Pay participants you recruited
Pay the participants you brought in yourself in one step: pick who to pay, set one payment method and one incentive, and confirm.
Participants you recruit yourself, with a share link or a CSV import, are paid from the Pay Research Participants window once their interview is done. You choose who to pay, set one payment method and one incentive per participant, and Strella applies them to everyone you selected.
Panel participants from Respondent or User Interviews are paid differently: their incentive is prepaid with the recruitment order. See Report a participant for how their payout works.
Pay a group of participants
- Open Recruit → Participants → Completed
Tick the participants you want to pay, then click Pay Participants in the bar at the bottom of the table. The button appears when at least one ticked participant is one you recruited yourself and hasn't been paid yet.
- Check who is selected
Everyone starts ticked. Untick anyone you don't want to pay right now, or use the checkbox in the header to tick or untick everyone at once.
- Choose a payment method and an incentive
Pick a Payment method and type the Incentive per participant. Every ticked row shows the method and amount that participant will get, and the summary beside the fields shows how many are selected and the total.
- Confirm
Click Confirm. It stays disabled until there is someone to pay and, for a payment through Strella, an incentive above $0.
You can also pay one participant at a time from their interview under Results. The same window opens with just that participant.
Payment methods
Each method sets what Confirm does for the ticked participants.
| Method | What Confirm does |
|---|---|
| Pay via Strella | Takes you to checkout to pay the total, then Strella sends each participant their incentive at their email address. |
| Pay via Strella (Credits) | Pays the total from your organization's credit balance, after a second confirmation that shows the amount. |
| No payment / Pay manually | Marks the participants as attended without any payment through Strella. Use it when you pay them yourself or the study offered no reward. |
When you choose Pay via Strella (Credits), a summary under the list compares the total with your available credits. If the total is more than your balance, the window shows Insufficient credits and Confirm is disabled until you add credits on the Billing page.
Who gets paid
- Ticked participants get the method and incentive you chose.
- Unticked participants: Strella leaves them out entirely. It does not pay them or mark them as attended, and they stay unpaid in the table so you can pay them later.
- Participants with no verified email address can't receive a payment through Strella, because Strella sends the incentive to their email. Whatever method you pick, Strella only marks a ticked participant without one as attended, and their row says No verified email address.
- Panel participants in the same selection appear under Hired Participants as Prepaid. Confirming marks them as attended on their panel, which releases their payout on most orders.
Tips
- Set the amount once. You don't need to enter the incentive for each person: the one amount applies to everyone ticked.
- Pay in groups if amounts differ. To pay some participants a different amount, untick them, confirm the first group, then open the window again for the rest.
Approve, reject & invite
Once participants start arriving, you decide who moves forward. The Participants table is where you approve, reject, invite, and tag.
Report a participant
Strella auto-pays panel participants a set time after their interview. Here is how the payment window works and how to report a fraudulent or low-quality participant before they are paid.