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Faster payouts for hourly contracts

lenaellis
Community Member

We have heard from many in our community that you need your earnings faster, especially now. Today, we are happy to announce that all Top Rated freelancers and agencies working on hourly contracts are eligible to receive their funds five days earlier. This is because we are eliminating the security hold on their payouts. 

 

For Top Rated agencies and freelancers, the earnings for hours that you worked last week will be available to manually withdraw this Friday. You will see a notification under your bell icon and receive an email about the updated payment schedule for your hourly contracts for this week. 

 

Because this is for Top Rated agencies and freelancers, the early release of funds will depend on when you currently have the Top Rated badge. If you lose or earn the Top Rated status during this time, your payment schedule will be adjusted to include or exclude the security hold.


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How does it work?

As long as your client’s billing method can be charged successfully and they don’t dispute your hours, we will apply their payment to your Upwork account five days earlier than before if you are Top Rated. You can then withdraw the money anytime you prefer by clicking here and choosing “Get Paid Now.” Note: If you have an automatic payment schedule set up,  this will not adjust the schedule, so if you want your earnings sooner, you also can use “Get Paid Now.”

 

Why are we only rolling this out to Top Rated freelancers and agencies?

We know that many of the talent on Upwork would benefit from receiving their earnings faster. However, during these unprecedented times, changing our policies also creates a higher risk of fraud. Due to the potential risk, we are initially rolling this out to the marketplace’s most successful freelancers and agencies—those who are Top Rated. In the future, we will consider expanding this to other freelancers. 

 

Why do we have a 10-day wait in the first place? 

There is an inherent risk in payment processing, driven by the potential of fraudulent people, disputes, and chargebacks. We also need to give clients time to review their freelancer’s billed hours and project progress before payment is released. But in these unusual times, we understand how important it is for you to get payouts as quickly as possible. As a result, we are willing to take on additional risk and remove the security-hold period for Top Rated freelancers and agencies so you can get your money five days sooner.



Will this be available only during COVID-19?

While we plan to continue the practice after the COVID-19 pandemic ends, we will be monitoring the impacts of this change. 

 


Why is this only available for earnings on hourly contracts and not fixed-price contracts? 

With faster payments we decided to focus on the removal of security holds from hourly contracts first because the majority of contracts on Upwork are hourly. We understand faster payments will be a benefit for all contract types and we plan to explore making fixed-price payments faster in the future.


Upwork is dedicated to our community, and all of our teams are focused on keeping independent professionals working. Please visit our Help Center article for more details and let us know if you have any additional questions.

847 Comments
ruzanna17
Community Member

Great! Thank you!

kochubei_valeria
Community Member

Hi Doug,

 

This doesn't affect your Automatic Payment Schedule. So your money will be sent to your preferred withdrawal method according to the schedule you set up. 

abdulqadeer098
Community Member

Thank you very much for this effort.

kapil_roy
Community Member

Great decision. Thank you very much. 

pattychiroque
Community Member

Awesome! Thank you!

 

aakwabi
Community Member

To Daniel

This was also my point. Really glad that someone shares my views. It does not make sense for a client to approve a project, but then Upwork still holds it for 5 more days. The client has already had enough time to ascertain that the work meets the requirements. Holding on it beats logic. It is rather the 14-day period for clients to review remains the same (though it can still be shortened/reduced), but the 5-day waiting period for fixed hour contracts is eliminated. That column should be removed as it does not add any value to Upwork, the client, or the freelancer. I wish there was a voting system so that we vote on such issues, but the only thing we can do is air out our grievances.

adnanrahim630
Community Member

Thanks! It's really helpful in these strage time - Many Thanks! 🙂

kluchnyk
Community Member

Great news, thanks )

ahmed_ibrahhim
Community Member

That's amazing.

michael_m_loyal
Community Member

Kudos Upwork! this is a huge help Smiley Very Happy