After You're Accepted: How Finn Helps You Understand What Comes Next
Deliverables, deadlines, asset-level requirements, uploads, and review. What happens after acceptance, and where to ask when something is unclear.
Acceptance is where a Brief stops being a decision and starts being a commitment. From here you have deliverables, a deadline, and a set of requirements each of your files will be checked against. The most expensive mistake at this stage is guessing. A file that misses a requirement costs you a reshoot, and a result you misread can cost you a reshoot you never needed. Finn can help you make sense of what a Brief is asking for and what the status on it means, using the information available in Cohley. The current Brief and the status shown on it are always the source of truth. This guide covers requirements, uploads, review, posting, and when to stop and ask a person.
TL;DR
- 📋 Re-read the Brief after acceptance. The version in your head is not the version you agreed to.
- 🎯 Requirements are checked against each individual asset, not across your whole submission.
- ⏳ What happens after you upload is not the same on every Brief type. Follow the status on the Brief you are working.
- 🛑 If a result does not make sense, ask before you reshoot. Reshooting on a guess is the most expensive move available to you.
- 🎵 Sort out your audio before you edit, not after you post.
- 💬 Finn helps you understand. Support helps when something looks wrong.
The stakes change at acceptance
Before you applied, the worst case was a wasted twenty minutes. Now you have committed to producing something, and the cost of a misunderstanding is measured in shoots.
Almost every problem creators run into at this stage traces back to the same thing. They read the Brief once, before applying, when they were reading it to decide whether to apply. Then they produce from memory. The deliverable count drifts. A requirement gets remembered as a suggestion. The thing the brand asked for in the second file gets folded into the first.
None of that is carelessness. It is what happens when you read something for one purpose and then use it for another.
So the first move after acceptance is unglamorous: open the Brief again and read it as a set of instructions rather than an opportunity. Finn is useful here for the same reason it was useful before you applied, which is that you can ask about the thing in front of you instead of hunting for a help article.
Deliverables and deadlines
Get precise about three things before you plan a shoot.
How many files, and of what type. A Brief asking for two videos and a photo is a different day than one asking for a video with two scenes. Some Briefs are also built around separate concepts, each with its own deliverables, so the count depends on what you are creating against.
What format. Some Briefs distinguish between raw footage and a finished edit, and submitting one when the other was asked for is a full redo.
When it is due, and what the date actually governs. Content deadlines and posting dates are not always the same date.
Finn can help you work through what a Brief specifies. Ask it rather than reconstructing the Brief from memory three days out.
Who this is for: everyone, every time. This is a five minute step that prevents multi-day mistakes.
Requirements are checked against each asset
This is the single most useful thing on this page, and it is the thing creators most often learn the hard way.
A Brief's AI Asset Analysis Requirements are checked against individual assets. Every file you submit gets reviewed against them on its own. The check does not read your submission as a set and it does not carry context from one file to the next.
That has a consequence that catches people out. A requirement written to describe the whole batch behaves badly when applied to each file separately. Real examples of requirements that cause this:
Submit one video outside and one video inside. Read as a batch, that is clear. Applied to a single file, neither video satisfies it.
Read all deliverables. Check out all reference videos. Neither of those describes anything a file can contain, so neither can be satisfied by an asset.
This is the same asset-level check described in Use Finn Before You Apply, and it matters more now, because at this stage a miss costs a shoot. You are not responsible for fixing a brand's badly written requirement, and you should not try to. What this changes is your planning. Build each file so it stands on its own against the requirements that describe content, and if a requirement seems to describe the set rather than a file, that is worth flagging before you shoot rather than after.
Ask Finn to walk you through the requirements on your Brief one at a time. It is a better use of ten minutes than almost anything else at this stage.
Uploading, and what happens after
Here is where creators most often draw a wrong conclusion, because the workflow is not the same on every Brief.
Uploaded assets may be checked against the Brief's requirements. What a result means, and what happens next, depends on the Brief type. On some Briefs, a flagged asset comes straight back to you with what needs to change, and you correct and resubmit. On others, your submission moves into brand review, and an automated result is not the same as brand approval.
So the rule is the same everywhere even though the workflow is not: follow the status and the instructions shown on the Brief you are working. Finn can help you make sense of what you are seeing there. The Brief itself is what governs.
One practical note. If an upload will not go through, try a different browser before you assume the file is the problem.
If something comes back, do not reshoot first
This is the part worth internalizing, because it is where creators lose the most work for the least reason.
A result on your asset is information, not a verdict. It can mean your file really did miss something the Brief asked for. It can also mean a requirement was written in a way that no single file could satisfy, which is a problem with the requirement and not with your content.
You cannot always tell which from the result alone. What you can do is stop.
Read the specific requirement the result points to. Ask Finn to help you make sense of it against what you submitted. If the two do not reconcile, if you look at your file and the requirement and cannot see the gap, that is the moment to ask a person rather than to pick up a camera. Reshooting on a hunch is the most expensive thing available to you at this stage, and a meaningful share of the time it turns out to have been unnecessary.
Who this is for: anyone who has had content come back and immediately started planning a reshoot. Spend the ten minutes first.
Music, before you edit rather than after
Audio is worth settling early, because fixing it late means rebuilding a finished video around a different track.
The short version: licensing follows how content is used, not which account posts it. Brand-linked content is commercial, so the broad catalog in your editing app is usually the wrong place to pull from. Cohley gives you a licensed catalog to search inside the platform.
The full picture, including what the audio statuses mean and where platform rules stop, is in How Music Compliance Works in Cohley. Read it before you edit, not after you post.
Posting and what follows
When your content clears review, some Briefs ask you to post it on your own channels. Where and how depends on the Brief, and platform-specific instructions may come with it.
Two things make this go smoothly.
Connect the account you will be posting from ahead of time, so authorization is not a last-minute obstacle. The Creator Help Center covers connecting accounts. And if a Brief asks you to share the link to your post, do it through the Brief rather than in a side conversation, because that is how the post gets tracked and how performance comes back.
Payment follows the Brief's terms. What it depends on, and when it happens, is on the Brief and in the Creator Terms and Conditions.
When to use Finn, and when to use Support
Worth being clear about, because using the wrong one costs you time.
Use Finn when you need to understand something. What the Brief asks for. What a requirement means. What the status you are looking at is telling you. What your next step appears to be. Finn is fast and it is available while you are working.
Use Support when something looks wrong rather than unclear. A result you cannot reconcile with your file. A status that does not match what you did. Something broken. A question about payment specific to your account. These need a person with access to your account, and Finn is not that.
The signal that you have crossed from one to the other is usually frustration. If you have asked the same question three different ways and the answer still does not fit your situation, stop asking and open a ticket. The Creator Help Center is the route.
The Brief is the source of truth
One thing to carry through everything above.
Finn helps you understand what is in front of you. It does not replace it. Where anything you read here, anything Finn tells you, and the current Brief disagree, the Brief and the status shown on it win. The same goes for your account, your deadlines, and your payment terms. Those are states in the product, not things to be recalled from a conversation.
That is not a disclaimer. It is how to avoid the specific failure of acting on a summary when the actual instruction was one screen away.
What Finn can and cannot do after acceptance
- Help you make sense of a Brief's deliverables, deadlines, and requirementsChange a deliverable, extend a deadline, or alter a requirement
- Help you understand what a status on your Brief appears to meanApprove your content, or change a result on your asset
- Help you think through whether your plan meets the requirementsReview your file before you submit it and tell you it will pass
- Point you toward Cohley's licensed music catalogGrant you rights to audio you brought from elsewhere
- Help you understand what a Brief says about posting and paymentResolve a payment issue on your account
- Tell you when a question needs SupportAct as Support
Starter prompts
Open Finn with the Brief you are working on in front of you.
Right after acceptance
- What exactly am I delivering on this Brief, and by when?
- Are the content deadline and the posting date the same?
- Walk me through this Brief's requirements one at a time.
While you are planning the shoot
- Which of these requirements applies to each individual file?
- Is there a requirement here that no single file could satisfy?
- Where do I find music I can use for this?
After you submit
- What does this status on my Brief mean?
- What does the Brief say happens next?
- I cannot see how my file missed this requirement. What should I check?
When you are stuck
- Is this something you can help with, or should I contact Support?
Open Finn where the work is
None of this is worth much read in the abstract. It is worth a lot with your Brief open next to it. Start with the deliverables question, even if you are confident you know the answer, because that is the one people are most often confidently wrong about.
FAQ
What should I do first after being accepted?
Re-read the Brief as a set of instructions rather than an opportunity. Confirm the number and type of deliverables, the format, and both the content deadline and any posting date. Most problems later trace back to producing from a version of the Brief remembered from before applying.
Why did my file get flagged when the Brief seemed clear?
Requirements are checked against each asset individually, not across your submission as a set. A requirement written to describe the whole batch, like asking for one video outside and one inside, cannot be satisfied by either file on its own. That is a requirement problem, not a content problem.
Does a result on my asset mean the brand rejected me?
Not necessarily, and it depends on the Brief type. On some Briefs a flagged asset returns to you with what to change. On others, your submission moves into brand review and an automated result is not brand approval. Follow the status shown on your Brief.
Should I reshoot if my content comes back?
Not first. Read the specific requirement the result points to and check it against what you submitted. If you cannot see the gap, ask before you re-film. Reshooting on a guess is the most expensive move at this stage, and sometimes the requirement was the problem.
Can Finn check my content before I submit it?
No. Finn can help you think through whether your plan meets the requirements, but it does not review files in advance or predict a result. Treat it as help with understanding the Brief, not as a preview of the check your assets will go through.
When should I contact Support instead of asking Finn?
When something looks wrong rather than unclear. A result you cannot reconcile with your file, a status that does not match what you did, anything broken, or a payment question specific to your account. Those need a person with account access. Finn cannot resolve them.
When do I get paid?
Payment follows the terms of the Brief you completed, so check the Brief and the Creator Terms and Conditions. If the payment status on your account does not match what the Brief says should have happened, that is a Support question rather than something Finn can resolve.