Payroll is your default payout

Every contest in Kief lets you choose how you get paid: payroll or store credit. Until you choose otherwise, you're paid through payroll.

What this looks like

1. Nothing is paid while a contest is running. At the end of each pay period, the earnings of contests that have ended by then are batched (a repeating contest pays each cycle once that cycle has ended).
2. Once ops approves the batch, they're paid on your regular payday for that pay period.
3. A payroll earning goes in the first pay period that ends on or after the contest's (or cycle's) last day, and is paid on that period's regular payday, as long as it's not on hold for review.

Note: A vendor-funded contest that runs longer than a month is paid after the whole contest ends, not month by month — see contests that end at month end.

It's a real paycheck, taxed like one

Every earning, whether paid through payroll or as store credit, is a taxable bonus. It's reported on your W-2, and payroll taxes are withheld as required. Because it's earned through sales, it's also included in the regular rate used to figure overtime for the workweek you earned it in, under federal and New Mexico law. Oasis doesn't give personal tax advice — talk to your own tax preparer with specific questions.

Changing it

You can pick store credit instead, either as your overall default or just for one contest, on the Earnings page or right on a contest's detail page. See choosing store credit for how, and when that choice locks in.