How to pay your accepted Creators

When the brief is complete and your Creators are ready to be paid, here’s how the pay workflow works on Cohley.

Where payments happen

Payment actions live in the Completed stage of each brief. Once your Creators have delivered, been approved, and are in Completed, you’ll be able to send payment.

On each brief, you can choose to:

• Send Mass Payment — pay every Creator in the Completed stage (who hasn’t been paid yet) in one action
• Send Payment per individual Creator — pay a single Creator at a time

Important: Make any individual compensation adjustments before using Mass Payment. Mass Payment uses each Creator’s budget.

The pay-by date

Cohley automatically sets a pay-by date for every accepted Creator on a brief: 30 days from the brief’s content due date. Every Creator on the same brief shares the same pay-by date — submitting content early doesn’t move it earlier.

You can trigger payment any time within that window. We recommend requesting funds (see How to add funds to your Cohley account) as soon as Creators are accepted so funds are ready when it’s time to pay.

Checking how much you need

You have two views into upcoming Creator compensation:

• On a brief — open the brief to see Cohley funds and Expected funds for all accepted Creators
• On your Cohley homepage — see total upcoming Creator compensation across all your briefs

If you don’t have sufficient Cohley funds when you go to pay, you’ll see a red Add Cohley funds button — see How to add funds to your Cohley account for the funding methods.

Mass Payment flow

1. Open the brief and go to the Completed stage
2. Click Send Mass Payment
3. Confirm the total amount and the number of Creators matches your expectations
4. Confirm to send

Mass Payment includes every Creator in Completed who hasn’t been paid yet, at their budget.

Individual Payment flow

1. Open the brief and go to the Completed stage
2. Click Send Payment next to the specific Creator
3. Confirm the amount
4. Confirm to send

Use this when you want to adjust compensation for one Creator (e.g., a negotiated rate that differs from the budgeted amount).

Cohley doesn’t take a cut

100% of the Creator compensation goes to the Creator. Cohley does not charge a fee or commission on payments to Creators.

Tax forms and 1099s

Your brand does NOT need to send 1099s to Creators. Cohley payments go through PayPal, and PayPal is responsible for issuing 1099s where applicable. See Creator tax forms and 1099’s for the full explanation.