# Judge pay

> From FilmScorecard Help: https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/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](#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](#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](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/paying-your-judges.md).

**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](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/what-an-invitation-pays.md).

## The two screens

| Screen | What you set there |
| --- | --- |
| **Categories and scorecards** → a category's form | **Default technical pay** and **Default creative pay** — where a category's pay *starts*. Both are also **shown as columns** on that screen's table. |
| **Festival settings** → **Categories** tab | **Judge pay this season** (Paid or Volunteer), and this season's **Technical pay** and **Creative pay** for every attached category. |

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](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/festival-settings.md) 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](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/categories-and-scorecards.md). **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](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/what-an-invitation-pays.md).

## 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](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/what-an-invitation-pays.md).
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 season | A judge can be invited as | An open-call applicant can apply as |
| --- | --- | --- |
| **Paid** | Paid **or** Volunteer | Paid **or** Volunteer |
| **Volunteer** | Volunteer only | Volunteer only |

**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](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/what-an-invitation-pays.md#2-how-this-judge-is-paid))
or on the application's third step (see
[Applying to an open call](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/applying-to-an-open-call.md#step-3--rate-and-submit)).

**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](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/paying-your-judges.md) ledger shows a notice
instead of a ledger, and nobody on it has a pay statement — their portal's
[Earnings](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/earnings.md) 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](#what-a-filed-scorecard-records) and
[Paying your judges](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/paying-your-judges.md).

### 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](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/judges.md).

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

| Counted | Why |
| --- | --- |
| A **paid** place somebody accepted, **whatever has happened since** | They agreed to paid terms. A judge you later paused or removed still accepted once. |
| A **paid** invitation still out and unanswered | The offer on that judge's screen promises money. Revoke it and it stops counting. |
| A **paid** open-call application that is neither accepted nor declined | Accepting it would write a paid place. Decline it and it stops counting. A countered application is still open, and still counts. |

**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](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/invites-sent.md), decline the open paid
  applications on [Judge requests](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/judge-requests.md) — 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](#where-a-categorys-pay-starts-the-library).

**None of that applies in the library.** A `$0.00` in the Technical or Creative
column of [Categories and scorecards](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/categories-and-scorecards.md#the-two-pay-columns)
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](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/what-an-invitation-pays.md#000-on-a-picked-category-is-an-error).
**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](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/paying-your-judges.md)), **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](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/earnings.md) 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](#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](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/categories-and-scorecards.md#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:

| Field | What it means |
| --- | --- |
| **Default technical pay** | What a technical review on this category is worth, per scorecard filed, when it is attached to a season. |
| **Default creative pay** | The same for the creative scorecard. |

- **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](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/importing-from-the-default-list.md#a-category).
- **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](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/categories-and-scorecards.md#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](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/what-an-invitation-pays.md#two-ways-to-end-up-with-unpriced-work).

### A new festival's first season

A festival created from the
[Add a festival](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/adding-a-festival.md) 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](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/what-a-new-festival-starts-with.md).

## 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.

| The judge's place, at that moment | What the scorecard records |
| --- | --- |
| **Volunteer** — on a volunteer season, or a volunteer place on a paid one | Zero — deliberately free, and nothing is owed. Their stored rates are not read at all. |
| **Paid**, creative scorecard | That judge's creative rate **for the category the scorecard belongs to**. |
| **Paid**, technical review | That judge's technical rate for the category the queue routed them to — see below. |
| **Paid**, but that judge's rate is `$0.00` | **Unpriced.** Not zero: a rate nobody set is not the same as a rate somebody set to nothing. |
| **Paid**, but the judge holds no rate for that category at all | **Unpriced.** Nothing falls back to the season's figure. |
| **Paid**, but the category was detached or its technical scorecard swapped while the judge held the film | **Unpriced.** The filing still succeeds. |
| **Paid**, and the category was taken out of **the judge's scope** while they held the film | **Their agreed rate for it.** A film in hand can be finished, and it pays what was agreed — creative and technical alike. |
| Filled in by a coordinator rather than a judge | Nothing. Staff filings are not paid work. |
| Filed before category pay shipped | **Unpriced.** Nothing was backfilled. |

**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](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/what-an-invitation-pays.md#two-ways-to-end-up-with-unpriced-work).

### 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](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/review-queue.md), 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](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/paying-your-judges.md).

**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](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/earnings.md) 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](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/your-pay.md).
**An invoice the judge sends you freezes the same lines** — see
[Judge invoices](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/invoices.md).

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](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/season-actions.md).

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](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/what-an-invitation-pays.md#what-the-judge-is-emailed)
   and [Your judging invitation](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/your-judging-invitation.md).
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](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/your-pay.md). **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](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/earnings.md).
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](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/judges.md#judging-scope).

**Your organization's payment terms ride beside those rates** — "Paid 30 days
after invoice" — when you have set any. See
[Organization settings](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/organization-settings.md#judge-payment-terms).

**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](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/paying-your-judges.md) — 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](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/invoices.md).
- **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](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/what-an-invitation-pays.md). 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](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/season-overview.md#revenue). The
  screen that does read them is **Payouts**
  ([Paying your judges](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/paying-your-judges.md)).

## Messages

| The message | What it means |
| --- | --- |
| 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. | The season is locked at Paid. Nothing changed. Revoke the open paid invitations and decline the open paid applications; a judge who has already accepted paid terms settles it for good. |
| Every category already matches its library default. Nothing was changed. | **Reset pay to library** found nothing to do — the button was out of date. |
| Enter an amount like 25 or 25.00. | A rate box on the Categories tab holds something that is not a plain amount, or has more than two decimals. |
| Enter an amount like 8 or 8.00. | The same, in the library's Default pay fields. |
| Enter an amount between $0 and $10,000.00. | The amount is outside the range. |
| You do not have permission to change this festival's settings. | Season rates and the season's pay setting need owner or organization-admin access. |
| You do not have permission to change this library. | Library defaults are owner-only. |
| Something in the form is not valid. Check the fields and try again. | The change was rejected before it reached the database. |
| The change could not be saved. Try again. | Anything else. Nothing partial is saved. |
| 2 of 5 changes could not be saved. Try again. | **Save** wrote some of what was waiting and not the rest. What did not save stays waiting — a rate keeps what you typed, with the reason under it. |

## Related guides

- [Paying your judges](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/paying-your-judges.md) — 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](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/invoices.md) — invoices your judges send from their
  statements, and the payment terms that give them a due date.
- [The payments log](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/payments-log.md) — the tab beside it: every payment the
  season has recorded, one row each.
- [Your pay statement](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/your-pay.md) — the judge's copy of that statement,
  and [Earnings](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/earnings.md) — the judge's screen where every one of these
  records lands.
- [What an invitation pays](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/what-an-invitation-pays.md) — 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](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/season-categories-and-awards.md) — the
  rest of the Categories tab: attaching, detaching, entry fees and add-on
  prices.
- [Categories and scorecards](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/categories-and-scorecards.md) — the
  organization library the defaults live in, and the two columns that now show
  them.
- [What a new festival starts with](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/what-a-new-festival-starts-with.md) —
  which library categories a new festival's first season is priced from.
- [Festival settings](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/festival-settings.md) — the tabbed screen and how
  each tab saves.
- [Season and festival actions](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/season-actions.md) — carrying a season's
  rates and pay setting into next year.
- [Judges](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/judges.md), [Judge requests](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/judge-requests.md) and
  [Invites sent](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/invites-sent.md) — where the paid records that lock the
  season at Paid are made, and where they are cleared.