Selling scorecard access

Once a scorecard is released — with its season, or on its own ahead of it — its filmmaker can read their score for nothing and pay to unlock the working behind it — every judge's answers, the averages, the written notes, the reviews and their season rank. This guide covers what is sold and at what price, what has to be true before anything can be sold, what you earn, what a discounted sale earns you, where the figures appear, how to see whether one submission has been unlocked, comping access for a filmmaker, and what happens on a refund.

You do not price this and you do not run the checkout. Both belong to the platform. What is yours is the payout account the money lands in, the figures on your dashboard, one button that gives a filmmaker their scorecard for nothing, and your organization's own promo codes — the one way to sell below the platform's price. See Promo codes.

What is sold, and for how much

Access to one submission's scorecard in one category, for $29.99 USD, once — and $22.49 for each further category of the same submission.

• A submission judged in one category is one sale of $29.99. That is most of them, and nothing about it has changed.
• A submission judged in more than one is sold a category at a time. Each category is its own scorecard, with its own judges and its own notes, so each one is unlocked in its own right. The first costs $29.99 and every later one is 25% off at $22.49 — two categories come to $52.48, three to $74.97.
• The filmmaker buys them in one press. The button on their page unlocks every category still locked, in one payment, and your Orders list records one row per category. See Paying for your scorecard for their side of it, word for word.
• The discount follows what the submission already holds, whether it was paid for, comped by you or unlocked free, and however long ago. A submission holding one unlock is charged $22.49 for the next one.
• Only a category with an approved creative scorecard is sold. What a filmmaker pays for is the judges' work, so a category the film is attached to but nobody has scored has no section on the filmmaker's page and is not charged for — and a category scored so far only on its technical review or press kit is on the filmmaker's page, with its score, but has nothing for sale until a creative scorecard in it is approved. A category with no creative scorecard at all is never for sale; a comp is the only way to open it.
• The price is platform-set and the same everywhere. Every festival on FilmScorecard sells at the same figures. There is no price field on any of your screens, on the season, the festival or the organization — not hidden, not greyed, not coming.
• It is per submission, per season. A filmmaker with two films in your season buys twice; one film in two of your seasons is two scorecards.
• Access is permanent. It does not expire, it survives archiving the season, and it cannot be taken back.
• A category bought and then taken off the film stays bought. Removing a category with Edit categories is never refused for a purchase: the filmmaker keeps that section on their page, exactly as it stood when the category was removed, and the sale stays on Orders. A removed category nobody bought is never offered for sale. See What removing a category leaves behind.
• The submitter's score is free and always was. What they pay for is everything behind it.
• A filmmaker with one of your promo codes pays less — and the sale is otherwise an ordinary one. Only a Free unlock code, which exists only where FilmScorecard has allowed your organization free codes, makes it cost nothing. See Discounted sales.

What has to be true before anything sells

Three things, and all three are yours except the last:

1. The submission's scorecard is released — with the season, see Releasing scorecards, or on its own ahead of it, see Releasing one submission's scorecard. Either one opens the purchase at once.
2. The category has an approved creative scorecard. A submission with nothing scored has no page at all, so there is nothing to sell; a category scored only on its technical review or press kit has a section on the page and nothing for sale; and on a submission in several categories, only the categories with an approved creative scorecard are on sale.
3. Your organization's payouts are fully enabled on Stripe — see Connecting payouts.

A released scorecard with payouts unfinished shows its submitter the price and the list of what they would get, and no button, under one line:

This festival is not set up to accept payments yet. Check back soon.

That is the whole of what a filmmaker is told, and it is the state your amber dashboard banner is warning you about. Nothing is lost while it lasts — a submitter who comes back after you finish onboarding gets the ordinary card. No promo code works in the meantime.

What you earn

What the filmmaker pays, less the platform fee and your share of Stripe's processing fee, is yours. Both come off at the moment of the sale, not in a monthly invoice: the charge is taken by FilmScorecard, the platform fee and your processing share are kept back together, and the rest is transferred into the Stripe account your organization connected.

On an organization FilmScorecard has not changed, a $29.99 scorecard sold with no code comes to:

• Your terms are on the Payments tab of Organization settings, stated in one line — for example "FilmScorecard keeps 20% of what each order pays, at least $2.00. You pay 50% of Stripe's processing fee, estimated at 2.9% + 30¢ an order." They are your organization's own, and no screen of yours can change them. See the platform fee line.
• The platform fee is your rate on what the order pays — or, if FilmScorecard has set your organization up that way, on the order's full price before any code — and no paid order is charged less than $2.00 of it, unless your rate is 0%. At 20% the floor never comes into it on a full-price scorecard — 20% of $29.99 is $6.00 — so it matters on a low rate, or on an order a deep code has made cheap. See Discounted sales for what a code changes.
• Your processing share is an estimate made when the order is placed — 2.9% of what the order pays plus 30¢, at your organization's share, 50% unless FilmScorecard has set it otherwise. FilmScorecard pays the rest of Stripe's fee, and anything Stripe charges beyond the estimate. It applies to every paid order, at a rate of 0% too.
• A payment covering several categories is split across them. The fee and the processing share are divided between the categories in proportion to what each one was charged, to the cent, and a promo code's discount is worked out category by category, so the rows always add up to what Stripe charged.
• Each sale keeps the fee it was actually charged. If your terms are renegotiated later, last month's sales keep last month's figures — nothing is recalculated behind you, and a CSV downloaded twice reads the same both times.
• When the money reaches your bank is Stripe's business. Balances, payout schedules and transfers live in your Stripe dashboard and nowhere here.

Discounted sales

Your organization makes its own promo codes, on the Promo codes screen — owners and org admins only. A code takes a percentage or an amount off, and you decide which of your seasons it works in, how many times it can be used and between which dates. A filmmaker who has one types it into the checkout dialog before they go to Stripe. A code works only at your own festivals, and nobody else's code works at yours.

What a code changes for you:

• It applies to each category at that category's own price, after the 25% extra-category price. A 20% code takes $6.00 off a $29.99 scorecard and $4.50 off a $22.49 one; a $15.00 code takes $15.00 off each.
• On the usual terms, the platform fee follows what is paid, so the platform shares the discount with you. A 20% code on a $29.99 scorecard leaves $23.99 charged, $4.80 of platform fee, $0.50 of processing and $18.69 to you.
• On full-price terms, if FilmScorecard has set your organization up that way, the platform fee stays where it would have been with no code, so the whole discount comes out of your share: the same 20% code leaves $23.99 charged, $6.00 of platform fee, $0.50 of processing and $17.49 to you.
• Every coded order pays at least what covers its own fees — the platform fee, with its $2.00 minimum, and your processing share — and never less than $0.50. Each category keeps its share of that minimum, so a code worth more than the rest of a category's price stops there. Codes are capped when you make them so that a lone $29.99 scorecard still covers both — 92% or $27.81 off on the usual terms, which leaves an order of $2.18: $2.00 of platform fee, $0.18 of processing and nothing for you. See How deep a code can go. A code at that limit leaves you nothing on the order, and never a debt.
• A Free unlock code makes the order free, and it is the only code that can. It exists only where FilmScorecard has allowed your organization free codes: the filmmaker who types one goes straight back to an unlocked page without visiting Stripe, nothing is charged, and nobody — you, the platform or Stripe — takes anything. The rows on Orders read Free unlock at $0.00 with the code on them, and the filmmaker is emailed a receipt. The Free unlock codes of earlier days, made before FilmScorecard asked, were all ended and stay ended.
• Your figures are what was paid. Gross on the Revenue card, the Amount column and the figures on Orders all read the discounted amount, because that is the money that went through Stripe. Nothing on your screens adds the discount back in, except the Revenue card's Discounts line, which is what codes took off.
• The code is recorded on the order. The order panel prints List price, Code and Paid in place of the single Amount line — see When a promo code was used — and the Orders CSV carries Discount and Code columns beside Amount. The season's Revenue card and its scorecard-sales CSV report what was paid, and name no code.
• The filmmaker's receipt names it too, with the list price, the code and what they paid.

How often each code has been used, and the most recent orders it went on, are on the Promo codes screen. Nothing emails you when a code is used. To tell filmmakers about a code, email it to them from that screen — see Emailing a code.

Where the figures appear

The Revenue card on the Season overview, under Scorecard sales: Scorecards sold, Gross, Platform fee, Processing and Host net. Sold counts unlocked categories, not submissions — free unlocks and comps included, both at $0.00 — so a two-category film unlocked whole counts as two. A refund takes its sale out of the count and its money out of every line.

The scorecard-sales CSV, from Export CSV on that card, one row per category unlocked:

Purchased at, Receipt, Submission, Amount, Platform fee, Processing, Net, Currency

A submission unlocked in two categories is two rows with the same title and two different receipt numbers. This file names no category — the list that does is the Orders CSV, which carries a Category column.

Money columns are plain two-decimal numbers with no currency sign, so a spreadsheet reads them as numbers, and Net is a column rather than a sum you have to write — it is Amount minus Platform fee and Processing, computed the same way the card computes it. Refunded sales are not in the file.

A title that begins with =, +, - or @ is written with an apostrophe in front of it, so a spreadsheet shows it as text instead of running it as a formula.

Both need the View revenue and payouts permission — see Who can open it. Somebody without it has no Revenue card at all, and the CSV address answers them "page not found".

The Orders screen, behind View orders on that same card, is the organization-wide list — one row per category unlocked, across every festival, buyer and receipt named, discounts and refunds kept and marked, with a Processing column beside the fee — for owners and org admins only. See Orders.

Whether one submission has been unlocked

Open the submission from the Submissions list and go to the drawer's Settings tab. In the Scorecard link card, under the line that says where the scorecard's release stands, a second line says whether it has been unlocked:

• The count is categories, not purchases. "1 of 2 categories" means one is open and one is not; 2 of 2 means the whole submission is unlocked. The line names the most recent unlock's receipt number, whichever category it belongs to.
• A category the film is attached to counts in the M, even if nobody has scored it yet — so a submission can read "1 of 2 categories" while the second one is not yet on sale at all.
• Only the categories the film still competes in count, on either side. A category it has been taken out of is in neither number, even if the filmmaker bought it — they keep that section on their page, and Orders keeps its row, but this line no longer counts it. A submission whose only purchase was in a removed category reads Not unlocked here, while the Submissions table's Purchased column still ticks it.

This is the only per-submission view of any of it. The line does not say whether the filmmaker paid, was comped or unlocked for free, which category is open, what they paid, or whether a code was used. The Submissions table's Purchased column ticks every row with an unrefunded unlock — a removed category's included — for the same people, and says nothing more. The list that does say which — across every festival, one row per category, with the buyer beside each row — is Orders, for owners and org admins.

It only appears for somebody with View revenue and payouts. For anybody else the line is not drawn and the figures are never read — there is no greyed version and nothing on their screen to say a line is missing.

Comping access for a filmmaker

Comp scorecard access gives one filmmaker their full scorecard at no charge. Use it for a filmmaker you owe a favour, a mistake you want to make good, or a guest of the festival.

The button sits under the unlocked line in that same card, and it is only drawn when there is something to comp: the submission's scorecard has been released — with the season, or on its own — its season carries the usual price, and at least one of the categories it still competes in holds no unlock of any kind. A submission that is unlocked in every one of them — bought, comped or refunded — shows its line and no button.

1. Press Comp scorecard access.

2. A dialog confirms it, headed with the film's title:

   Comp scorecard access for The Lighthouse Keeper?

   This unlocks the full scorecard permanently, at $0.00. The festival earns nothing on a comped scorecard.

3. Press Comp access, or Cancel.

The dialog closes, the screen re-reads, and the line becomes Unlocked with a receipt number and today's date.

Six things to know before you use it:

• It opens every category that is not already unlocked, in one press — including a category nobody has scored yet, which then opens for the filmmaker the moment a scorecard for it is approved, and a category that is not for sale. Each category gets a receipt number of its own.
• It opens only the categories the film still competes in. A category it has been taken out of is never comped, and a section the filmmaker bought there before it was removed is not a reason to hold the button back from the rest.
• It fills the gap and nothing more. On a submission where the filmmaker has already bought one of two categories, comping opens the other and leaves the purchase exactly as it was.
• A refunded category is skipped and never re-granted. If every category has been bought and refunded there is nothing to comp, and no button.
• It cannot be undone, and it earns you nothing, by design. There is no un-comp, a comped category can never afterwards be sold, and each comped category is recorded at $0.00 with a $0.00 fee — counting in your Scorecards sold with no money against it.
• The filmmaker is not told. No email is sent — a receipt for $0.00 nobody asked for is mail nobody wants — so if the point is a gesture, tell them yourself. Their page is unlocked from their next load, and from their side it is indistinguishable from paying.

A comp is the one way to give one scorecard away from your side. The other way is a Free unlock promo code, which the filmmaker types themselves — and which exists only where FilmScorecard has allowed your organization free codes. See Free unlock codes.

And it is the answer to a filmmaker stuck with one category open and one closed. Their own page cannot sell them the remaining category today, so if they write to you asking for it, comping is what opens it — at no charge, and earning you nothing.

Who can actually comp

Two conditions, and they are not the same condition:

• Seeing the line takes View revenue and payouts — festival admins by default, owners and org admins always, and anybody the box has been ticked for. See Festival access.
• Comping takes that and being somebody who can change the season.

For nearly everybody those are the same people. The exception is the one this permission exists for: a read-only viewer given revenue — a board member, an accountant. They see the unlocked line, and no button: the comp needs somebody who can change the season, and a viewer cannot. If a tab left open from before their access changed still shows one, pressing it answers:

Scorecard access could not be comped. Refresh the page and try again.

That sentence is the answer to every refusal, including an entry somebody else has just comped and a scorecard that has not been released. It never says which, deliberately — a refusal that named its reason would tell somebody who may not act on a submission that the submission exists.

Refunds

Scorecard purchases are final, and the product says so to the filmmaker twice — on the card before they press, and again in their receipt email. It is printed a third time on the Stripe invoice that comes with that receipt.

• There is no refund button anywhere on your screens, and none on theirs. Nothing in this product asks for a refund or grants one.
• A refund is an exception handled off-platform, and only FilmScorecard can issue one. If a filmmaker writes to you about a charge, that is the route — not a control you are failing to find.
• A full refund re-locks every category that payment bought, permanently. Each of those categories drops out of the Revenue card and the CSV, and none of them can ever be sold or comped again. On Orders each row stays, marked Refunded, with the amount that was charged — and, on a discounted sale, the code that made it that figure. The code does not get its use back. A section the filmmaker had kept from a removed category is taken off their page by a refund too.
• It can leave a submission half-sold, and the filmmaker cannot fix it. If one category was refunded and another was never bought, their purchase card shows the refunded state and offers no button, so the remaining category can only be opened by a comp.
• A partial refund changes nothing at all. The scorecard stays unlocked and the sale stays in your figures. That is deliberate: a small goodwill gesture must not destroy somebody's access.
• Nobody is emailed either way. Not the filmmaker, not you.

A sold submission cannot be moved

Once any category of a submission has been unlocked — bought, comped, freely unlocked, or refunded afterwards — that submission stays in its season. The Move dialog opens on one sentence in place of its controls:

This submission's scorecard has been purchased, so it cannot be moved.

and Move stays dim. A receipt names the season it was sold in, and nothing on your screens can re-key one. See Moving a submission to another festival.

The same fact blocks an import rollback: a batch holding a submission whose scorecard has been unlocked is refused whole, and the refusal counts submissions — see Imports.

What this does not do

• No price of your own. Not per season, not per festival, not per submission, not per category. The figures are the platform's.
• No fee terms of your own. The platform rate, what it is charged on and your share of processing are set by FilmScorecard for your organization.
• No code after the fact. A promo code works only when the filmmaker types it at checkout; nothing applies one to a sale already made, and nothing lowers the price for everyone — see Promo codes.
• No refund UI, and none planned.
• No sales notification. Nothing emails you when a scorecard sells; the Revenue card, the CSV and Orders are the record.
• No per-season list of who has unlocked. The state is per submission, in the drawer, one at a time, and the Submissions table's Purchased column ticks the rows; the list across every festival is Orders, and it is for owners and org admins only.
• No view of access codes, share links or who has opened a page. Those have no staff screen at all.
• No copy of the invoice. Stripe writes one per payment and sends it to the filmmaker with their receipt; your side of the money is the Revenue card, the CSV and Orders.
• Nothing about entry fees. They are still collected on FilmFreeway and are not reported anywhere in this product. A fee the import brings in is shown on the submission's record and added into nothing.
• Nothing about judge pay. That is money you move yourself — see Paying your judges.

Related guides

• Releasing scorecards — the one-way action that opens a season's scorecards, and what each submitter is emailed.
• Releasing one submission's scorecard — opening one submission's scorecard ahead of the season, which opens its purchase and its comp at once.
• Promo codes — your organization's own codes: making them, choosing which seasons they work in and how often, pausing and ending them, emailing them, and how each one has been used.
• Connecting payouts — the Stripe account your share is paid into, the platform fee line with your processing share, and the amber banner when it is not finished.
• The Season overview — the Revenue card, the scorecard-sales CSV and who may see them.
• Orders — every unlock across the organization in one list: buyer, receipt, category, status, the figures, the discount lines on a coded sale, resending a receipt, and the CSV.
• Opening a submission — the drawer whose Scorecard link card carries the unlocked line and the Comp button.
• Paying for your scorecard — the filmmaker's side: the card, the promo-code field, the Stripe page, the receipt, and the three states with no button.