# Judge requests

> From FilmScorecard Help: https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/judge-requests

Judges who have applied to one of **this season's** open calls. This is where
you shortlist them, reply with different prices, message them, turn them down,
or put them straight onto the season they applied to.

It is the second of three tabs on a season's Judges screen. The first is the
[Roster](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/judges.md) — the panel you have already built — and the third is
[Invites sent](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/invites-sent.md), the offers this season has out. This tab is
the other direction from both: **they came to you, and they have answered the
prices your season posts** — or told you they do not want to be paid at all.

**And the conversation now goes both ways.** When you reply with different
prices, the applicant can accept your figures or send back their own, and the
row tells you which — see
[What the judge does with your counter](#what-the-judge-does-with-your-counter).

**These tabs moved.** They used to sit on your organization's Judges screen and
cover every festival at once. They are now on the season the work belongs to,
and **the old addresses no longer exist** — see
[Finding the screen](#finding-the-screen).

## Finding the screen

**Judges** in the season block of the left navigation opens the season's Judges
screen. A strip of three tabs sits under the **Judges** heading:

| Tab | What it holds | Its count |
| --- | --- | --- |
| **Roster** | The people on this season's panel. See [Judges](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/judges.md). | Every row on the roster. |
| **Requests** | Applications judges filed against **this season's** open calls. | The ones waiting on you — see [The tab counts](#the-tab-counts). |
| **Invites sent** | Every offer this season has sent. See [Invites sent](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/invites-sent.md). | Offers still unanswered. |

The addresses are:

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

**The three tabs are one page**, so switching between them is instant and
nothing reloads; the address names the tab you are on. The season's older
addresses, `…/judges/requests` and `…/judges/invites`, still work and open the
tab they name — so a link in an email sent before the change still lands here.

**The old organization-wide addresses are gone.**
`/org/<organization>/judges/requests` and `/org/<organization>/judges/invites`
now show "page not found". `/org/<organization>/judges` still works and sends
you to the [Judges directory](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/judges-directory.md), which is the only thing
left in that area.

**There is no longer one screen showing every festival's requests at once.**
Requests belong to the season whose call they were filed against, and you read
them there. A second festival's applications are on that festival's season.

Two small things worth knowing:

- **Nothing else is kept in the address.** Your search, the Status filter, the
  sort, your row selection and the record you have open are working state: they
  reset when you leave, and the link you copy opens the plain tab for a
  colleague.
- **The browser tab is titled "Judges, *your festival*"**, the same on all
  three tabs.

### The tab counts

| Badge | What it counts | When it is amber |
| --- | --- | --- |
| **Roster** | Every row on this season's roster. | Never. Nothing on it is waiting on a person. |
| **Requests** | Applications **awaiting a decision** — New and Shortlisted, **plus every countered row the judge has answered**. | Whenever it is above zero. |
| **Invites sent** | Offers nobody has answered. | Never. An open offer is a fact about the season, not something waiting on you. |

- **A shortlisted request still counts.** Shortlisting sends nothing to the
  judge and leaves the move with you, so it is not a decision.
- **A counter nobody has answered does not count.** You have already acted and
  the ball is with the judge.
- **An answered counter counts again.** The moment an applicant accepts your
  figures or sends back their own, the move is yours, so the row rejoins the
  badge.
- **Zero shows no badge at all**, not a `0`.
- **Each count is kept by its own tab's list.** While you are on this tab the
  Requests count moves the moment one of your own actions has been re-read —
  accepting or declining a request drops it by one — and within a minute of
  a judge's move: a new application, an answer to your counter, a withdrawal.
  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 move shows when you come back. See
  [The list keeps itself up to date](#the-list-keeps-itself-up-to-date).

## Who can work here

**The two pipeline tabs need permission to manage judges on this season.** That
is a capability rather than a job title, and it is set on
[Festival access](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/festival-access.md):

| Who | Sees Requests and Invites sent |
| --- | --- |
| Organization owner, organization admin | **Yes** |
| **Festival admin** or **Coordinator** on this festival or season | **Yes**, by default |
| **Programmer** or **Viewer** | **No**, by default |
| An ordinary member with no festival role here | **No** |
| FilmScorecard platform administrator | **Yes** |

**Per-person overrides are honoured in both directions.** Ticking *Manage
judges and assignments* for one person on one grant gives them these tabs;
un-ticking it takes them away from a coordinator who would otherwise have them.

**Somebody without it is not shown a disabled strip.** They open the season's
Judges screen and get the Roster with **no tab strip at all**, and an address
naming either tab opens the Roster for them instead.

**Acting is narrower than reading, and the difference is real.** Every control
that changes something also needs write access to the season, which **Viewer
never has**. So a viewer who has been given the manage-judges override reads
every row, opens every record, and finds every commit greyed:

> You need permission to manage judges on this season.

- **A logged-out visitor is sent to the log-in screen first.**
- **Judges cannot open this screen.** Nothing on it is shown to them — not
  another applicant's prices, not your shortlist. What an applicant *can* see of
  their own application, including your counter and the controls for answering
  it, is on [Open calls](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/open-calls.md) and
  [Applying to an open call](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/applying-to-an-open-call.md).

## The list keeps itself up to date

**The season's requests 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** — a shortlist, a counter, a
  decline, an acceptance, a message. Each of those except the shortlist 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. **A shortlist on one
  row moves first** and re-reads the list once its save lands — see
  [Shortlisting](#shortlisting). An acceptance re-reads the
  [Roster](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/judges.md) and [Invites sent](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/invites-sent.md) too, since it
  writes a judge onto the season.

What arrives that way is what other people have been doing: a new application
appears as a **New** row, a judge's answer to your counter turns the pill green
or amber and puts the row back in the count, a colleague's shortlist or
decision moves a row, a withdrawal takes one away — each within a minute, in
place, under whatever search, filter and sort you are working in. The header's
"7 open requests, 4 awaiting a decision" 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 decided — a request a colleague accepts while
you had it ticked drops out of your selection and out of the count on the bulk
bar, because there is nothing left there to act on.

**An open record follows its row.** A judge's answer to your counter, their
revised figures, a colleague's shortlist — each reaches the panel within a
minute without your closing it. A row that leaves the list takes the panel
with it: a request the judge withdraws while you are reading it closes on its
own, and so does one that leaves your filter — a New request you have open
under the New filter closes when a colleague shortlists it.

### 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".

## Where these requests come from

**A judge browses the Open calls board, opens one of your calls, presses Start
application and fills in a three-step form.** Submitting it creates the row on
this tab, as **New**. Nothing else creates a request: there is no way to add one
by hand.

**What they applied for is now specific.** An application names:

- **which kind of judging they want** — creative, technical, **or both** on a
  call that hires for both — which is the **Role** column;
- **which categories** they want to be assigned from, out of the ones the call
  opens;
- **whether they want to be paid at all** — see
  [An applicant can apply as a volunteer](#an-applicant-can-apply-as-a-volunteer);
- **a price for each of those categories**, which is either the figure your
  season posts for it or a figure they asked for instead — **two prices per
  category, creative and technical, on an application for both**.

**It no longer names their availability.** The application stopped asking how
many films a week a judge can take and when they are away, so a new request
carries neither. Requests filed before that change still show theirs.

**Only calls belonging to this season appear here.** A call belongs to exactly
one season, so the narrowing is total — there is no way for another season's
application to show up on this tab, and no way for one of this season's to be
missing from it.

### An applicant can apply as a volunteer

**On a call that pays, the third step of the application asks the judge whether
they want to be paid.** Paid is where it starts, so an untouched step 3 is a
complete application at the prices your season posts; choosing **Volunteer**
sends an application that asks for nothing.

**On a call that does not pay, there is no choice** — every application to a
volunteer season is a volunteer one, as it always was — and **no applicant can
ask to be paid on one.** Your season's Paid or Volunteer setting is a **ceiling**
over what any one application can be, not a rule about all of them. See
[Judge pay](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/judge-pay.md#paid-or-volunteer-is-a-ceiling-not-a-rule).

What a volunteer application means on this tab:

- **Its Rates cell is empty**, and it is never marked as differing from your
  posted prices — asking for nothing is not an argument about a number.
- **Counter is not offered on it**, in the row menu or in the record's footer.
  There is nothing to counter. See [Counter the rate](#counter-the-rate).
- **The record's rate block is a sentence rather than a table** — see
  [What they asked for](#what-they-asked-for).
- **Accepting it puts them on the season as a volunteer**, and there is no
  control anywhere that turns that into a paid place. See
  [Accepting a volunteer application](#accepting-a-volunteer-application).

**Nothing tells the judge that other applicants asked to be paid**, and nothing
tells your other judges that this one did not.

### Posting the call in the first place

**You write and post the call yourself**, on **Settings → Judging**: the **Open
judge call** card, and its **Accepting applications** switch. Saving it on puts
the season on the judge portal's board; saving it off takes it down again
without touching the applications you already hold. **You also choose there
which kind of judging the call hires for** — technical, creative or both — which
is what the *Applying as* row on every record below reflects, **and which of
your categories it opens**, which is what an applicant can pick from. The whole
card is [Opening a judge call](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/opening-a-judge-call.md).

**Nothing on that card advertises that volunteering is possible.** The board and
the call's page quote what your categories pay; the choice lives on the
application form, and there is no setting that turns it off.

Until somebody posts a call, the season has no call for anyone to apply to and
this tab reads:

> **No open call for this season**
>
> Requests arrive once a call is posted for this season.

There is deliberately **no button** on that empty state — Settings is where a
call is written, and this tab does not send you there.

**No email tells you an application arrived.** The amber count beside
**Requests** is the only signal: it moves within a minute while you are on this
tab, and shows a new application when you open the tab otherwise. **A judge
answering your counter does email you** — see
[What you are emailed when a judge answers](#what-you-are-emailed-when-a-judge-answers).

## The header

Under the **Judges** heading and the tab strip, each pipeline tab draws its own
two lines:

> Northern Lights Festival, 2026 Season
>
> `7 open requests, 4 awaiting a decision`   `● Call budget $6.00 to $14.00 per film`

- **"Open"** means not yet decided — New, Shortlisted and Countered rows
  together, whether or not the judge has answered.
- **"Awaiting a decision"** is New and Shortlisted **plus every countered row
  the judge has answered**, and it is the same number as the tab's badge. **A
  counter nobody has answered is open but the ball is with the judge**, which is
  why it is counted in one and not the other; once they answer, the move is
  yours again and the row joins both numbers.
- **Both numbers are of the whole tab**, not of what your filters have left.

### The call-budget pill

**It is present only when at least one of this season's calls posted a rate
range**, and it spans them: the lowest floor and the highest ceiling across
every call on the season that posted one. A call with no range contributes
nothing and does not blank the pill.

**A call you post yourself never carries one.** The Open judge call card has no
range field — what a judge is quoted comes from the per-category rates on
[Judge pay](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/judge-pay.md) — so a season whose only call was written there
shows no pill at all.

**When no call posted a range there is no pill at all** — not `$0.00 to $0.00`,
not an em-dash. A budget nobody set is not a budget of nothing.

**No judge sees this figure any more.** What an applicant is shown is derived
from what your season posts per category — see
[Judge pay](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/judge-pay.md) — so this pill is an internal note about a range
somebody typed into a call, not the money anyone is quoted. **Nothing checks a
figure against it** either; see
[Counter the rate](#counter-the-rate).

## Reading a row

| Column | What it holds |
| --- | --- |
| *(no heading)* | A **checkbox**, on undecided rows only. See [Selecting rows](#selecting-rows-and-acting-on-several-at-once). |
| **Judge** | The name they applied under, as a button that opens their record, over their monospace `JDG-` number and the email address they gave. |
| **Role** | **Creative judge**, **Technical reviewer** or **Creative + Technical** — the kind of judging they applied for. See [The Role column](#the-role-column). |
| **Rates** | An amber **Rates differ** mark when the application asks anything other than what your season posts, and **nothing at all otherwise**. See [The Rates column](#the-rates-column). |
| **Capacity** | **How many films a week they said they could take**, as `12/week`, on a request filed before the application stopped asking. **An em-dash on every new request.** |
| **Applied** | The day they applied, as `Aug 11`. See [Dates](#dates). |
| **Status** | One of the seven pills below. See [The statuses](#the-statuses). |
| **Last update** | The last thing that happened and its day, or a live counter's figure. See [The Last update column](#the-last-update-column). |
| *(no heading)* | The three-dot **row menu**. |

**No column says whether an applicant asked to be paid.** Open the record for
that: a volunteer application's rate block says so in a sentence, and its
Counter control is absent.

### The Role column

One pill: the kind of judging this application asked for, in the same words the
[Roster](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/judges.md) and [Invites sent](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/invites-sent.md) use. **An application
for both reads Creative + Technical**, still one pill and still one row: a judge
may file one application per call, and on a call hiring for both kinds of
judging they can ask for both in it. Sorting by Role puts those rows between the
creative and the technical ones.

**An em-dash is an application filed before the question existed.** The record
panel's **Applying as** row is absent for the same reason. Accepting one of
these rosters them as a **Creative judge**, which is what the question's absence
used to mean.

**Festival and Open call are no longer columns.** Every row on this tab belongs
to the festival and season named above it, and a column that says the same thing
on every row says nothing. **The call is still named in the record panel and is
still matched by the search box**, which is how a season running several calls
tells them apart.

**The name and email are taken from the applicant's own account** at the moment
they applied. Nothing the judge types on the application form decides it.

### The Rates column

One question: **did this applicant ask for anything other than what you
posted?** When they did, the cell carries an amber **Rates differ** mark. When
they did not — which is most applications — **the cell is empty**, not dashed:
an application that accepted your prices is not missing anything.

**Point at the mark to see what they ask** — one figure such as `$16.00` when
every picked category settles at the same number, or a span such as
`$8.00–$16.00` when they differ. **A span is not a total**: it is the cheapest
and the dearest single figure, with no arithmetic between them. **The figures
themselves, category by category, are in the record** — see
[Opening a record](#opening-a-record).

What counts as differing:

- **A per-category application** differs when **any** category it picked asks
  something other than the figure your season posted for it at the time — on an
  application for both, its creative or its technical figure.
  **Your own counter does not count** — this is about whether the judge moved
  off your price, not whether you replied.
- **An application with no per-category rows** — one filed before per-category
  pricing — never marks a row. It carries no figure of its own any more, so
  there is nothing to differ.
- **A volunteer application never marks a row**, whether the call pays or not.
  It asks for nothing at every category, so marking it would report a counter
  nobody made. **This is now a fact about the application rather than about the
  season** — on a paying call a volunteer application sits unmarked beside
  marked paid ones.
- **Nothing to compare** — no rate posted for the categories named — is not a
  difference either.

**The figure on the mark is what accepting would pay today**, which is the same
rule accepting itself uses: **your counter only on the categories the judge has
accepted it for, and their own ask everywhere else.** A counter nobody has
answered does not move it, and neither does one they answered with figures of
their own — see [Which rate is used](#which-rate-is-used).

### The statuses

**Five states are stored on a request; the pill says seven.** Two of them are
read off the judge's answer to your counter rather than out of the request's own
status, which is why a countered row can say three different things.

| Pill | What it means |
| --- | --- |
| **New**, indigo | Filed and untouched. |
| **Shortlisted**, grey | Somebody marked it as one to come back to. **Nothing was sent to the judge.** |
| **Countered**, amber | Your festival replied with different prices and **the judge has not answered yet**. They have been emailed. |
| **Counter accepted**, green | **The judge agreed to your figures.** It records their agreement and nothing else — they are not on your panel until you accept the request. |
| **Revised ask**, amber | **The judge sent figures of their own back**, which replaced what they had asked for and withdrew your counter. |
| **Accepted**, green | Taken. The judge is on this season's roster at the agreed terms. |
| **Declined**, grey | Turned down, with a reason the judge was told. |

**Counter accepted and Revised ask are still Countered underneath.** Nothing new
is stored: both are read from the answer the judge gave, so **the Status filter
and the Status sort still work on the five** — ticking **Countered** matches all
three, and sorting by Status keeps them together. See
[Searching, filtering and sorting](#searching-filtering-and-sorting).

**Declined rows sit on a muted background** and are visibly not waiting on
anyone. The other six are drawn normally.

**The judge sees five states, not seven.** New, Shortlisted, a counter they have
already answered and a counter you have cleared all read as **Applied** on their
side of the call — your triage is yours. **A counter that is standing and
unanswered reads "Counter received", in amber**, on their board card, their
Applied tab, the call's page and their own application, because that is the one
state where something is waiting on them. Accepted and Declined read as
**Accepted** and **Not selected**. See
[Open calls](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/open-calls.md#your-status-on-a-call).

**Countered is unreachable on a volunteer application**, because the control
that produces it is not offered.

### The Last update column

Its own column, to the right of Status — it used to be a second line under the
pill.

- **The last thing that happened, with its date** — Applied, Shortlisted,
  Removed from shortlist, Countered, Counter revised, **Accepted your counter**,
  **Revised their ask**, Accepted, Declined, Message sent.
- **A live counter nobody has answered shows its figure instead** — "Countered
  at $12.00 /per", or a span such as "Countered at $8.00–$12.00 /per" across the
  categories you countered on, in monospace. A request that predates
  per-category pricing shows its single flat figure the same way. A long span
  is cut short with an ellipsis; hover it for the whole line, or open the
  record for the figures.
- **Once the judge answers, the figure gives way to the answer** — "Accepted
  your counter Sep 5", "Revised their ask Sep 5". The news is no longer the
  number, and the pill already carries the state.
- **A counter you cleared falls back to the last thing that happened**, because
  there is no figure left to name.
- **A row with no history at all shows nothing**, rather than a sentence about
  having none.
- **The heading sorts by when the last thing happened**, whatever the cell
  prints — a live counter sorts on the day you made it.

### The table scrolls sideways

**Rows stay rows at every width.** When the card is narrower than the table —
roughly 1,200 pixels — the table **scrolls sideways inside its card** instead of
restacking each request into a block. The heading row stays pinned to the top,
and **the checkbox and Judge columns stay pinned to the left** so you always
know whose figures you are reading.

The scroll region takes keyboard focus, so you can reach the right-hand columns
with the arrow keys without activating anything in them. The toolbar, the footer
line and the empty states do not move.

## A request can disappear

**A judge can withdraw their application, and withdrawing deletes it.**

- **The row leaves this tab entirely.** There is no "Withdrawn" status and no
  tombstone — the request is simply not there any more. If you are looking at
  the tab it goes within a minute, and a panel you had open on it closes with
  it.
- **Everything attached goes with it**: their note, categories, the prices agreed
  against them, away dates, and the whole history on the record, **including a
  counter you had sent and their answer to it**.
- **Nothing tells you.** No email, no notice, no entry anywhere. **The judge is
  warned**, though: while your counter is standing, their confirmation adds "The
  festival's counter goes with it."
- **They can only do it while the request is open** — New, Shortlisted or
  Countered, answered or not. **Once you have accepted or declined, they
  cannot.**
- **While the call is still open they can apply again**, which arrives as a
  brand new **New** row with a fresh date and **quoted at whatever your
  categories cost now**. Nothing of the withdrawn one comes back. **It is also
  how an applicant changes their mind about volunteering** — withdrawing and
  applying again is the only way, on either side.

The practical consequence: **if you want a request, act on it.** Accepting or
declining closes the door; shortlisting and countering do not.

## Closing the call does not close these rows

**Turning the Open judge call switch off, or letting its close date pass, stops
new applications and nothing else.** Every request already on this tab stays
exactly where it is: still readable, still shortlistable, still counterable,
still acceptable and still declinable, with no deadline of its own. **The judge
can still answer a counter after the call has closed**, for the same reason.

The applicant sees their own application marked closed on their board and can no
longer withdraw once you have decided it. If the call is closed and some
requests are still New or Shortlisted, the Open judge call card in Settings
says so — "3 requests still awaiting a decision from while the call was
open." — with a **Review requests** link back to this tab. **That card does not
count countered rows**, answered or not, so its figure can be lower than this
tab's amber count.

**Narrowing the call's categories does not close them either.** Take a category
off the call and the applications naming it stay exactly as filed: the record
still names it, you still decide it, and accepting still scopes the judge to the
categories on the application — the closed one included. The restriction governs
who applies next.

**Switching the season to Volunteer is a different matter, and it is refused
while a paid application is open.** An application asking for money cannot be
left standing under a season that has stopped paying, so the settings screen
will not make that change until every open paid application is declined — see
[Volunteer to Paid is always allowed](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/judge-pay.md#volunteer-to-paid-is-always-allowed-paid-to-volunteer-is-not).
**Volunteer applications never block it.**

## Searching, filtering and sorting

Everything on the toolbar applies immediately. There is no Apply button and no
delay, because the whole tab is already on the screen.

- **The search box** is headed "Search judge or open call" and matches **the
  judge's name, their email address, their `JDG-` number, the call's label and
  the `CALL-` code**, as substrings, ignoring capitalisation. Escape clears it,
  and so does the ✕ inside the box.
- **Status** is now **the only filter** — a tick-box list of all five stored
  statuses, each with a count. Ticking two means "either of these". **With
  nothing ticked the trigger reads "Open requests" and the list shows New, Shortlisted
  and Countered only** — the requests still waiting on somebody. Accepted and
  Declined are hidden until you tick them, and ticking one shows exactly that
  status. The Festival filter retired with the Festival column: on one
  season's screen it could only ever have offered one option.
- **Clear filters** appears in the toolbar as soon as anything is set, the
  search included, and inside the filter when it is set.

**The filter lists five statuses, not the seven pills.** Ticking **Countered**
matches every countered row — the ones still waiting on the judge, the ones they
accepted, and the ones they answered with figures of their own. **There is no
way to filter the three apart.** The pill, the amber count and the newest-first
order are how you find the answered ones.

**There is no filter for volunteer applications.** The Rates column does not
distinguish them either — an application that accepted your prices and one that
asked for nothing both show an empty cell.

**The counts beside the five statuses are measured over your search, never over
the filter itself.** Every status is listed every time, including the ones with
a count of zero — which is how you can tell that Declined exists and this season
has none.

**Changing the search or the filter clears your row selection**, so a bulk
action can never reach a row you cannot see.

### Sorting

**All seven column headings sort.** Clicking a new one sorts it **descending**
first; clicking the one you are on reverses it. The active heading carries a
caret, and **the judge's name breaks every tie**.

The list arrives sorted by **Applied, newest first**. Sorting by Status follows
the order of the five stored statuses rather than the alphabet — so Countered,
Counter accepted and Revised ask sort together — and **sorting by Capacity or by
Role puts the applicants who did not answer last, whichever way the arrow
points**: "unknown" is neither a small number nor a large one, and an
application filed before the role question existed is neither kind of judging.

**Rates sorts on the mark.** Descending puts every application that asks
something different first; ascending puts them last. Among the marked, and
among the unmarked, the judge's name decides. **Volunteer applications are
always among the unmarked.**

### The footer

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

> Showing 8 of 12 requests, filtered, sorted by Applied, descending.

The word "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 requests with nothing ticked, or the declined ones with
Declined ticked — never the hidden rows. **There is no paging and no Load
more** — every request in view is on the screen.

Under the card, the standing note:

> Every request judges filed against this season's open calls. Accepting a
> request writes the judge onto this season at the agreed rate; the notification
> runs as a background job.

### When nothing is listed

Four different empty states, and they say different things on purpose:

- **No call has been posted for this season** — "No open call for this season" /
  "Requests arrive once a call is posted for this season." No button; post one
  on [Settings → Judging](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/opening-a-judge-call.md).
- **A call exists and nobody has applied** — "No requests yet" / "Judges apply
  through this season's open calls. Applications land here the moment one is
  filed."
- **Every request has been answered** — "No open requests" / "Every request
  has been answered. Tick Accepted or Declined in the Status filter to see
  them." No Clear filters, because nothing is set.
- **Your filters exclude everything** — "No request matches these filters" /
  "Widen the status filter, or clear the search.", with **Clear filters**.

The first two are deliberately different sentences, so you can tell whose move
it is.

## The row menu

The three-dot menu opens with the judge's name and a monospace line —
`JDG-2041, CALL-201` — so you can be sure whose row you are on. It names the
**call** rather than the festival, because on a season's own screen the festival
is the one thing you cannot be unsure about.

**On a New or Shortlisted row:**

| Item | What it does |
| --- | --- |
| **Open request** | Opens the record panel. |
| **View judge profile** | Opens the judge's directory profile. Only when that judge is listed in the [Judges directory](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/judges-directory.md). |
| **Accept and add to season** | See [Accept and add to season](#accept-and-add-to-season). |
| **Counter the rate**, or **Revise your counter** once you have countered | See [Counter the rate](#counter-the-rate). **Absent on a volunteer application.** |
| **Shortlist for later**, or **Remove from shortlist** | See [Shortlisting](#shortlisting). |
| **Message the judge** | See [Message the judge](#message-the-judge). |
| **Decline request**, in amber under a divider, with "The judge is told, with the reason you pick." | See [Decline request](#decline-request). |

**On a Countered row the shortlist item is absent.** Shortlisting a request the
judge has not answered yet would throw away a live counter, so the control is
not drawn rather than drawn and refused. **That is true of all three countered
pills** — the menu is the same whether the judge has answered or not, and
**Revise your counter** is the wording on every one of them.

**On a volunteer application the counter item is absent** for the same kind of
reason: there is no figure to counter, and a control that could only fail is not
drawn. Everything else — accept, shortlist, message, decline — works exactly as
it does on a paid one.

**On an Accepted or Declined row there are two items: Open request and View
judge profile.** A decided request is a record.

**The first two items stay usable for somebody who cannot act**, because both
only open a panel. Everything below them is greyed with the explanation on
hover.

**Every action except shortlisting opens a dialog first**, and every dialog
states what committing will do before you commit it — and holds until the list
has been re-read, so the row has already moved when the dialog closes.

## Opening a record

Clicking a name, or **Open request** in the row menu, slides a panel in from the
right over the table, so you do not lose your place. 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 to your counter,
their revised figures and their note, or a colleague's shortlist reach an open
panel within a minute without your closing it. A request withdrawn while you
are reading it closes the panel. See
[The list keeps itself up to date](#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, up to four blocks.

### The judge's note

**When the applicant wrote you a note, it is the first thing on the panel** —
an indigo-edged block headed **Note from the judge**, the note itself, then a
monospace line reading "Added with the application, Aug 11".

It sits above the figures because it is the only thing on the panel a person
wrote. **When there is no note the block is simply absent** — there is no empty
state for it.

### The application

One card, in this order. **Rows the applicant did not answer are absent rather
than showing an em-dash**, because those questions were not asked of the
applications filed before the form grew them.

| Row | What it says |
| --- | --- |
| **Open call** | The call's label and its `CALL-` code. |
| **Your counter** | Only on an application filed before per-category pricing that was countered back then — a single per-film figure. Nothing writes one today. |
| **Applying as** | **Creative judge**, **Technical reviewer** or **Creative + Technical** — the kind of judging they applied for. Absent on an application filed before the question existed, where accepting rosters them as a creative judge. |
| **Your note** | The note you sent with the counter, when there was one. |
| **Their answer** | Only once the judge has answered your counter: **"Accepted your counter Sep 5"** or **"Revised their ask Sep 5"**. Absent until they answer — there is no "not yet" row. |
| **Their note** | The note the judge attached to a **revised ask**, when they wrote one. Accepting says nothing back, so this row belongs to a revision alone. |
| **Capacity** | Films a week — **only on an application filed before the form stopped asking**. A new one has no Capacity row. |
| **Away** | The stretches inside the judging window they cannot score, as `Aug 3 to Aug 17` — likewise only on an older application that named some. |
| **Categories** | The categories they asked to be assigned from. **These are the categories accepting scopes them to** — see [The scope accepting writes](#the-scope-accepting-writes). |
| **Runtimes** | The formats they said they can cover. **Accepting reads this too.** |
| **Languages** | The languages they can score. |
| **Applied** | The date. |
| **Reason** | Only on a declined row: the reason you picked. |
| **Latest** | The same line the row's Last update column carries. |

**There is no row that says "volunteer".** The rate block below is where a
volunteer application announces itself.

**"Your range" is gone.** It printed the range typed onto the open call — a
per-film guidance figure nothing reads any more — directly above a breakdown
that is per category and per scorecard. The block below answers the same
question from figures somebody actually set.

**"Proposed rate" is gone too.** An application filed before per-category
pricing used to carry one per-film figure of its own, and that figure has been
retired: such a request has no money of its own on this panel, and the block
below shows your season's posted rates for it instead.

**One answer is still not shown anywhere**: whether the judge said they need
subtitles. They are asked it on the application form and nothing on this screen
reports it.

### What they asked for

The money, per category, as a table that scrolls sideways with its **Category**
column pinned to the left. **An application for both has two tables**, headed
**Creative** and then **Technical**, each laid out as below; the line under the
second one speaks for both.

| Column | What it holds |
| --- | --- |
| **Posted** | **What your season was asking for that category at the moment they applied.** Frozen: editing the category's price afterwards does not move it, so this is always the honest record of what you quoted. |
| **Asked** | What the applicant wants — **their revised figure once they have sent one back**, since a revision replaces the ask in place. |
| **Countered** | Your reply for that category, or an em-dash where you have not made one. **A revised ask clears this whole column back to em-dashes**, because their revision withdraws your counter. |

**A row where they asked for something other than the posted figure marks
itself**: the row is tinted amber with an amber bar down its left edge, its
Asked figure is drawn amber and bold, and under that figure is **how far off it
is, signed** — `+$4.00` when they ask more than you posted, `−$1.50` when they
ask less. That is the whole legend — the rows you need to look at pick
themselves out, and the figure under each says how much is at stake.

Under the table, one line, and on a countered request it names the figure
accepting would use:

| The line | When |
| --- | --- |
| "Per scorecard filed. Posted is what this festival was asking when they applied — a later price change does not move it." | No counter has been made. |
| "They have not answered your counter. Accepting now pays what they asked." | Your counter is standing and unanswered. |
| "They accepted your counter. Accepting pays these figures." | They accepted. |
| "They sent back a revised ask. Accepting pays what they now ask." | They sent figures back. |
| "Your counter is what accepting will pay. Where you have not countered, they are paid what they asked." | **On a decided record that carries a counter.** Read it as history rather than as a rule: what was actually written is on the [Roster](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/judges.md). |

Three cases this block reads differently:

- **A volunteer application** replaces the table with a sentence about **the
  judge**: "This judge holds a volunteer seat on this season. No scorecard they
  file carries a payout, so there is no rate to break down." **It used to say
  "This season is volunteer"**, which stopped being true the moment a paying
  season could hold one volunteer beside its paid judges.
- **An application that predates per-category pricing** has nothing of its own to
  show, so the block falls back to **the season's posted rates** for the
  categories it named, headed **Category rates** — a price list, not an
  agreement.
- **A season with no categories attached** says so: "This season has no
  categories attached yet, so there is nothing to price."

### Profile

Then, when the applicant is listed in the judges directory: **Based in**,
**Credits**, **Past festivals**, and their bio as prose. An applicant who is not
in the directory gets no Profile block at all rather than an empty one.

### The footer

The panel's footer carries **the same actions as the row menu**, minus Open
request — you are already looking at the record. On a New or Shortlisted row
that reads:

> **Accept and add to season** · Counter the rate · Shortlist for later ·
> Message the judge · **Decline request**

**On a volunteer application, Counter the rate is not in that row either.** The
footer takes its actions from the same list the menu does, so the two cannot
disagree.

**On a decided record there is a single Close button.** For somebody who cannot
act, every button except Close is greyed with the same explanation the row menu
gives.

## The judge's profile panel

**View judge profile** opens the same panel the
[Judges directory](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/judges-directory.md) opens — the judge's own Profile,
Seasons and References tabs — over this tab, without navigating anywhere.

Two differences from the directory's version:

- **The private note is not on it.** That is a directory write and it stays on
  the directory screen.
- **Its footer is Close, then Open request**, which closes the profile and opens
  that judge's request record.

It reads the same directory pool the Invites sent tab's picker draws from,
re-read when you come back to the window — so a profile a judge has just
changed is what you see.

**What a judge's card says about pay — Paid or Volunteer — is their own
answer**, not this application. Somebody whose profile reads Paid can still
have applied as a volunteer, and somebody whose profile reads Volunteer can
still have asked you for money.

## Selecting rows, and acting on several at once

**Undecided rows carry a checkbox**; New, Shortlisted and Countered rows can be
selected, and Accepted and Declined ones cannot. The checkbox in the heading row
selects **every undecided row currently on screen** and clears them again.

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

> ✓ **3 selected**   Clear selection            Shortlist · **Decline** · **Accept**

- **Nothing commits from the bar.** Each button opens one confirm dialog naming
  the count, exactly as the row menu does, and the dialog holds until the list
  has been re-read.
- **Decline asks once for a reason and an optional note, and uses them for every
  selected record.**
- **Accepting in bulk accepts each application on its own terms** — every judge
  lands on the prices agreed with them, **which is your counter only where that
  judge accepted it**, and on the scope their own application named, not on one
  figure or one scope for the batch. **A volunteer application in the selection
  lands as a volunteer**, and a paid one beside it lands paid.
- **There is no bulk Counter**, so the volunteer absence never has to be
  explained here.
- **Selection does not survive a tab switch**, and changing the search or the
  filter clears it.
- **At most 200 records at a time.** A larger selection is refused with "Select
  at most 200 records at a time."

### A bulk action is not all-or-nothing

**Records commit one at a time and there is no rollback.** Each one goes through
exactly the same checks, writes exactly the same history and queues exactly the
same email as it would on its own — and the message afterwards tallies what
happened:

| What you see | What it means |
| --- | --- |
| "5 accepted." | Everything committed. |
| "4 accepted, 1 could not be accepted." | Four went through. One did not — the re-read list shows where it is. |
| "That record could not be accepted. Reload the page to see where it is now." | The only selected record failed. |
| "None of the 3 records could be accepted. Reload the page to see where they are now." | Nothing committed. |

**A record somebody else moved while you were deciding is one line of that
tally, never an overwrite.** So is a record in a state the verb cannot reach —
Shortlist on an already-shortlisted row simply reports it as done.

**A bulk accept reports counts and nothing else.** The per-record sentence that
names a judge's scope — the one below about categories that went missing — is
only shown when you accept a single record, and so is the one that names
`Volunteer, no payout`. Check the [Roster](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/judges.md) after a batch if any of
those applications were old enough for their categories to have moved.

## Shortlisting

**Shortlist for later** commits straight from the menu — no dialog, because
nothing leaves the system. The status becomes Shortlisted, the menu item becomes
**Remove from shortlist**, and a message appears at the bottom of the screen:

> Ada Reyes shortlisted. Nothing is sent to the judge.

**The row moves the moment you press it**, and the save follows behind. If the
save is refused, **that row goes back to where it was** and the message at the
bottom of the screen says why — so a row that stays where you put it has been
saved. A second press on a row that is still saving is ignored, and a record
you pressed it from closes at once.

- **The shortlist belongs to the festival, not to you.** A colleague opening
  this tab sees the same shortlisted rows — and one who already has it open
  sees yours within a minute.
- **The judge is never told.** No email, no record on their side — their own
  screen still reads "Applied". **They can still withdraw.**
- **A shortlisted request still counts in the Requests badge**, because
  shortlisting is not a decision.
- **It works on a volunteer application** exactly as on any other.

Removing from the shortlist puts the row back to New. Shortlisting something
that is already shortlisted says so — "Ada Reyes is already shortlisted." —
rather than pretending somebody raced you.

## Counter the rate

**Not offered on a volunteer application.** There is no figure to counter, and
offering money to somebody who applied without asking for any would bind them to
terms they never saw. If the control is reached another way — a stale tab, an
old link — the server refuses it in the same words:

> This applicant applied as a volunteer, so there is no rate to counter. To pay
> them, send a paid invitation from the judge directory.

**That sentence is also the answer to "how do I pay this person?"** Decline the
application, or accept it and then revoke and re-invite, and send them a paid
invitation from the [Judges directory](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/judges-directory.md) — the path that
puts real figures in front of a judge before they agree to anything. See
[Paying a volunteer applicant](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/what-an-invitation-pays.md#paying-a-volunteer-applicant).

**On a paid application the counter is per category, because the application
is.** The menu item reads **Counter the rate** (or **Revise your counter** once
you have countered), and the dialog it opens is headed **Counter the rates**,
with the judge's own figure in the subhead:

> Ada Reyes asked $8.00–$16.00 /per for Features first pass.

Under it, **one row per category the applicant picked**:

- The category's name, with a monospace line under it — `asked $16.00 · posted
  $12.00` — so you can see what they want and what you were asking, together.
  **The rows where those two figures differ are tinted amber**, with the line
  drawn amber, the same marking as the record's rate table.
- **A box on the right, prefilled with what they asked for.** That is deliberate
  and it is the opposite of the judge's own form: an untouched box here means
  "I am countering at what they asked", which is a real offer you are making, so
  it is shown as a figure you can see yourself sending. **Reopening the dialog to
  revise a counter prefills with the figures you last sent**, and after a judge
  has sent a revised ask it prefills with their new ask, which is what you are
  now countering.
- Type it however you like: `$6.50`, `6.50` and `1,500` are all read correctly.
  Two decimal places at most.

**On an application for both, the boxes come in two groups**, headed
**Creative** and **Technical** — one box per category in each — and you counter
both figures in the one dialog. The judge's answer covers both.

**Clearing a box withdraws the counter on that category**, and the judge is then
paid what they asked for it. **Clearing every box** sends a counter that offers
nothing new: the request still moves to Countered, and the message afterwards
says "Counter cleared sent to Ada Reyes."

Then **Note to the judge, optional**, under 500 characters, with the line "Why
these numbers, and what you can offer in volume." under it. And:

> The request moves to Countered and the judge is asked to accept or send back a
> revised ask. Clearing a box drops that category's counter. Nothing is charged
> until they accept.

**An application that predates per-category pricing cannot be countered here.**
There are no rows to fill in, so the dialog says so and **Send counter** stays
off:

> This application was made before per-category rates, so there is nothing here
> to counter. Accept it at the season's posted prices, or decline it.

Such an application names no rate of its own — the single figure it was filed
with has been retired — so accepting it writes your season's posted prices,
exactly as the record's rate block and the Accept dialog say.

### The call's range is guidance, and nothing enforces it

**A counter on a request is not checked against anything.** The range somebody
typed onto the open call is not consulted, is not shown in this dialog, and is
not shown to the judge anywhere — a posted range says what the festival
budgeted, not what it is permitted to offer, and after per-category pricing it
drives no judge-facing figure at all. **A call posted from Settings carries no
range in the first place.**

**Any amount from $0.00 to $10,000.00 is accepted**, above your posted price or
below it. The only thing that can fail here is a box you cannot read: "Enter
amounts like 12.50, or clear a box to drop that counter." — and the commit is
blocked until every box is either empty or a readable amount, because a counter
that silently dropped one category would be worse than one that refuses to
send.

**There is no counter on an *invitation* at all**, in either direction — see
[Invites sent](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/invites-sent.md#nobody-can-counter-an-invitation). This tab
is the one place a rate is negotiated.

### What sending does

The status becomes Countered, the Last update column reads "Countered at *your
figure*", and **an email goes out to the judge** naming your figures, linking
them to the screen where they can answer, and saying nothing is agreed until
they accept. The message goes as a background job — leaving the screen does not
cancel it. The confirmation names what you sent — "Counter of $6.50 /per sent to
Ada Reyes." or "Counter of $6.50–$12.00 /per sent to Ada Reyes."

**A countered request can still be withdrawn, and withdrawing takes your counter
with it.**

**Revising overwrites your previous numbers**, every category at once — including
back to nothing where you cleared a box. The earlier figures are in the row's
history and **no screen prints them**; the record shows the current ones only.

### What the judge does with your counter

Your figures appear on the judge's own application screen, per category, beside
what they asked for and what you posted — and under them, two controls. **This
is new**: until this release a judge could read a counter and nothing more.

Each of these reaches this tab within a minute while you are looking at it,
without a reload:

| What they do | What you see |
| --- | --- |
| **Accept these rates** | The pill turns green **Counter accepted**, the record gains a **Their answer** row, the row rejoins your awaiting-a-decision count, and **you are emailed**. |
| **Send a revised ask** | The pill turns amber **Revised ask**, their new figures replace the Asked column, **your counter is cleared to em-dashes**, their optional note appears as **Their note**, the row rejoins the count, and **you are emailed**. |
| **Withdraw the application** | The row disappears, silently, as it always did. |
| **Nothing** | The row stays plain **Countered** and stays out of the count. You can still accept it whenever you like — at what they asked for. |

**Accepting your counter does not put them on your panel.** It records that they
agree to those figures, and no more. You still accept the request, and you can
still decline it or counter again instead.

**They can change their answer, but only one way round.** A judge who accepted
can still send back a revised ask afterwards. A judge who has revised **cannot
then accept**, because their revision withdrew the counter there was to accept —
counter again if you want their agreement on new figures. They can keep revising
until you act, which is deliberate: a typo in a money figure has to be fixable
before somebody hires on it.

**Countering again clears their answer and asks them afresh.** Revising your
counter — or clearing it — wipes their answer, their note and the date, sends
the counter email again, and puts the row back to plain **Countered**. An
agreement to figures you have since changed is not an agreement to the new ones,
so it is not carried across.

**Clearing every box leaves them nothing to answer.** The row still reads
Countered on your side, and their screen goes back to **Applied** with no
controls, because there is no offer standing for them to take.

**They can answer after the call has closed.** Nothing about answering consults
the closing date.

**A stale screen cannot answer a counter that has moved.** If you revise or
clear your counter while the judge has the old one open, their answer is refused
with one sentence — "This counter can't be answered any more. The page has been
refreshed." — and their screen re-reads itself. **They never agree to figures
they were not shown.**

## Message the judge

Opens a dialog headed **Message *the judge's name***, with a card naming the
address it will go to and the call it is about, and one line under the heading:

> Sent through FilmScorecard messages and to their email on file.

**Both halves of that sentence are now true.** The message is emailed to the
address on the application, as a background job — **and, when the applicant
holds a FilmScorecard account, the same words also appear in a conversation with
them in your [Inbox](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/messaging-your-judges.md), which they can answer.** Their
answer arrives in your Inbox, not in your mail.

- The message is required — committing an empty one says "Write a message before
  sending."
- **Keep it under 2000 characters.**
- **The request does not move.** The dialog says so: "Messages send as a
  background job. The request stays where it is." Only the row's history records
  that a message was sent.
- The confirmation reads "Message queued for Ada Reyes."
- **One email, not two.** The applicant gets the application email described in
  [What the judge is emailed](#what-the-judge-is-emailed) and nothing else; the
  copy in the conversation is delivered on their screen, not mailed again.

**An applicant with no account is email-only**, exactly as before: no
conversation is created for them, and **none is created later if they sign up**
— messages you sent before they had an account are never backfilled into one.

**The conversation lasts as long as the application is open.** Declining ends
it, and so, in this release, does accepting — see
[The judges an open call brought you](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/messaging-your-judges.md#the-judges-an-open-call-brought-you)
before you rely on being able to keep writing to somebody you took on this way.

**It is the one control that reaches a volunteer applicant with words rather
than figures**, which makes it the sensible place to say "we would rather pay
you — expect an invitation".

## Decline request

The amber item, and it always confirms. The dialog asks for a **reason, shared
with the judge**, required and single-select — one of exactly four:

- Availability does not fit the window
- Coverage already filled
- Panel is full for this round
- Rate above the budget for this call

Committing with none picked says "Pick a reason before declining." There is also
an optional note under 500 characters, with the line "One or two lines. It is
sent with the decline." under it.

> The request closes and the judge sees the reason in their portal. They can
> apply to your next call.

**"In their portal" is half right.** The judge does see the application close:
the call reads **Not selected for this panel** on their open-calls board.
**Your reason is not on it, and neither is your note** — both reach them in the
email and nowhere else.

**All four reasons are offered on a volunteer application**, including "Rate
above the budget for this call", which cannot be true of one. Pick another.

The row becomes Declined, sits on the muted background, and its menu drops to
the two reading items. **A declined request cannot be reopened**, and the judge
can no longer withdraw it either. **A counter the judge had accepted does not
change any of that** — an acceptance is agreement to a figure, never a claim on
a place.

## Accept and add to season

The one action that creates something. The dialog is headed **Accept and add to
season**, subheaded with what it is doing —

> Ada Reyes joins this season from Features first pass.

— over a card of the facts it is acting on: the **Open call** and its code, the
**Rate** it is about to agree, the **Categories** they asked for and, on an
older application that gave one, their **Capacity**. Then:

> The judge gets access to this season at this rate and the notification is
> queued as a background job.

**That sentence used to claim a payout obligation was created. It no longer
does, because nothing creates one.** The agreed prices are recorded on the
judge's roster row and that is the whole of it — see
[Money on this tab](#money-on-this-tab).

### Hire for: an application for both

**On an application for both kinds of judging, the dialog opens with one more
line, above the facts:**

> Hire for: ☑ Creative ☑ Technical

- **Both start ticked**, which takes the judge on for everything they applied
  for.
- **Untick one to take them on for the other alone.** They are rostered in only
  the role you kept, at the figures agreed for that role; the figures they asked
  for the other role are not written.
- **At least one must stay ticked.** With neither, **Accept and add to season**
  is greyed.
- **The Rate row follows the ticks**, so the figure you are agreeing to is
  always the one on screen.

A single-role application shows no boxes. **A bulk accept takes every
application for both on both roles** — open the request on its own to hire for
one.

### Which rate is used

**Per category: your counter only where the judge accepted it, and what they
asked for everywhere else.** The Rate row in the dialog is that answer as one
figure or a span, so you can see what you are agreeing to before you commit. It
is dropped entirely when there is nothing to state.

**On a countered request the dialog says which of the three you are in**, on a
line under the facts:

| The sentence | When |
| --- | --- |
| "They have not answered your counter, so this pays what they asked." | Your counter is standing and unanswered. |
| "They accepted your counter, so this pays the countered figures." | They accepted your figures. |
| "This pays the ask they sent back." | They sent back a revised ask, which cleared your counter. |

**Nothing blocks Accept while a counter is unanswered.** You can hire somebody
at the moment you like; what you cannot do is hire them at a number they never
agreed to.

**This is the thing that changed.** A counter used to be what accepting paid,
whether or not anybody had taken it — so a festival could counter at its own
figure and then accept at it, with no consent anywhere on record, while the
email told the judge that nothing was agreed until they accepted. **A counter is
now an offer until the judge takes it.** (Before that again, accepting wrote
your season's posted prices over everything that had been agreed; that is the
older fix, and it is why the record's Posted column is frozen.)

**On a volunteer application there is no Rate row at all.** There is no figure
to state — the application asked for nothing on every category — so the row is
dropped rather than reading `$0.00`, and the message you get afterwards says
`Volunteer, no payout`.

### Accepting a volunteer application

**They join the season as a volunteer, and that is fixed once it is done.**

- **Their place carries no pay**, so every scorecard they file is recorded at
  `$0.00` — a deliberate zero rather than an unpriced card — and folded into
  "Nothing payable" on the season's [pay ledger](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/paying-your-judges.md).
- **Their rate rows are your season's posted figures**, written and owed to
  nobody. That is deliberate: it means a place re-invited as paid later starts
  from real numbers instead of from zeros, and it means their categories are not
  the only ones on the season priced at nothing.
- **Nothing upgrades them.** There is no accept-time control, no counter, and no
  editor on the [Roster](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/judges.md). A paid invitation from the
  [Judges directory](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/judges-directory.md) is the route, and it makes a new set
  of terms the judge sees before agreeing to them.
- **The message afterwards names it**: "Ada Reyes added. Volunteer, no payout."

### What accepting does

- **The judge is added to this season's roster as Active**, in the role they
  applied for — **Creative judge** or **Technical reviewer**, or on an
  application for both, **the roles you left ticked under Hire for**. An
  application filed before the question existed arrives as Creative judge,
  which is what it always meant. To give somebody another role later, use the
  [Roster](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/judges.md) tab.
- **Their place is paid or volunteer as the application was.**
- **They are scoped to what the application asked for** — the categories they
  picked, and the kind of work they said they could cover. See
  [The scope accepting writes](#the-scope-accepting-writes).
- **The categories they picked are written at the agreed price**, in the column
  for each kind of judging they were hired for. **Every other category on the
  season gets your season's posted prices**, in both columns. **A volunteer
  application takes your posted prices everywhere**, its own categories
  included.
- **A second role added afterwards on the Roster therefore pays your posted
  rate** — never a figure agreed for a different kind of work, and nothing at all
  on a volunteer place.
- **Your organization gains a person record for them** if it did not have one.
- **The request becomes Accepted** and is linked to the roster place it created.
- **An email goes out** telling them they are on the panel and naming what they
  will be paid — the same agreed figure the dialog quoted. **It says nothing
  about their scope** — that is on the roster, and their own copy of what they
  asked for is their application.
- A message at the bottom of the screen names the figures: "Ada Reyes added at
  $8.00 to $16.00." — a single figure when every category comes to the same,
  "added at the season's posted rates" when the season has no categories to
  price, and **"Ada Reyes added. Volunteer, no payout."** when the application
  was a volunteer one.
- **The dialog holds until this list, the Roster and Invites sent have all
  been re-read**, so by the time the message appears the judge's row is already
  on the roster.

### The scope accepting writes

**This is the other thing that changed.** Accepting used to put every applicant
on the season able to be given every category and both submission types,
whatever they had asked for — "the picks decide the money, not the scope". They
decide both now.

- **Categories.** The judge is scoped to exactly the categories their
  application names, and to nothing else. A category they did not pick is not
  theirs to be given, and neither is one you attach to the season afterwards.
- **Submission type.** An applicant who said they cover **films** only is scoped
  to films; **screenplays** only, to screenplays. Somebody who said both — and
  any application filed before the form asked — is left open to both.
- **A judge already on this season, active or paused, keeps their scope.**
  Nothing is narrowed and nothing is widened. **What they lack is added, and
  nothing they hold is changed**: a role you hired them for that they do not
  hold yet is added, and so is a rate for any category they have no rate for —
  but a rate they already hold is never touched, and neither is whether their
  place is paid or volunteer. A judge already holding a volunteer place stays a
  volunteer even if the application asked to be paid, and the other way about,
  so check the [Roster](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/judges.md) before you rely on that acceptance having
  agreed anything.
- **A dead place is replaced, not merged.** Reviving somebody who was declined,
  removed or revoked writes the application's scope over whatever that old place
  held — including a scope you had set by hand when you first invited them —
  **and its terms over whatever that place used to carry.**

**The prices do not follow the scope.** Accepting still writes a rate for every
category on the season, so a category outside the judge's scope is priced and
unreachable. That is deliberate and it is safe: narrowing never invents money,
and it means widening their scope later does not silently create unpriced work.
See [Money on this tab](#money-on-this-tab).

**Change it afterwards on the [Roster](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/judges.md) tab**, under *What a judge
may be assigned*. Read
[Widening a scope asks for a rate](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/judges.md#widening-a-scope-asks-for-a-rate)
before you widen one.

**The scope is not adjustable in the accept dialog.** It names the categories
the application asked for and writes those. **Neither are the terms** — the
application decides those too.

**An accepted applicant does not appear on the Invites sent tab.** Nobody sent
them an offer — they asked — so that tab, which lists offers only, leaves them
out. They are on the Roster, like everybody else on the panel.

### The two cases that are not a plain add

- **They are already on this season, active or paused.** Nothing is duplicated.
  The request is marked accepted and says so: "Ada Reyes is already on that
  season. The request is marked accepted." **Only what their place lacks is
  added** — a role you hired them for that they do not hold, and a rate for any
  category with none — at the figures this acceptance would have written. Their
  existing rates, their scope and the paid-or-volunteer answer of the place they
  already hold all stand. **The message does not list what was added**; the
  [Roster](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/judges.md) shows it.
- **They hold a dead place on this season** — declined, removed, revoked, or an
  unanswered invitation. That place is revived as Active on the application's
  terms, the role they applied for is added to whatever they already held, and
  the application's scope replaces the old one.

### One category that went missing

If a category is **detached from the season between the application and your
accepting it**, the price agreed for it goes with it. Accepting still works: that
category is simply not part of the agreement any more, and every category still
on the season that they did not name takes your posted prices. Nothing fails and
nothing is invented.

**The scope follows the same rule**, and the judge ends up scoped to whichever
of their picks are still attached.

**If every category they named has gone**, there is nothing left to scope them
to. Rather than adding a judge who can be given nothing, FilmScorecard adds them
able to be given **everything** — and tells you so in full:

> Ada Reyes added at $8.00 to $16.00, able to be assigned every category. The
> categories they applied for are no longer on the season.

On a **volunteer application** the same case reads "Ada Reyes added, able to be
assigned every category. Volunteer, no payout. The categories they applied for
are no longer on the season."

**That is the only time accepting writes a wider scope than the application
asked for, and it is the only time the message mentions scope at all.** Narrow
it on the [Roster](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/judges.md) tab if the judge should not have the run of the
season.

## Money on this tab

- **Every figure is per scorecard filed** — one judge, one film, one card, one
  payment of that category's rate. The `/per` suffix on this tab is that unit.
- **A price is agreed per category, not per application.** One number in a column
  is either the only figure or a span across several; nothing on this tab is a
  total, and nothing adds two rates together.
- **A counter is an offer until the judge takes it.** Accepting pays your
  countered figures only on the categories the judge accepted them for; on a
  counter nobody answered, and on one they answered with figures of their own,
  accepting pays their ask. See [Which rate is used](#which-rate-is-used).
- **An application can also agree no price at all.** A volunteer application asks
  nothing for every category it names, and accepting one writes a place that owes
  nothing. That is a real state on a paying season, not only on a volunteer one.
- **Amounts are exact.** Two decimal places, no rounding, no thousands
  separators — `$1500.00 /per`, not `$1,500.00 /per`.
- **What the applicant was quoted is frozen at the moment they applied.** Editing
  a category's price on [Judge pay](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/judge-pay.md) afterwards changes what the
  *next* applicant is quoted and nothing about this one. **A volunteer
  application still records what you were quoting** — the posted figure is on the
  record and the ask beside it is nothing, which is the honest account of what
  happened. **A judge's revised ask does not move it either**: a revision
  rewrites what they want, never what you were asking.
- **The rates are a record, and nothing more.** Accepting a request writes them
  onto the judge's roster row. **No payout or Stripe object is created**, and no
  screen in FilmScorecard pays anybody: your festival pays its judges itself, as
  the Festival Host Agreement your organization accepts says, and the judge's
  acceptance email tells them they are paid "by the festival directly". What a
  judge is owed, and their invoices, are on
  [Paying your judges](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/paying-your-judges.md).

## Dates

**Applied shows a month and a day and no year** — `Aug 11` — and it is measured
in UTC, not in your festival's time zone. A request filed late in the evening
can therefore show the next day's date, and a request from a previous year looks
like one from this one. Sort by Applied if the order matters.

An unreadable or missing date shows an em-dash rather than today.

## If something is refused

**One control here moves before it is saved — Shortlist for later, and Remove
from shortlist, on a single row — and nothing else does**, the bulk bar's
Shortlist included. Every other 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. Dialogs stay
open with the message inside them. A refused shortlist puts its row back and
says why at the bottom of the screen — see [Shortlisting](#shortlisting).

| The message | What it means |
| --- | --- |
| "You do not have permission to act on this organization's judges." | You do not hold the manage-judges permission on this season, or you hold it and are a Viewer, or your access changed while the page was open. |
| "That record is no longer available. Reload the page." | The request, or the call behind it, is not readable any more — **including because the judge withdrew it while you had it open** — or it belongs to a different season from the one you are on. The list catches up on its own within a minute; reloading is not needed for that. |
| "Someone else changed this record while you were deciding. Reload the page to see where it is now." | A colleague moved this request between your opening the dialog and your committing. **Your action was not applied and theirs was not overwritten.** The list catches up on its own within a minute. |
| "This applicant applied as a volunteer, so there is no rate to counter. To pay them, send a paid invitation from the judge directory." | A counter reached the server for a volunteer application. The control is not drawn on any screen, so this means a stale tab. Nothing was written. |
| "You do not have permission to add judges to that festival's season." | Accepting only, and it means the database refused the roster write. |
| "Running festivals is paused until an owner of *your organization* accepts the Festival Host Agreement." | Accepting — one request or several. **No owner of your organization has agreed to the current Festival Host Agreement yet**, so nobody can be put on a panel. Shortlisting, countering, messaging and declining still work. An owner agrees the next time they open any of the organization's screens — see [The two role agreements](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/terms-and-privacy.md#until-an-owner-agrees). |
| "Enter amounts like 12.50, or clear a box to drop that counter." | The counter dialog, with a box it cannot read. |
| "Pick a reason before declining." | The decline dialog, with nothing chosen. |
| "Write a message before sending." | The message dialog, empty. |
| "Keep the message under 2000 characters." | The message dialog, too long. |
| "Keep the note under 500 characters." | A counter or decline note is too long. |
| "Select at most 200 records at a time." | A bulk selection over the limit. |
| "Something in the form is not valid. Check the fields and try again." | A commit FilmScorecard could not read at all. Rare; reload. |
| "The change could not be saved. Try again." | Anything else. The next refresh shows where things stand. |
| "Couldn't refresh the list. Showing what was last loaded." | Nothing you did failed. The list could not re-read itself, several tries running — what is on screen is as new as the last refresh that worked. See [When the list cannot refresh](#when-the-list-cannot-refresh). |

**A judge answering while you were countering does not produce a message here.**
Their answer is cleared by your counter and they are asked again; nothing is
refused on your side.

## What the judge is emailed

Four of your actions email the applicant, at the address on the application,
from a background job. **One of them carries a link** — the counter email, which
sends them to the screen where they can accept your figures or send back their
own. The other three carry none: there is no judge-side screen for a decline
reason, and the acceptance email has nothing to press.

| Your action | Subject | What the body says |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Accept | "You are on the panel for *the festival*" | That they are accepted, the open call, and what they were added at — one figure, or a span across the categories they picked. On a volunteer application it names no figure. |
| Counter, or revise it | "A reply to your application to *the festival*" | Your figures as one figure or a span, then **"Accept these rates, or send back different figures, here:"** and a link to their application screen, then "Nothing is agreed and nothing is charged until you accept." Your optional note is quoted under "A note from the festival:". **Never sent on a volunteer application** — there is no counter to send. |
| Decline | "About your application to *the festival*" | **The reason you picked**, your optional note, and "You are welcome to apply to their next open call." |
| Message | "A message about *the festival*" | Your message, and "Your application has not moved. Reply to this email to answer." **That last line is still what the email says**, even for an applicant who could answer you in the app instead. |

**"Nothing is agreed until you accept" is now true.** It was a promise the
product could not keep while there was nowhere to accept; the link in that same
email is where they do it.

**The counter email states what you are offering, and it does not change when
they answer.** A judge who accepts, or sends figures back, gets no further email
from you until you counter again, accept or decline.

**The accept and counter emails quote a span, not the breakdown.** A judge who
wants the per-category figures reads them on their own application screen, where
they are exact.

Replies go to your organization's support address when it has one — set it on
the [organization settings](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/organization-settings.md) screen.

**Every message on this tab is queued, not sent on the spot.** The dialogs and
the confirmations say "queued" for that reason: a background job drains the
queue, and leaving the screen does not cancel anything.

**Shortlisting emails nobody**, and **neither does a judge applying or
withdrawing.** **Opening or closing a call emails nobody either.**

## What you are emailed when a judge answers

**One message, and it is the only thing on this tab that reaches your own
inbox.** When an applicant accepts your counter or sends back a revised ask,
everyone who can see this season's judges is emailed:

| Their answer | Subject |
| --- | --- |
| They accepted your figures | "*Judge* has accepted your counter for *your festival*" |
| They sent figures back | "*Judge* has sent back a revised ask for *your festival*" |

The body names the open call, states the money as one figure or a span — "They
accepted $8.00 to $16.00 per scorecard filed." or "They now ask $9.00 to $18.00
per scorecard filed." — quotes their note as its own paragraph when a revision
carried one, and ends with **"Accept, counter again or decline here:"** and a
link straight to this tab.

- **It goes to owners, organization admins and anybody with a grant on this
  festival or season** — the same set that gets the invitation-accepted notice.
- **You can turn it off for yourself.** It is the **Applicant answers your
  counter-offer** switch on your account's Notifications tab — see
  [Your account settings](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/your-account-settings.md#notifications). Switching it
  off stops your copy and nobody else's.
- **It is a background job**, like every other message here.
- **It is not sent if the answer has stopped being true by the time it drains** —
  because you countered again first, or because the judge withdrew. Nothing
  arrives, and nothing is reported as failed.
- **Still nothing tells you an application arrived, or that one was withdrawn.**
  The amber count is the only signal for the first, and there is no signal at all
  for the second — beyond the row itself leaving the tab while you look at it.

## What does not work yet

- **A warning that a category you are closing is named on applications you
  already hold.** The categories you open a call to are enforced now — an
  applicant only sees them and can only pick them — but narrowing the call says
  nothing about the requests already on this tab, and changes none of them.
- **A call's close date is not consulted by anything on this tab.** Requests stay
  open and decidable long after the call closes, by design, and a judge can
  answer a counter for just as long.
- **Paying a volunteer applicant from this tab.** No counter, no upgrade at
  accept, no editor afterwards. A paid invitation from the
  [Judges directory](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/judges-directory.md) is the whole of the path.
- **Any column, filter or sort that separates volunteer applications from paid
  ones.** Open the record.
- **Any filter that separates a countered row the judge has answered from one
  they have not.** The pill, the amber count and the newest-first order are all
  there is.
- **The figures a judge revised away.** A revision replaces their ask in place;
  the previous numbers are kept in the row's history and no screen prints them,
  so note them before you counter if you need them.
- **Whether an applicant needs subtitles.** They answer it; nothing shows it.
- **Any notice that an application arrived or was withdrawn.** An answer to your
  counter does email you; an arrival and a withdrawal do not. The rows arrive
  and leave quietly — there is no "1 new request" notice and no highlight on a
  row that has just changed.
- **A conversation on this tab.** Your message opens a conversation in your
  [Inbox](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/messaging-your-judges.md), and the applicant's answer arrives there —
  **nothing of that exchange after your first message appears on this tab.** The
  row's history records only that a message was sent.
- **Undoing a decision.** Accepted and declined are final here; a declined
  applicant has to apply again.
- **Choosing the scope while accepting.** The application decides it — the
  categories it names and the work types it names — and the dialog offers no way
  to change either. Adjust it afterwards on the [Roster](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/judges.md) tab.
- **Countering an application filed before per-category pricing.** It no longer
  names a figure of its own: accept it at your season's posted prices, or
  decline it. **The judge cannot answer one either** — there is nothing per
  category for them to accept.
- **Payments.** Rates are recorded and shown. Nothing charges, collects or pays.

## Related guides

- [Opening a judge call](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/opening-a-judge-call.md) — where the call these
  applications came from is written, opened and closed: the switch, the
  applications close date, and the roles and categories you advertise.
- [Applying to an open call](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/applying-to-an-open-call.md) — the judge's side of
  this screen, including the card where they accept your counter or send back a
  revised ask.
- [Invites sent](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/invites-sent.md) — the third tab: the offers this season has
  out.
- [Judges](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/judges.md) — the Roster tab beside this one, which is where an
  accepted applicant lands, and where their Pricing card says what they are
  paid.
- [Judge pay](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/judge-pay.md) — where the prices an applicant is quoted come
  from: the two rates every category on the season carries, and the ceiling the
  season's Paid/Volunteer setting places over every application.
- [Your account settings](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/your-account-settings.md) — the Notifications tab,
  where the email a judge's answer sends you can be switched off.