Direct Contracts with Freelancers/us

It doesn’t matter if it’s a small project or a big one, short-term or long-term. We understand how important it is to work with the right person, because a good connection can last you a lifetime.

If your freelancer has invited you to have a Direct Contracts contract on Upwork, you get the security and convenience of paying through Upwork.

How it works

With Direct Contracts, you’ll benefit from the following:

• Escrow service to protect your funds until you’ve had the chance to review the work and approve it. This also gives your freelancer peace of mind that the project funds are available, and they can be certain of your payment upon the successful completion of the job.
• Power to dispute the payment or cancel the contract if done within the window of time before you approve the release of funds (4 days for hourly contracts, 14 days for fixed price contracts). If you cancel, the funds are returned to your original payment method within 7 business days.
• Project management tools, such as invoices, emailed directly to you.

Review and accept a Direct Contract

When you receive a Direct Contract offer, you will receive an email with the key information, including the contract amount, title, and description. You will have the option to either “Accept and Fund Contract” or “Decline.”

Fund a Direct Contract

After you have agreed to the terms of the contract, you’ll be asked to deposit the funds for the contract in escrow via a credit card or PayPal. Once you have deposited funds, the contract starts and the project can begin. All transactions are in USD.

For an hourly contract, you’ll be asked for a one-time deposit of the equivalent of one week’s worth of contracted work.

For a fixed-price contract, you and the independent professional you work with may choose to add milestones to divide the job into a series of phases, due dates, or deliverables based on your needs.

Milestones are individually funded, and provide a way to work through a large project in smaller steps. You will only need to fund one milestone at a time, making it easier to scale your project.

Example

If a contract has five milestones at $100 for each milestone, the contract total is $500. However, you’ll only need to fund Milestone 1 with $100 to get started. Once that milestone is complete, you have the power to fund and activate the next one.

Review Payment Requests

Depending upon your contract type, you’ll review payment in different ways. Follow on-screen prompts in your email to review and approve/decline work.

Fixed-price Contracts

Once your freelancer has completed and submitted work for a fixed-price project (based on milestones), they will send you a request for payment. You’ll receive an email notification with the option to “Accept” or “Decline” the request.

If you accept the payment request, we immediately release the funds to the freelancer and, if all milestones are finished, the contract is closed.

If you reject the request, the funds remain in escrow and the contract is kept open; the freelancer can then make any necessary changes to the work and resubmit their payment request. You’ll have 14 days to approve or decline the work –– if you take no action during that time we will release the funds automatically to your freelancer at the end of the 14 days.

Hourly Contracts

Once the freelancer has logged hours, you will have the opportunity to review them. You’ll see what was logged in the previous week, and what is being logged in the current week. You’ll have 4 days to approve or dispute the hours, Monday-Thursday of that week –– if you take no action during that time we will release the funds automatically to your freelancer on Friday. If a freelancer logs extra hours outside of the weekly hourly limit on your contract, you’ll be able to approve or decline them. If you decline the extra hours, you will not be charged for those extra hours.