# Paying your judges

> From FilmScorecard Help: https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/paying-your-judges

**Ledger**, the first tab of a season's **Payouts** screen, is the season's pay
ledger: one row per judge, what their approved scorecards add up
to, what has been paid, and what is still owed. It is also where a payment is
written down — **after** you have made it, by bank transfer, check, PayPal,
Venmo or cash. FilmScorecard moves no money: this screen records payments made
outside the platform; it cannot send one.

What a judge is owed starts long before this screen. Each category carries
rates ([Judge pay](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/judge-pay.md)), each invitation copies and may tune them —
or declines them entirely, if that judge was taken on as a volunteer
([What an invitation pays](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/what-an-invitation-pays.md)) — and each scorecard
records its own price the moment it is filed. This screen is where those
records are finally added up — and the first screen anywhere that shows them.

Every row also opens a **pay statement**: one judge's figures as a document
you can print or hand over — and the same document that judge can read for
themselves in their own portal. See [The pay statement](#the-pay-statement).

Beside it sit two more tabs: **Invoices**, where the invoices your judges send
from their statements land — see [Judge invoices](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/invoices.md) — and
[the payments log](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/payments-log.md), the season's transactions one row at a
time rather than one row per judge. See [The other tabs](#the-other-tabs).
Invoices still waiting on you are also listed on this tab, above the judges —
see [Invoices to pay](#invoices-to-pay).

## Finding the screen

**Payouts** sits in the season block of the left navigation, between Awards and
Settings, and opens on this tab. Its address is:

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

The row is there only for the people allowed to see it, and for nobody else —
the navigation carries on without it. **It carries an amber count of the
invoices waiting on you** — every invoice a judge has sent that is Sent or
Accepted and not yet paid — and **while that count is above zero the row opens
the Invoices tab** instead of this one. No invoices waiting, no number, and the
row opens the Ledger. See [Judge invoices](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/invoices.md).

The three tabs under the heading — **Ledger · Invoices · Payments** — carry no
counts of their own. **They are one page**, so switching between them is
instant and nothing reloads. The address names the tab you are on — the Ledger
is the bare address above, the other two add `?tab=invoices` and
`?tab=payments` — so a reload, a bookmark or a link you send opens the same
tab, and the browser's Back button leaves Payouts rather than stepping back
through the tabs. The older tab addresses, `…/payouts/invoices` and
`…/payouts/payments`, still work and open the tab they name. Older links to
`…/judges/pay`, including saved statement addresses, still work too: they
forward here.

## Who sees it, and who can act on it

Two different questions:

- **Opening the screen takes the *View revenue and payouts* permission** — the
  same one that decides the Revenue card on the
  [Season overview](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/season-overview.md#revenue). Festival admins have it by
  default; coordinators, programmers and viewers do not; owners and org admins
  always do; a tick box on anybody's grant changes the answer — see
  [Festival access](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/festival-access.md#what-the-capabilities-do-today).
  Somebody without it has **no Payouts row in the navigation at all** — not a
  greyed one — and typing the Payouts address, on any of its three tabs, sends
  them back to the season. **The same permission governs the statements, the
  invoices and the receipts**: they sit under the same address, and each of
  them answers the same people "page not found". Somebody who types a Payouts
  address anyway may see the section's heading appear above that refusal, but
  no figure under it is ever read, and none of them reach their browser.

  So the common case is a coordinator who runs the whole judging pipeline —
  roster, requests, invitations, the Review Queue — and never sees this ledger.
  The reverse case works too: somebody given *View revenue and payouts* and
  nothing else — the accountant below — gets the whole Payouts section, and
  the [Judges](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/judges.md) screen without its tab strip.
- **Logging or voiding a payment additionally requires being somebody who can
  change the season.** A read-only viewer given *View revenue and payouts* — a
  board member, an accountant — reads every figure, every breakdown, every
  receipt and every statement, and finds no **Log a payment**, no **Mark
  paid** and no **Void** anywhere. The refusal is enforced when a write is attempted, not only on
  screen.

## Where the money comes from

- **A scorecard becomes payable when it is approved** on the
  [Review Queue](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/review-queue.md). Filed work still waiting on a reviewer is
  excluded from every figure, and nothing on this screen counts it — the
  Review Queue is where it waits.
- **Each approved scorecard contributes the amount recorded on it when it was
  filed** — that judge's own rate at that moment, not today's. Nothing on this
  screen multiplies a rate by a count, so repricing a season, resetting to the
  library or changing a judge's next invitation never moves this ledger's
  history. See
  [What a filed scorecard records](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/judge-pay.md#what-a-filed-scorecard-records).
- **Scorecards a coordinator filled in themselves contribute nothing.** Staff
  filings are not paid work and are left out of every figure and count.
- **A scorecard approved with no rate on record is "unpriced".** It is
  excluded from every figure and reported in amber instead — season-wide,
  above the table ("3 approved scorecards are unpriced and are excluded from
  every figure below"), and again on each affected judge's row. There is no
  way to price one after the fact yet. The ways a scorecard ends up unpriced
  are listed in
  [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 press-kit scorecard is a third — no press-kit rate exists, so an approved
  one in a paid season always lands in this bucket.
- **A rate of $0.00 is not "unpriced".** A scorecard priced at zero counts in
  the Scorecards column and contributes $0.00, deliberately. **The ordinary way
  to get one is a judge who is on this season as a volunteer** — see
  [A volunteer judge on a paid season](#a-volunteer-judge-on-a-paid-season) —
  and a season that judged as volunteer before turning paid produces them too.

## The three figures

Across the top, three cards, always covering the whole season whatever the
table below is filtered to:

| Figure | What it is |
| --- | --- |
| **Approved pay, season** | Every judge's approved, priced scorecards added up, with the scorecard count underneath. |
| **Paid** | Every payment logged this season that has not been voided, with a count of the judges paid. |
| **Outstanding** | What is still owed, with a count of the judges owed. |

**Outstanding counts only what is positively owed.** A judge you have overpaid
does not quietly reduce what you still owe everybody else: their credit is
kept out of the figure, and the card grows an amber footnote instead — "2
judges overpaid by $24.00 in total. Credits are not subtracted from what
others are owed."

**A volunteer judge's `$0.00` lines are in Approved pay's scorecard count and
add nothing to its money.** They are priced work worth nothing, so they neither
inflate a figure nor disappear from one.

**These three are the season's figures, and they are the only ones that claim
to be.** The line above the [payments log](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/payments-log.md#the-summary-line)
describes the rows listed on that tab, which is a different question.

## Invoices to pay

While any invoice a judge has sent is still waiting on you — **Sent** or
**Accepted**, not yet paid — an **Invoices to pay** card sits between the
figures and the judges, with a count beside its heading. It lists every open
invoice on the season, in the same order as the
[Invoices tab](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/invoices.md#the-list), one line each:

- the judge's name and the invoice's status pill;
- under it, the number, the amount and when it is due — "INV-0007 · $150.00 ·
  due Nov 14, 2026" — or "sent Oct 15, 2026" when the invoice has no due date.

Each line carries two buttons:

- **View** opens the invoice itself. **Accept** and **Return** are there, not
  on this card — see
  [Accepting, returning and marking paid](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/invoices.md#accepting-returning-and-marking-paid).
- **Mark paid** opens the same dialog as **Mark paid** on the invoice: Log a
  payment with the invoice fixed in it — see [Mark paid](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/invoices.md#mark-paid).
  It is there only for somebody who can change the season, and only when the
  judge has a row on this ledger, because the dialog names it. A read-only
  viewer finds **View** alone.

Once an invoice is paid it leaves the card — it is then on the Invoices tab
under **Paid** — and the figures and the judge's row update at once. Returned
and withdrawn invoices are never on it, and with nothing open the card is not
there at all.

## The ledger

One row per judge who **ever accepted a seat this season**, whatever has
happened since. A judge you paused, removed or whose invitation you revoked
keeps their row, with a quiet grey note beside their name — **Paused**,
**Removed from roster**, **Invitation revoked**, **Declined** — because a debt
does not disappear when somebody leaves the roster, and no other screen
reports it. Judges who were invited and never accepted are not listed.

**Volunteers are listed too**, and read **Nothing payable** — see
[A volunteer judge on a paid season](#a-volunteer-judge-on-a-paid-season).

The columns: **Judge** (name, with their email underneath), **Scorecards**
(their approved, priced ones — the count that matches the money),
**Approved pay**, **Paid**, **Outstanding**, **Pay state**, and a ⋮ menu. A
judge with unpriced work carries an amber "2 unpriced scorecards excluded"
under their name.

**No column says whether a judge is a volunteer.** `$0.00` in Approved pay
beside a non-zero Scorecards count is what it looks like; their panel's
[Pricing](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/judges.md#pricing) tab on the Roster is where it is stated in
words.

On a narrow window the table scrolls sideways under a frozen header, with the
Judge column holding still on the left — rows never restack.

### The five pay states

| Pay state | When a row reads it |
| --- | --- |
| **Nothing payable** | Approved pay is $0.00 and nothing has been paid. The row is quiet, and its menu offers no payment action. **A volunteer judge lives here**, however much work they have filed. |
| **Owed** | There is approved pay and none of it has been paid. |
| **Partly paid** | Something has been paid, and less than the approved pay. |
| **Paid** | Payments exactly match approved pay. The row goes quiet. |
| **Overpaid** | Payments exceed approved pay. The Outstanding cell reads $0.00 with the credit on a second line — "$12.00 credit" — and the row does not go quiet: a credit is something to notice. |

(The judge reads the same five words for the same facts, on the Statements tab
of their own [Earnings](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/earnings.md) screen — except a volunteer, who has no
statement at all and reads their place on that screen's Volunteer tab instead.)

### A volunteer judge on a paid season

A season that pays its judges can hold one who was taken on as a volunteer — by
invitation, or by applying to one of its open calls as one. On this ledger they
are an ordinary row, and every figure about them is honest:

- **Their approved scorecards are priced at `$0.00`**, one line each in the
  breakdown, grouped by category like anybody else's. `$0.00` is a **price**
  here, not an absence.
- **They are never in the amber unpriced bucket.** That bucket means "a paid
  judge whose rate was never set" and is a thing to fix; a volunteer's zero is a
  decision, and the two must not be confused.
- **Their row reads Nothing payable**, their Approved pay is `$0.00`, and their
  ⋮ menu offers no **Log a payment** — there is nothing to pay.
- **Open pay breakdown and Open statement both still work**, and both are
  all-zeros documents. **The judge cannot open that statement themselves** —
  see [What the judge sees, and when](#what-the-judge-sees-and-when).
- **Nothing on this screen says "volunteer" in words.** The Roster's
  [Pricing](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/judges.md#pricing) tab does.

**A season where every judge is a volunteer still shows the ledger**, as long
as the season's own setting is Paid — a table of `$0.00` rows rather than the
notice below. The notice belongs to the season's setting, not to who is on it.

### The ⋮ menu

It is built from the row's state rather than being a fixed list with greyed-out
entries, so what you see is what will work:

| Item | When it is there |
| --- | --- |
| **Log a payment** | Always, except on a **Nothing payable** row and for anybody without write access. A fully-paid row still offers it — overpaying is allowed. |
| **Open pay breakdown** | Always. |
| **Open statement** | Always — every row, every state, paused, removed, revoked and volunteer included. |

### Sorting, searching and filtering

- **The table opens on Outstanding, largest first**, with names A→Z breaking
  ties — the judges you still owe sit at the top, and the settled rows sink to
  the bottom in name order. **Volunteers therefore sit at the bottom**, among
  the settled ones.
- **Every column heading sorts.** The money columns and Scorecards open
  largest-first; Judge opens A→Z; clicking the same heading again reverses it.
- **Search** matches names and emails. **Pay state** filters the rows, several
  states at once, each with its count over the whole ledger; on a narrow
  window the filter sits behind a single **Filters** button. **Clear filters**
  puts everything back. **Filtering to Nothing payable is the nearest thing to
  a volunteer filter**, though it also catches judges who have simply filed
  nothing yet.
- Sorting and filtering are yours alone and reset when the page reloads. The
  three figure cards ignore them entirely.

When a filter matches nobody, the table says so — "No judges match these
filters", with the roster count and a **Clear filters** button. A season where
nobody has accepted a seat yet reads "Nobody has accepted a seat this season"
instead of an empty table.

## The pay breakdown

Click a judge's name, or choose **Open pay breakdown** from their ⋮ menu, and
a panel opens over the ledger showing how their numbers were reached. The
address changes as it opens, so you can send a colleague a link that lands
directly on one judge's breakdown.

- **Their own three figures** — Approved pay, Paid, Outstanding — with an
  overpaid judge's Outstanding reading their credit in amber.
- **The approved work**, one line per rate rather than one per film:
  **Category · Rate type · Rate · Cards · Amount** — "Documentary Feature ·
  Creative · $16.00 · 3 · $48.00". Technical and creative work are always
  separate lines, never blended. A scorecard with no category on record is
  listed by its type alone — "Technical scorecard" — and still counts in
  full. Unpriced scorecards get their own amber line reading **Unpriced**,
  with a dash where the amount would be. With no approved scorecards yet, the
  table reads "No approved scorecards yet this season."
  **A volunteer judge's lines read `$0.00` and `$0.00`** — an ordinary priced
  line, not the amber unpriced one.
- **Payments**, newest first: the amount, the method and reference, the date
  paid, any note, which scorecards it covered when a set was picked, who
  logged it, and a **View receipt** link when one was attached. With none,
  "Nothing paid yet this season."

**This is the only place a payment's note and its covered films are shown.**
The [payments log](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/payments-log.md) reports how many scorecards a payment
covered, never which, and never the note.

A **View statement** button sits in the panel's header, on every judge, and
opens that judge's statement.

A **voided** payment stays in the list struck through, on a grey card, with an
amber note underneath — "Voided by Ada Chen — logged against the wrong judge"
— and its receipt link still works. See
[Voiding a payment](#voiding-a-payment).

Escape, the ✕, a click on the background or the browser's Back button all
close the panel.

## The pay statement

**Open statement** on a row's ⋮ menu, or **View statement** in the breakdown
panel, opens one judge's figures as a document:

```
/org/<organization>/<festival>/<season>/payouts/<judge>/statement
```

It is a full page rather than a panel, so it has its own address to send to a
colleague, and the browser's Back button (or the **Ledger** tab) is how you
return to the ledger. **The statement deliberately drops the Payouts heading
and the tab strip** — it is a document meant to be printed, and neither belongs
on the paper.

**It is offered on every row, whatever the state.** A **Nothing payable** row
opens an honest all-zeros document rather than nothing at all, a judge you
removed still has one — it is the durable account of what they were owed, on a
season their own portal no longer shows them — and so does a volunteer, whose
copy is all zeros by design.

### What it holds

| Part | What it holds |
| --- | --- |
| **The heading** | The festival's name, the season underneath, and FilmScorecard's logo over the words **Pay statement**. **Your organization's name is not on it** — the document is identical on both sides, and a judge has no access to your organization's record. |
| **As at …** | When the page was built, in **the season's time zone**. Nothing is stored: the document is generated on every open, so it always states its own age. |
| **The judge** | Their name, with the address you hold for them underneath. No judge number. |
| **How this is worked out** | "Paid per approved scorecard at the rate each scorecard carried when it was filed. Technical and creative rates are set per category and can differ." |
| **Your payment terms** | "Paid 30 days after invoice", or "Paid on the 15th of the month" — your organization's [judge payment terms](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/organization-settings.md#judge-payment-terms). Absent when none are set. |
| **Approved work** | The same lines as the breakdown's table — Category · Rate type · Rate · Cards · Amount — including the amber unpriced line. |
| **Payments** | Amount, method, the date paid, your reference when there is one, and "covers *n* scorecards" when the payment named a set. |
| **The balance box** | **Approved total**, **Paid**, **Balance due**. |
| **The footer** | "Questions about this statement go to the Judging Coordinator through Messages." |
| **Scorecards** | After the footer, one line per approved scorecard, oldest approval first: **Title** · **Format** (Film or Screenplay) · **Category** · **Scorecard** (Creative, Technical or Press kit) · **Rate** · **Approved**, with a total row equal to the Approved total. An unpriced scorecard reads **Unpriced** and adds nothing. With nothing approved it reads "No approved scorecards yet." |

**Balance due never goes negative.** An overpaid judge's statement reads
**$0.00** with a second line under it — "$12.00 paid above the approved total."

### Where it deliberately differs from the breakdown

The statement is what the judge sees, so two things in the drawer are not on
it, on your copy as much as theirs:

- **Voided payments are not on it at all** — not struck through, not greyed:
  absent, along with the reason and the name of whoever voided them. The audit
  trail stays in the breakdown and on the
  [payments log](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/payments-log.md#voided-payments), where it belongs.
- **No receipts, no notes, and no "logged by".** Who recorded a payment and
  what they attached is internal.

**And one thing is on it that the drawer does not have: film titles.** The
Approved work table still groups by category and rate, but the **Scorecards**
page after it names every approved film, one line each — so the judge can see
exactly which pieces of work the total is made of. Both copies print the same
lines.

Everything else is the same figure read from the same record: your copy and
the judge's cannot disagree.

### Printing it

**Download PDF**, above the document, opens your browser's own print dialogue —
choose *Save as PDF* for a file, or a printer for paper. **No file is generated
on the server** and none is stored. The navigation, the top bar and the button
itself are all left out of what prints, the approved-work table prints every
line rather than the few that fit on screen, and **the Scorecards list starts
on a page of its own** after the summary.

### What the judge sees, and when

Judges reach their own copy through the **Earnings** row in their portal — its
Statements tab lists every paid place they hold, one **View statement**
each. [Your pay statement](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/your-pay.md) is the judge's-eye guide to the
document; [Earnings](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/earnings.md) is the guide to the screen around it,
where your season's figures sit beside every other festival's.

| Their place on the season | Can they open the statement? |
| --- | --- |
| Accepted, active, on **paid** terms | Yes. |
| **Paused** by you, or the season has closed | Yes — the debt is still theirs. |
| **Removed** from the roster | **No.** Removal ends their access to the season entirely — statement, Earnings rows and figures alike. Your copy remains the record. |
| A **volunteer** place — on a volunteer season, or as a volunteer on a paid one | **No statement** — there is nothing to owe. The place does appear on their Earnings screen's **Volunteer** tab, as filed and approved counts with no money on them. **You can still open your own copy** of their all-zeros statement from this ledger; they cannot. |
| Invited, never accepted | No — and they are not on your ledger either. |

**The judge's copy has one control yours does not: Send invoice**, beside
Download PDF. It sends you their statement, frozen, as a numbered invoice — it
arrives on the Invoices tab. See [Judge invoices](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/invoices.md).

**Nothing tells the judge a statement changed.** No email, no inbox notice: it
is a page they open, not a message you send. If you have just voided a payment
or approved a batch of their work, the change is silent until their next look —
though it is no longer unexplained on their side: their Earnings screen lists a
voided payment struck through with the date you voided it (never your reason),
and counts freshly approved work. A large change is still worth a message.
**The exception is a payment that pays one of their invoices**: they are
emailed the amount and the date paid.

## Logging a payment

**Log a payment** is on a row's ⋮ menu and at the top of the breakdown's
Payments list. **It is only on this tab**, and as **Mark paid** on an invoice
and on its line under [Invoices to pay](#invoices-to-pay) — the payments log
records what has been paid and never adds to it, because a payment starts with
choosing a judge and seeing what they are owed.

It is not offered on a **Nothing payable** row — there is nothing to pay, which
is also why it is never offered on a volunteer — and it *is* offered on a
fully-paid row, because overpaying is allowed and warned about, not blocked.

The dialog opens with the point stated plainly: "This records a payment you
already made outside FilmScorecard. No money moves." Under it, the **Judge**
the payment is for.

**If that judge has an open invoice**, a **Pays INV-0007** switch comes next,
**on** when the dialog opens: leave it on and this payment pays that invoice,
which then reads Paid and the judge is emailed; switch it off for a payment
that has nothing to do with it. Paying an invoice from the invoice itself, or
from its line under [Invoices to pay](#invoices-to-pay), is **Mark paid** — the
same dialog with the invoice fixed in it. See
[Mark paid](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/invoices.md#mark-paid).

1. **Amount** arrives pre-filled with the judge's outstanding balance, in
   dollars. Change it freely. An amount above the balance is accepted with an
   amber warning — "This is above the $150.00 outstanding. The excess is
   recorded as an overpayment."
2. **Date paid** starts at today and cannot be in the future — this is a
   record of a payment already made. It is the date both this ledger and the
   payments log order by.
3. **Method** is one of four: **Bank transfer**, **Check**, **PayPal or
   Venmo**, **Cash**. The reference field underneath follows your choice:

   | Method | The reference field |
   | --- | --- |
   | Bank transfer | **Transfer reference** — e.g. `ACH 88-4419` |
   | Check | **Check number** — e.g. `2215` |
   | PayPal or Venmo | **Transaction ID** — e.g. `PP-XXXXXX` |
   | Cash | **Reference** — e.g. `Receipt book 14` |

   The reference is optional, up to 200 characters. **It is printed on the
   judge's statement**, it names the payment's row on their Earnings screen,
   and it is one of the two things the payments log's search matches, so
   write something you and they would both recognise.
4. **Logged by** is you, stated and not editable — every payment names the
   person who recorded it, on the breakdown and in the payments log. That name
   is not on the statement.
5. **Receipt** is optional: one PNG, JPEG or PDF, up to 10MB. It opens later
   from **View receipt** on the payment, on this tab and on the payments log,
   and is never shown to the judge.
6. **Note** is optional, up to 2,000 characters, and stays internal to this
   tab's breakdown.
7. **What this payment covers** is either **All outstanding** or **Picked
   scorecards**. Picking opens the judge's priced, approved scorecards, each
   with its recorded rate; ticking them **rewrites the amount** to their sum,
   and you can still edit the amount afterwards — the amount is what you paid,
   the picked set is what the payment was for. The set is kept on the payment
   and shown in the breakdown as "Covers …", on the payments log as a count,
   and on the judge's statement as "covers 3 scorecards" without naming them.
   It is a note of intent, nothing more: outstanding is always approved pay
   minus payments, never worked out from which scorecards were named.
8. Press **Log a payment**. Problems appear under each field and summarised at
   the top, and the dialog stays open; success closes it, shows "Payment
   logged.", and the figures and the row update at once.

## Overpayments and credits

Paying more than the balance is legitimate — an advance before the last
approvals land, a rounded-up transfer — so FilmScorecard records it rather than
refusing it. The row reads **Overpaid** with the credit on its Outstanding
cell, the breakdown shows the credit in amber, the judge's statement reads
"$12.00 paid above the approved total.", and the season's Outstanding card
footnotes it without subtracting it from what others are owed. A credit
resolves itself as more of that judge's work is approved.

The same state has a second cause worth knowing: a scorecard **voided after
you paid for it** takes its amount back out of approved pay, and a judge who
was Paid can become Overpaid without any new payment being logged.

**A volunteer cannot become Overpaid through this screen**, because the one
control that could — Log a payment — is not offered on their row.

## Voiding a payment

A logged payment is never edited and never deleted. The one correction is a
**void**, and it is one-way:

1. Open the judge's pay breakdown and choose **Void this payment** on the
   payment — or find the payment on the [payments log](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/payments-log.md) and
   press **Void** at the end of its row. Both open the same dialog and do the
   same thing.
2. The dialog states the consequence: the payment stops counting toward Paid
   and comes back into Outstanding; the record stays, struck through, with
   your name and your reason; its receipt stays attached; and a void cannot be
   undone — log a new payment instead.
3. A **reason** is required. Press **Void payment**.

Voiding takes the same permission as logging. The voided record remains in the
breakdown and on the payments log permanently — history here is corrected,
never rewritten — and if somebody else voided the same payment first, you are
told "This payment is already voided." and nothing changes twice.

**On the judge's statement the payment simply vanishes**, and their balance
goes back up. On their Earnings screen's Payments tab it stays listed, struck
through with the date you voided it — **but never your reason**, which stays
on your side. Voiding a payment a judge may already have seen is still worth a
message to them.

**Voiding a payment that paid an invoice puts that invoice back to
Accepted**, waiting to be paid again. See [Judge invoices](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/invoices.md).

## The other tabs

**Invoices**, the middle tab, lists every invoice your judges have sent this
season, open ones first, each opening as the frozen document with **Accept**,
**Return** and **Mark paid**. The open ones are on this tab too, under
[Invoices to pay](#invoices-to-pay). See [Judge invoices](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/invoices.md).

**Payments**, the last tab, is the same money read the other way round: one
row per payment for the whole season, newest first, with the method, the
reference, who logged it and its receipt — and a search and two filters over
the lot. It is where "what did we pay out in March" is answered, and where a
payment is easiest to find when you know the check number and not the judge.

Everything it shows is on this tab too, one judge at a time, in the breakdown.
See [The payments log](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/payments-log.md).

## Volunteer seasons

A season **whose own judge pay setting is Volunteer** shows no ledger at all —
no figures, no rows, no payment actions. In their place is a notice: "This
season is volunteer. No scorecard on it carries a payout, so this judge is owed
nothing per card filed."

**That notice is keyed on the season, and it is the one judge-facing place the
season's own setting still decides something on its own.** It is safe to be
that blunt because a volunteer season can only hold volunteer places — the
setting is a ceiling, so nothing paid can exist under it and there is provably
nothing to owe.

With no rows there is nothing to open a statement from, and judges on a
volunteer season have no statement in their portal either. **They do have an
Earnings row**: the place is listed on that screen's Volunteer tab, as filed
and approved counts with "Volunteer, no pay" beside them and no money
anywhere — see [Earnings](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/earnings.md). **The payments log is not blanked in
the same way**: if the season holds payments, that tab still lists them.

**A paid season with volunteers on it is the opposite case, and it shows the
full ledger** — see
[A volunteer judge on a paid season](#a-volunteer-judge-on-a-paid-season). The
notice is about the season's setting; a place's own terms are read row by row.

A season switched from volunteer to paid later shows the full ledger, with the
scorecards filed during its volunteer stretch counting as real $0.00 lines —
priced at nothing, not unpriced. **Judges who were already on it stay
volunteers** — flipping the season never gives anybody a raise they did not
agree to — so their later work is `$0.00` too until they are re-invited on paid
terms. The switch itself, and why the reverse is often locked, is on the
Categories tab — see
[Judge pay](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/judge-pay.md#paid-or-volunteer-is-a-ceiling-not-a-rule).

## What this screen does not do

- **Move money.** No transfer, no Stripe anything. Every payment here happened
  somewhere else first — including one that pays an invoice.
- **Send or export statements.** A statement is opened and printed one judge at
  a time. There is no "email this statement", no bulk download, no zip, and no
  CSV export of the ledger or of the payments log.
- **Pay several judges at once.** There is no selection and no bulk action —
  one payment, one judge, one dialog.
- **Edit or delete a payment.** Void is the only correction, permanently.
- **Price unpriced scorecards.** They are reported, not fixed.
- **Turn a volunteer into a paid judge**, or pay one for work already filed.
  Their place's terms are fixed and their filed scorecards keep the `$0.00`
  they recorded. A fresh invitation on paid terms changes what happens next and
  nothing that has happened.
- **Say who is a volunteer, in words.** No column, no filter, no badge — the
  Roster's [Pricing](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/judges.md#pricing) tab is where that is written down.
- **Notify anybody — with one exception.** Logging a payment, voiding one and
  approving work all happen silently as far as the judge is concerned — their
  Earnings screen and statement change, and nothing tells them so. **A payment
  that pays one of their invoices is the exception**: they are emailed the
  amount and the date.
- **Reach past this season.** Payouts belongs to the season in the address;
  there is no festival-wide or all-seasons roll-up of what you have paid. (The
  judge's own Earnings screen does add their places together — but only
  theirs, and only for them.)

## Messages

| The message | What it means |
| --- | --- |
| This judge has nothing payable this season. | A payment was attempted against a row with approved pay at $0.00 and nothing paid — a state the screen offers no button for. **A volunteer's row is always in it.** |
| Enter an amount above $0.00. | The amount is empty, zero, or not a plain dollar amount. |
| Enter the date this was paid. | The date field is empty or not a date. |
| The date paid cannot be in the future. | This records a payment already made. |
| Keep the reference under 200 characters. | The reference is too long. |
| Keep the note under 2,000 characters. | The note is too long. |
| Pick at least one scorecard, or cover all outstanding. | **Picked scorecards** is selected with nothing ticked. |
| A receipt is a PNG, a JPEG or a PDF. | The attached file is some other kind. |
| A receipt can be at most 10MB. | The attached file is too large. |
| This file is empty. | The attached file holds nothing. |
| The receipt could not be uploaded. Try again. | The file never arrived. No payment was written — attach and submit again. |
| The receipt did not finish uploading. Attach it again. | The upload was interrupted between attaching and saving. No payment was written. |
| One of the picked scorecards is no longer payable. Reopen the dialog and pick again. | A picked scorecard changed under you — voided, or no longer this judge's. Nothing was written. |
| This invoice can no longer be marked paid. Refresh to see where it stands. | The payment was set to pay an invoice that has since been returned, withdrawn or paid by somebody else. Nothing was written — switch **Pays INV-…** off to log the payment on its own. |
| The payment was logged, but the picked scorecards could not be recorded against it. | Rare, and the important half is the first: **the payment is on the books** — do not log it again. Only the "Covers …" list failed to save; check the breakdown. |
| Say why this payment is being voided. | The void's reason is empty. A reason is required, always. |
| Keep the reason under 2,000 characters. | The reason is too long. |
| This payment is already voided. | Somebody voided it first. Nothing changed twice. |
| Payment logged. / Payment voided. | Success, as a brief toast. |
| This could not be saved. Refresh and try again. | Your access or the season could not be confirmed — commonly a stale tab after your permissions changed. |
| This could not be saved. Try again. | Anything else. Nothing partial was saved. |

## Related guides

- [Judge invoices](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/invoices.md) — the Invoices tab: what your judges send
  you, your payment terms, and accepting, returning or marking one paid.
- [The payments log](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/payments-log.md) — the last tab: every payment in the
  season as its own row, the columns, the filters, and voiding from there.
- [Your pay statement](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/your-pay.md) — the judge's side of the statement:
  how they reach it, what they can and cannot see, and what they are told when
  something changes.
- [Earnings](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/earnings.md) — the judge's own screen around it: your season's
  figures beside every other festival's, the Volunteer tab, and the one
  judge-facing place a voided payment still shows.
- [Judge pay](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/judge-pay.md) — where the rates start: pricing a season's
  categories, the Paid or Volunteer ceiling, and what a filed scorecard
  records.
- [What an invitation pays](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/what-an-invitation-pays.md) — the terms a
  particular judge holds, which are what their scorecards recorded, including
  the ones that carry no pay at all.
- [Review Queue](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/review-queue.md) — approving a scorecard is what makes it
  payable here, and what puts it on the judge's statement.
- [Festival access](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/festival-access.md) — the *View revenue and payouts*
  permission, role by role.
- [The Season overview](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/season-overview.md) — the dashboard's Revenue card,
  and why its judge-compensation figure is not this ledger.
- [Judges](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/judges.md) — the roster the ledger's rows come from, and the
  Pricing card that says which of them are volunteers.