Pending limit for incentives 🕒
Want to make sure that participants who are confirmed in one study won't be invited to another study that would exceed their annual incentive limit? Pending limits can help.
🤔 How does a participant end up with pending incentives?
If a participant is confirmed for a session that has an incentive amount setup in study plan, that amount will be considered pending for that study.
Setting up and testing pending limits ✅
Here't the basic checklist of all the elements you need in place for a participant to be blocked by pending limits in either calendar or Pool:
1️⃣ Pending limits turned on
2️⃣ Pool rule turned on for incentive limits
3️⃣ Participant confirmed in a study that exceeds your annual incentive limit, including any paid incentives
Step 1: Turn on pending limits
Head to incentives > activity > limits, and enable "Include pending payments." Any participant that is confirmed for a scheduling time will count immediately towards the pending limit. It's useful if you have participants filling out multiple studies at the same time and you want to limit their eligibility.
Step 2: Enable the Pool rule for limits
If you have an Enterprise plan, head to Pool > Rules > Yearly incentive limits and verify that it shows pending payments included.
Step 3: Try a fake participant that's confirmed for one study
The trick to testing out pending payments is to confirm an email in one study (study #1) that has a very high incentive, because it needs to be close to your yearly limit. Then make another study with a normal incentive that would take your participant over the yearly limit.
- Example yearly limit is $599
- Test study #1 with an incentive of $500
- Test study #2 with an incentive of $150
Step 4: Head to calendar for another study
Now head to study #2, use the same email from study #1 and pick a time and you should now see this participant as blocked by pending incentive limits from calendar view:
Pool filters
The following are the related pool filters to organize participants and panels by the amount they've been paid inside Ethnio (incentives) or the amounts you've tracked for payments outside of Ethnio (external payments).
| Filter Name | Type | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Annual incentive total 💰 | Incentives | Dollar amount paid this calendar year across all studies. E.g. $50 |
| Pending payments annually 💰 | Incentives | Number of incentives pending by year. E.g. 10 ppt pending in 2025 |
Pending + issued annually 💰 |
Incentives | Number of incentives issued + pending by year. E.g. 10 ppt paid/pending in 2025 |
Last payment date 📆 |
Incentives | Dates incentives issued |
| Paid all-time 💰 | Incentives | Dollar amount issued across all years. E.g. $50 |
| Annual external swag 💰 | External payments | Total swag paid this year. Greater or less than. E.g. $50 + $200 + $100 = total $350 |
| Last external swag payment date 📆 | External payments | Dates incentives issued |
| External swag issued all-time 💰 | External payments | Number of external incentives issued by year. E.g. 10 ppt paid in 2025 |
| External money issued all-time 💰 | External payments | Total external money all-time |
| Last external money payment date 📆 | External payments | Dates incentives issued |
| Total external money payments 💰 | External payments | Number of external incentives issued by year. E.g. 10 ppt paid in 2025 |
Participant detail in Pool
If you click the incentives section of any participant, you can also see any pending payments, even if you don't have the limit activated. This just means a participant is confirmed in a study with a set incentive. It does not mean they've been paid this amount:
Logic
There are some interesting points to consider around how the logic applies to pending state:
- Cancelled participants in the scheduling part of a study will not be counted towards pending
- Multi-session mode - the pending limit takes the amount in study details and multiplies it by the number of sessions. So if you enter $75 in study details, and you have 3 sessions, the pending limit will be $225.
Multi-Session Details
- For MSM, it's easier to reach the pending limit because of the multiple sessions. Please keep in mind that even one MSM study can launch a participant well past their yearly incentive limit.