth — copied from that judge's own rate when they file it, and never rewritten afterwards.

The point of copying rather than looking up is that nothing upstream can move a number under you:

• Editing a library default never reprices a season that already attached the category. It changes where the next attach starts.
• Editing a season's rate never touches the library, and never touches any other season.
• Editing a season's rate never reprices a judge. Anybody already invited or already judging keeps the figures their invitation named; the change only reaches invitations sent afterwards.
• Changing a rate never changes scorecards already filed.

One consequence to expect: detaching a category and attaching it again returns it to the library default, losing whatever you had tuned on the season. Entry fees have always behaved that way; rates behave the same. Detaching also takes that category's rates off every judge on the season, including judges who have accepted — the category itself is gone, so there is nothing left to price.

Paid or volunteer is a ceiling, not a rule

Directly under the intro on the Categories tab sits JUDGE PAY THIS SEASON with two buttons, and a line saying what the current choice means:

• Paid — "Every attached category pays a technical and a creative rate per scorecard filed."
• Volunteer — "No category pays. No payout is owed for any scorecard filed this season."

What that setting decides is the most a judge on this season can be, not what every judge is. Each judge's place carries its own answer underneath it:

This changed. The setting used to decide how every judge on the season was paid, and there was no way to put one volunteer on a paying panel. It now caps the choice rather than making it — the choice itself is on the invitation (see What an invitation pays) or on the application's third step (see Applying to an open call).

To pay somebody on a volunteer season, move the season to Paid first. That direction is always open, it does not touch anybody already on the season, and volunteers already there stay volunteers.

Every existing season is Paid. That is deliberate: an unpriced category in a paid season is loud — a red field and a count in the footer — and can be switched to volunteer from the same tab, while the reverse mistake would be silent.

In Volunteer the two pay columns disappear from the table. They are not greyed out and they are not zeroed: the numbers stay exactly as you left them and come straight back when you press Paid again. The choice waits for Save: the table changes as you press, and the season moves when you choose Save categories. The same is true of a judge's own rates, which are stored on a volunteer place and simply not owed.

This is the only screen that can change the season's setting. The invite dialogs decide one judge's terms under it; they cannot move the season. A volunteer season's Payouts ledger shows a notice instead of a ledger, and nobody on it has a pay statement — their portal's Earnings screen lists the place on its Volunteer tab, as filed and approved counts with no money on them.

A volunteer judge on a paid season is a different case, and the ledger does not hide them: their approved scorecards are priced at $0.00 and shown as $0.00, which is a price rather than an absence. See What a filed scorecard records and Paying your judges.

Volunteer to Paid is always allowed. Paid to Volunteer is not.

While a paid record is still open or already agreed, the season stays paid. The two buttons are replaced by a padlocked row:

JUDGE PAY THIS SEASON — Paid 3 paid seats and applications are accepted or still open, so the season stays paid. Review judges

With exactly one it reads "1 paid seat or application is accepted or still open, so the season stays paid." Review judges opens that season's Roster.

What the count counts — three kinds of record, added together:

What is never counted, and this is the part that is new:

• Volunteer places, however many there are and whatever their status. A paid season whose accepted judges all volunteered has nothing to protect, and can honestly become a volunteer season.
• Volunteer applications.
• Declined and revoked invitations, and declined applications. Nothing was ever agreed.

The lock used to count any judge who had accepted, paid or not — which, before a place could carry its own terms, was the same thing. It is now narrower in one direction and wider in the other: volunteers stopped blocking the flip, and open paid offers and applications started, so that no paid record is ever left stranded under a season that has stopped paying.

Other things worth knowing:

• A volunteer season never locks. The padlocked row only ever reads Paid, because turning pay on is always allowed.
• The rule is enforced when the change is saved, not only on screen. If you reach the button in a stale tab, the change is refused with "A paid offer or application is still open on this season, or a judge has accepted paid terms, so it cannot become a volunteer season."
• Clearing the lock is a matter of clearing the records. Revoke the open paid invitations on Invites sent, decline the open paid applications on Judge requests — and if a judge has already accepted paid terms, the season is settled and stays paid.

There is no amber warning beside this row. Nothing is wrong — the season has simply settled.

Setting a category's rates

In Paid mode the table carries two extra columns, Technical pay and Creative pay, one editable box each:

1. Click into the box and type an amount in dollars — 8 or 8.50. The $ is part of the field.
2. Press Tab or Enter, or click elsewhere. The amount tidies to two decimals, but it is not saved yet: the tab's amber dot lights and the footer shows Discard and Save categories.
3. Choose Save categories to write every rate you changed, or Discard to put them all back. Escape in a box puts just that box back.

Amounts run from $0 to $10,000.00, with at most two decimal places; more than two decimals is refused rather than rounded. Every amount on this screen shows two decimals — 8.00, never 8.

An emptied box is a deliberate zero. Clear the field and leave it and it settles to 0.00 — and Save writes that. It is not treated as a typing mistake.

If a save fails, the box keeps what you typed and the reason appears underneath it; choose Save categories again to retry.

$0.00 in a paid season is an error, not "free"

A rate of $0.00 while the season is Paid is saved, and then shown as a problem:

• the box turns red with a ring around it;
• the card footer grows a red line under the count: "1 category has a rate at $0.00. Set every rate above $0.00, or switch the season to volunteer."

Nothing refuses the value, and that is on purpose — a category whose library default is $0.00 lands at $0.00 the moment you attach it, so it has to be a state you can save your way out of. A category you wrote yourself and never priced is the usual one; categories imported from FilmScorecard's default list arrive priced — see Where a category's pay starts.

None of that applies in the library. A $0.00 in the Technical or Creative column of Categories and scorecards is written plainly, with no red field and no count line: at library level a zero legitimately means "price this per season", and there is no volunteer mode there to switch to.

The count is taken over every attached category, not the rows a search happens to be showing, so hiding the broken rows never hides the warning. A category with both rates at zero is counted once — it is one thing to fix.

It also blocks paid invitations. An invite dialog refuses to send while a picked category sits at $0.00, on either of its two rates. Somebody trying to staff the season will hit it whether or not they can open this screen — see What an invitation pays. A volunteer invitation is not blocked by it, because there is no figure to get wrong; that is the second half of the refusal's own sentence, "or invite this judge as a volunteer".

What it costs while it is wrong: every scorecard a paid judge files against a $0.00 rate is recorded as unpriced, not as zero. That distinction is the whole reason the field is red — a volunteer judge records a real zero, so the two can be told apart afterwards. The season's pay ledger reports unpriced scorecards in amber and leaves them out of every figure (see Paying your judges), and so do the judge's own screens — an unpriced scorecard shows an em-dash rate and an amber "awaiting pricing" count on their Earnings screen, so the judge can see that nothing was recorded for it. Pricing them after the fact is still to come. See What a filed scorecard records.

Sorting by pay

Three column headings sort: Category, Technical pay and Creative pay. Click one to sort by it, click it again to reverse. The footer names what you are looking at — "4 attached of 73 in the library. Sorted by technical pay, descending."

• Categories on the same rate stay in A→Z name order, in both directions. Reversing a pay sort reverses the money, not the names.
• Category, ascending is the way home. It is also where the table starts.
• Entry fee, Type and Submissions do not sort.
• Switching to Volunteer drops back to Category, ascending — the column you were sorting by is no longer on screen. Press Paid again and your pay sort comes back.

The library table sorts the same way, on its own Technical and Creative columns, with the same name tiebreak — see Searching, filtering and sorting.

Reset pay to library

A secondary Reset pay to library button sits in the toolbar, left of Attach categories. It appears only in Paid mode, and only while at least one category's rate differs from its library default — there is no permanently greyed-out button to wonder about.

Pressing it puts the library's rates into every category's two boxes at once — over anything you had typed there — so what Save will write is on screen before it is written. Nothing is stored until you choose Save categories; Discard puts the old rates back.

Five things worth knowing:

• Only rates move. Entry fees are untouched, and no scorecard already filed is rewritten.
• No judge is repriced. Anybody already invited or already judging keeps the figures their invitation named. One addition: an accepted paid judge on All categories who has no rate yet for a category this resets above $0.00 is given its new posted figures, and told once. Otherwise this changes where the next invitation starts, and nothing else.
• Categories that are not in the library are skipped entirely — not counted, not named, not changed. A category whose library record was deleted has nothing to reset toward, so a season made only of those never shows the button at all.
• An archived library category still supplies its numbers. Archiving means "do not offer this for new attachments"; it has never meant "forget its numbers".
• Editing a library default makes this button appear even though you never touched the season. That is the honest reading of it: your season now differs from the library, and this offers to match it.

If nothing is left to do by the time you save — somebody else reset it, or the library moved back on its own — you get "Every category already matches its library default. Nothing was changed."

If the reset stops part way through, the message says so and some categories may already have moved. Save again: it re-checks what still differs and finishes the job.

Where a category's pay starts: the library

Open Categories and scorecards, then any category's Edit (or + New category). The form carries two fields:

• They are prefilled when you edit, and both are written every time you save the form — so renaming a category never disturbs its pay.
• Blank counts as 0.00. A new category you do not price is worth nothing until somebody prices it, and every season it is attached to shows the red field until they do.
• A category imported from the default list arrives priced: $2.00 a scorecard, technical and creative alike, for a short category — a film category capped at 30 minutes or less, a screenplay category at 60 pages or less — and $4.00 for any other. Categories imported earlier that were still at $0.00 on both rates were given the same figures; one you had priced yourself kept its own. See Importing from the default list.
• Duplicating a category copies both numbers, along with its type, description, limit and scorecard slots.
• An archived category keeps its numbers, and Reset still reads them for a season that attached it before it was archived.
• Saving a default does not reprice any season that already attached this category. It is where the next attach starts.

Both figures are now columns on the library table too — Technical and Creative, between the scorecard slots and Festivals — so you can read and compare every category's defaults without opening a form. They are read-only there: the form is still where a category is defined, and the table is where it is scanned. See The two pay columns.

Attaching a category in a paid season

The attach dialog says where the numbers come from: "Attached categories start at $0 for the entry fee, and at the library's default judge pay — which may itself be $0.00. Set both before submissions open."

In a volunteer season it says what it always did: "Attached categories start at $0. Set the entry fee before submissions open."

Attaching a category prices it for the paid judges who judge every category. Every judge on the season who has accepted a paid place, is Active or Paused, and is scoped to All categories is given the category's posted rates as their own, fixed at once — and is emailed, with a line in their inbox: "You can now judge Drama Film at $8.00 per scorecard." One message per judge covers everything one attach added. Judges scoped to specific categories are untouched, because the new category is not in their scope.

Price the category in the library before you attach it. A judge is not given a posted rate of $0.00 for a role they hold — that would fix them at nothing for good — so a category attached at $0.00 leaves those judges without a rate for it until you price it. Setting its rate in Settings (or resetting it to a priced library default) then gives each of them the posted figures and tells them once, but anything they filed there before that stays unpriced. See Two ways to end up with unpriced work.

A new festival's first season

A festival created from the Add a festival form is born with the categories in your library's default set, and its first season copies their library defaults straight away. Categories that came from the default list bring their $2.00 or $4.00; any whose defaults are $0.00 open with a red rate on that first season. Price the library before you create the festival, or price the season afterwards. See What a new festival starts with.

What a filed scorecard records

The moment a judge files a scorecard, FilmScorecard copies a rate onto it. The rate it copies is that judge's own — the figures their invitation named, not the season's posted rates. That record never changes afterwards: not when you edit the season, not when you reset to the library, not if the category is later detached.

And whether it copies anything at all is decided by that judge's own place, not by the season. A volunteer judge on a paying season records zero; a paid judge on the same season records their figures. That is the change: the table below used to be keyed on the season.

Zero and unpriced are different answers and always were. Zero says "this was deliberately free" and counts as a real line at $0.00; unpriced says "nobody decided" and is reported in amber and left out of every total. A volunteer judge's work is the first kind, whatever season it happens on.

The category is recorded either way, volunteer work included, so a volunteer's $0.00 lines still group by category on the ledger.

A judge is never blocked by a pricing problem. Filing succeeds whatever the rates say; an unpriced scorecard is a thing to fix later, not a thing that stops the work.

Filing the same scorecard twice does not re-record it. The first filing wins, and a rate you changed in between does not rewrite it.

Every judge already on a season has rates. They were given the season's posted figures when this shipped, over the categories they were already allowed to work, so nobody was left unpriced by the change itself. The judges a later attach had left without a rate were priced too, when attaching started to price categories: every accepted paid judge on All categories was given the season's current posted figures for any attached category they had no rate for — except a $0.00 one. Nothing was emailed, and scorecards they had already filed there stay unpriced. The ways a gap can still open are listed in What an invitation pays.

A film in more than one category

A creative scorecard belongs to one category, so its rate is that judge's rate for that category.

A technical review does not: it is filed against the film, not against a category, and one technical scorecard is usually shared by several categories. Its rate is taken from the first of that film's categories that this judge is allowed to work, in the order they were attached to the season, whose technical scorecard is the one being filed.

A judge's own scope is part of that answer, and this is a correction: it used to be ignored, so a judge limited to Documentary Feature could be paid at Drama Film's rate for the same review. They are now priced at the category the queue actually routed them to.

So a film entered in two categories a judge can both work, with different technical rates, is priced at one of them — predictably, but not necessarily the one you would pick. If the two ought to be worth the same, set them the same.

Where this number surfaces

The season's Payouts screen is where these records are added up: once a scorecard is approved on the Review Queue, the amount it recorded joins that judge's approved pay on the Ledger tab, and unpriced scorecards are counted in amber and left out of every figure. A volunteer judge appears there too, at $0.00, folded into "Nothing payable". See Paying your judges.

It also reaches the judge. Their pay statement — the same document in two places, one opened from a ledger row, one from the Statements tab of the judge's Earnings screen — groups their approved scorecards by category and rate, and ends with a Scorecards page listing each one by title with the rate it recorded; the Scorecards tab of Earnings lists each approved scorecard with its rate too. The figure a scorecard recorded is visible to the person who filed it. See Your pay statement. An invoice the judge sends you freezes the same lines — see Judge invoices.

Nothing else displays it: not the Review Queue, not the Season overview, not the judging screens a judge works on.

Starting next season

Duplicate season carries both rates for every category and the season's Paid/Volunteer setting, alongside the entry fees and the rest of the season's rules — see Season and festival actions.

The rates come from the season you duplicated, not from the library. Next season starts where this one finished, which is what "start next season" usually means. If you would rather have the library's numbers, use Reset pay to library on the new season.

Judges are not carried over, so nobody's rates and nobody's volunteer arrangement come with them. Everyone is invited afresh, at the new season's posted figures or whatever you tune — and as paid or volunteer as you choose then.

What judges are told

A judge is never shown a season's posted rates or a category's pay in general. Whether their own place pays them, they of course know — their invitation said so, and their Earnings screen keeps paid places and volunteer places on different tabs — but the posted figures themselves reach no judging screen, queue or email.

A volunteer judge is never told that other judges on the same season are being paid. Their invitation, their inbox and their Earnings screen say only that their own work carries no payout.

They are shown their own rates, in these places and only these:

1. The invitation email names a range per scorecard type.
2. The page that link opens — and its copy on their Invitations tab — lists every category with both figures. See What an invitation pays and Your judging invitation.
3. Their pay statement, once they have filed work and you have approved it: one line per category and rate, with what each line comes to, what you have recorded paying them, and the balance, then every approved scorecard by title with its rate. It exists only for a paid place — see Your pay statement. Any invoice they send you carries the same lines, frozen.
4. Their Earnings screen, which lists each approved scorecard with the rate it recorded, and adds their places' balances together — theirs alone, across every festival they judge for. See Earnings.
5. The email and inbox line that tells them a category was added to their place after they accepted — "You can now judge Drama Film at $8.00 per scorecard." — whether you added it to their scope or attached it to the season. See Judges.

Your organization's payment terms ride beside those rates — "Paid 30 days after invoice" — when you have set any. See Organization settings.

The gap between what one judge was offered and what the season posts is not visible to them, which is why the posted set is deliberately kept off the invitation page: it would be evidence about what other judges were offered. Their statement and their Earnings screen show only the figures their own scorecards recorded, and no other judge's figures reach either — no season total, no average, no other name.

The library's own columns reach no judge at all. They are on an organization screen judges cannot open.

Nothing is charged and nothing is paid

• These rates are configuration. No payout is created, no transfer, no Stripe anything. The payments you make outside the platform are recorded against what these rates produced — see Paying your judges — and a judge can send you an invoice for them, which you mark paid the same way, from the invoice or from the Ledger's Invoices to pay — see Judge invoices.
• What you owe an individual judge is the set of rates on their invitation — copied from this screen when they were invited, possibly tuned for them, and fixed when they accepted — or nothing at all, if they were invited as a volunteer. See What an invitation pays. The old single figure on a roster row is no longer written by anything.
• The Season overview's Judge compensation block does not read these numbers. It multiplies approved scorecards by a separate season figure that no screen sets, so it will keep reading $0.00 however you price your categories — see The Season overview. The screen that does read them is Payouts (Paying your judges).

Messages

Related guides

• Paying your judges — where these records end up: the season's pay ledger under Payouts, logging the payments you make, each judge's pay statement, and how a volunteer's $0.00 lines read.
• Judge invoices — invoices your judges send from their statements, and the payment terms that give them a due date.
• The payments log — the tab beside it: every payment the season has recorded, one row each.
• Your pay statement — the judge's copy of that statement, and Earnings — the judge's screen where every one of these records lands.
• What an invitation pays — the next step in the chain: tuning these rates for one judge, inviting one judge as a volunteer, what the judge is shown, and when the figures stop being editable.
• A season's categories and awards — the rest of the Categories tab: attaching, detaching, entry fees and add-on prices.
• Categories and scorecards — the organization library the defaults live in, and the two columns that now show them.
• What a new festival starts with — which library categories a new festival's first season is priced from.
• Festival settings — the tabbed screen and how each tab saves.
• Season and festival actions — carrying a season's rates and pay setting into next year.
• Judges, Judge requests and Invites sent — where the paid records that lock the season at Paid are made, and where they are cleared.