In special circumstances, you may need to provide payment to participants whose submissions have already reached a terminal status. This feature allows you to compensate participants after the initial decision has been made.
The "Update and Approve Payment" button is available for submissions with these terminal statuses: Approved, Rejected, No-Show, and Returned.
When to Use This Feature
This action is designed for exceptional cases, such as:
- Compensating a participant after discovering a technical issue affected their submission
- Providing payment for partial work after initially rejecting a submission
- Correcting a payment decision after review or appeal
- Honoring commitments made through direct communication with participants
How to Update Payment
- Navigate to the Submissions Dashboard for your study
- Locate the submission with terminal status
- In the submission's action cell, click the "Update and Approve Payment" button
- Enter the payment amount you wish to provide
- Confirm the payment update
Note: This feature is designed for individual submissions only and does not support bulk actions.
Important Considerations
Status Will Change to Approved
Regardless of the original status, when you update and approve payment, the submission status will be changed to Approved. This means:
- A previously rejected submission will now show as approved
- This may affect your study's completion count and participant reputation scores
- Be mindful of your target subject count when approving previously rejected or returned submissions
Payment Transfer Required
When you enter a non-zero payment amount, the system will transfer funds from your main wallet to the study wallet to fund the participant payment. Ensure you have sufficient balance in your main wallet before proceeding.
Best Practices
- Document your reasoning: Keep records of why payment was updated for exceptional cases
- Consider study goals: Be aware that changing rejected submissions to approved may impact your target recruitment numbers
- Check wallet balance: Ensure sufficient funds are available before initiating the payment update
- Communicate with participants: If this is in response to a participant inquiry, let them know the payment has been processed
- Use sparingly: Reserve this feature for genuine exceptional circumstances rather than routine processing