🐈
» Forums » Bulletin Board » Re: We are here for you- COVID-19 Update
Page options
haydenb
Community Member

We are here for you- COVID-19 Update

In troubling and uncertain times like these, we find more meaning than ever in our company mission, which is to create economic opportunities so that people have better lives. It is through this lens that we are responding to the current COVID-19 crisis.

 

There is no higher value than the well-being of our team members, our customers, and our global community. Upwork is monitoring the COVID-19 situation closely and taking the necessary precautions to ensure the safety of our team members, while proactively driving business continuity plans to ensure that we continue to deliver for our customers. 

 

To ensure the safety of our team members as well as our business continuity, we’ve moved from a hybrid to a fully remote model. Upwork was built on a strong distributed team model, with the majority of our 1,700 team members already working remotely from their home offices in more than 800 cities before this crisis. Those who regularly work in one of our three corporate offices have shifted to working remotely as well. 

 

As Upwork’s CEO, I’m very aware that self-employed individuals and small-business entrepreneurs often face heightened risks in economic downturns. Upwork is committed to supporting you through this trying time, and we are working hard to ensure that clients know that your skills and talent may be exactly the thing they need to get through the current crisis. 

 

We have received some questions about Upwork’s approach and want to keep all our customers equally informed, so in addition to sending out emails, we are sharing information here in the Community forums on the steps we are taking and the ways we can help you.

 

The ways we are all connected have never been clearer, and Upwork remains committed to helping all our community members however we can. In particular, we are working to:

 

  1. Help you maintain business continuity. We are working hard with our clients around the world to ensure that their changing business needs are translating into work opportunities for all of you—particularly in this time when the need for work done remotely is at an all-time high. We are investing in developing new job pipelines for you so that you can find meaningful work opportunities on our platform even as this crisis unfolds. We are also helping our clients successfully adapt to remote work.

  2. Support freelancers in a time of need. We are a Founding Partner of the Freelancers Relief Fund, established this week by the Freelancers Union to assist independent workers in the United States who are experiencing financial hardship as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. For more information, visit here.

  3. Facilitate your earnings from non-Upwork clients. We are testing a program that gives you the ability to leverage our escrow services and directly invoice your non-Upwork clients. We are here to help you get paid at a time when prior solutions such as cash and checks may not be viable. If you are interested, please sign up here.

  4. Accelerate receipt of payments. We have heard from many of you a heightened desire to expedite payments from your Upwork clients. We have established an internal task force that is working on how we might do this, and we will keep you posted on these efforts here in the forums.

 

Our team is working around the clock to develop new resources for our customers and community, and we will continue to share more as the situation evolves. In the meantime, our thoughts continue to be with each of you during this challenging time. Please stay safe, stay healthy, and stay connected—and let us know how we can help.

 

Sincerely,

 

Hayden Brown

President and CEO, Upwork

173 REPLIES 173
hacknicity
Community Member

Thanks for this. One idea that could help is temporarily lowering the payment threshold down from $1000.


EDIT: I now know that I can request a payment at any time and / or change my payment threshold in my account settings. Thanks to those who politely told me this.

 

Geoff.


Geoff H wrote:

Thanks for this. One idea that could help is temporarily lowering the payment threshold down from $1000.

 

Geoff.


What are you talking about, good sir? On Upwork, $1000 isn't a marker post for anything.

Find below the fee structure

20% --> first $500

10% --> $501 to $10,000

5% --> 10,000 and above.

 

At the end of the month if my account is more than $1000 then I get paid. If not, I don't. For people who don't get regular work that can mean that we are owed money but will not receive it because the balance is below $1000.


Geoff H wrote:

At the end of the month if my account is more than $1000 then I get paid. If not, I don't. For people who don't get regular work that can mean that we are owed money but will not receive it because the balance is below $1000.


That's simply not true - you can get paid whenever you like. Go to your "Settings", enter your password, then click on "Get Paid". 

The moment when I first found this out was amazing as well 😄

That sounds like your payment settings might be a little high. Try logging in and visiting https://www.upwork.com/ab/payments/disbursement-methods, then select "Edit Schedule" to reduce this to a lower amount.

To withdraw today, go to that same payment page and select "Get Paid Now" to manually withdraw the funds.

I hope this helps!

Amy - my settings are already low. The issue is the minimum five-day waiting period to use the Get Paid Now feature. 

Exactly! Really slows down things...


Emmanuel I wrote:
Exactly! Really slows down things...

It slows things down, Emma. It doesn't slow down things...

 

Anyway, just wanted to give you kudos for that well-maintained profile of yours!

"Slows Things Down".

🙂

Maybe your concern is NOT earning, but also skill 


Geoff H wrote:

At the end of the month if my account is more than $1000 then I get paid. If not, I don't. For people who don't get regular work that can mean that we are owed money but will not receive it because the balance is below $1000.



As you can see from the attached screenshot, you can set your payment threshold from $100, $200, and so on up until $1000+.

Have you been on Upwork this long and didn't know this?

 

Set your payment schedule.png

I've withdrawn as little as $20 with no problem and not at the end of the month. 

Hi Geoff,

 

In your payment settings, you can set the $$ minimum for automatic payments.  Otherwise, you can manually transfer funds from your account to your bank/card at any $$ amount.  🙂

Jolene

This is not true unless it's an isolated incident. 

I have made withdrawals of amounts less than $100 and all has been fine 

Hey Geoff! Did you get the email this morning? Upwork is reducing the five-day waiting period on payments on hourly contracts, specifically for Top-Rated freelancers:
https://community.upwork.com/t5/Announcements/Faster-payouts-for-hourly-contracts/m-p/739876

Looking at my upcoming payments, I don't see it applying to my work completed last week, but I'm betting it will definitely apply to hourly work completed this week. Lena's posts says we'll get a notification that money earned last week will be available for manual withdrawal this Friday, so hopefully I'll see that payment schedule get adjusted.

"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."

shanellh
Community Member

I totally understand that you are trying to see what works BUT, I am still fired and out of money and having to wait for next week with minimal food and money for children and I. We need help even to make clients release funds in 24 hours instead of a week. I would think that wou;d ne easy to do because as I understood they prepaid into the escrow and upwork holds on to for disburment of payments correct? I dont know I just need help!!!!

Unfortunately, I'm not a fan of spreading free money around.

It causes inflation.

 

Still, an announcement that you are dropping the fee from 20% to 10% for the first $500 would be really cool, and much appreciated!

Such a fee drop would have to be maintained post-COVID, though, cos we won't let you switch it back without making at least some noise about it!

Yeah, would really appreciate if they could drop the service fee to at least 10% from 20%. That would be a big help to our family especially that my husband had been in no work no pay atm

 

I can relate. I have a mortgage to pay and income is starting to dry up. Releasing funds earlier and reducing the job fee would be a huge help at this time. 

Have you tried the instant payment feature? It only takes a $2 flat fee and it truly delivered to my bank account instantly, not hours later. It's much cheaper than a late fee!

Amy - I have that feature but at the moment I can't afford to lose the fee from what are often already small payments. I think Upwork should start working with clients like many other companies to help during this crisis. Reducing the job fee would be a good start. 

Yes I have but I was really referring to we have to wait a week back for our payments that we've already completed from last week or prior to if the funds are already available in an escrow account making them available in these hard times immediately would be better
tmbaru
Community Member

Exactly my concern.

If the earning process is complete and the client has released the funds, why does it have to take so long for the funds to clear? Anybody who knows the reason? 

AveryO
Community Manager
Community Manager

Hi Thomas, 

 

Our team is still looking into solutions that will allow for the security period to be reduced while maintaining a high level of protection users' payments currently have. We'll update the Community once we receive feedback from our Product team but I can confirm that our team is not considering reducing the timeline for automatically releasing Escrow funds.

 

While we continue to test ways to get freelancers' earnings faster to them, at this point we are not able to offer a shorter security period for all transactions. Security remains to be our priority.

 

 

Thomas wrote:

Exactly my concern.

If the earning process is complete and the client has released the funds, why does it have to take so long for the funds to clear? Anybody who knows the reason? 


 


~ Avery
Upwork
k_poser
Community Member

Thank you so much for looking into this. a 24-48hr period would be so welcomed when compared to the five days we currently wait. 

This, exactly! Even 3 days would be preferable 😄

I don't understand the security concern here. What exactly is the reason for the 5-day wait? When I do work outside of Upwork, and the client pays via paypal, I get the money immediately. Why does it take 5 days here? What exactly are you protecting us from?


Brad B wrote:

I don't understand the security concern here. What exactly is the reason for the 5-day wait? When I do work outside of Upwork, and the client pays via paypal, I get the money immediately. Why does it take 5 days here? What exactly are you protecting us from?


Wait until you get a chargeback on PayPal or a dispute. lol 

 

The 5-day hold is for fraud. There is a lot of it, mostly from freelancers so just like all things it's the **Edited for Community Guidelines** minority that ruin it for the honest ones. Upwork kinda brings it on themselves with the auto accepted people, but it is what it is and whatever as long as I am winning and making money.

The difference here is that the money for flat-rate projects in Upwork is already in escrow and received from the client. Any money deposited into escrow that has been there for over the five days should be already vetted. The only "fraud" I could see after that would be from the freelancer not completing adequate work, but if the client has approved the milestone, that risk should also be eliminated.

Can someone from Upwork tell us the reasoning behind that? I've had milestones that have been set up for weeks but apparently that payment still needs vetted for that entire period. Is there any development in the works for flat-rate projects? Otherwise this sounds like Upwork is having cashflow issues and is leaning on us to compensate. Freelance work should be more popular than ever with positions being eliminated, so I don't imagine freelance hosts like Upwork are hurting.

Could you please update us on the evaluation progress your team is doing on 

"Accelerate receipt of payments. We have heard from many of you a heightened desire to expedite payments from your Upwork clients. We have established an internal task force that is working on how we might do this, and we will keep you posted on these efforts here in the forums."

?

**Edited for Community Guidelines**

Yes I have but I was really referring to we have to wait a week back for our payments that we've already completed from last week or prior to if the funds are already available in an escrow account making them available in these hard times immediately would be better

 

well, Why is your profile shy? 

 


Brian K wrote:

well, Why is your profile shy? 


What other people do or do not do about visibility of their profiles is not our business.

where is this 'instant payment' feature?

Annemarie - go to Settings and select the Get Paid option. You can sign up for Instant Pay if you want to bypass waiting for funds to be transferred to your bank account, but Instant Pay does incur a $2 fee. 

You can access the "Get Paid Now" feature here:

Capture.JPG

Hi! How do you activate this feauture? Does that mean you don't have to wait a week for every payment?

Hi Wendy,

 

Are you referring to fixed price payments or payments on hourly contracts? Once a milestone is approved you will receive your funds after our 5 days security period is finished. To learn more about how you`re getting paid on Hourly contracts, check out this Help Article
If you have any additional questions, let me know. Thank you.

~ Goran
Upwork


Wendy T wrote:

Hi! How do you activate this feauture? Does that mean you don't have to wait a week for every payment?


There's no feature to activate. The procedures and timelines for release of funds from escrow, and for payment on hourly jobs, are unchanged.

Upwork is reconsidering whether payment release can be expedited. If it comes up with anything, it will let us know.

Latest Articles
Featured Topics
Learning Paths