Hi,
If you recently won a contest which had multiple winners, perhaps you found out there's one rule that complicate things with payment release.
The rule is - all designers must have their files approved/finalized before each of them can get funds released. So, no matter if your files got approved, you have to wait for others to finish theirs.
My suggestion is that you separate this and have each designer get his/hers funds, unrelated to other winning design's completion state.
Thank you for reading.