Customizing payment methods based on contract type

[Richard S]

I suggest oDesk add a feature that allows for different credit cards be used for different projects. For example, if I have both a personal project and a work related project with oDesk I would to pay for the personal project on my personal card and the work related project on work related credit card in order to keep personal and business expenses and payments separate. It is difficult to do this manually, especially when i have two projects going on at the same time, because payments are automatic. Could someone from oDesk contact me to discuss this or at least acknowledge this post?

[Valeria K]

Hi Richard, Thank you very much for your feedback. Unfortunately, it's not possible to set up different payment methods for different contracts at this point. However, enabling teams feature could be a good workaround for it, since you can set up different payment methods for different teams. You could have one team for work-related contracts and another for personal contracts and set up payment methods accordingly. Note, that the reports and transaction history will be separated as well. Here is more information about this feature and you will need to contact Customer Support in order to enable it. I hope it's helpful.

[Sam H]

I just wanted to add that I would like this feature to be added as well. I don't think I want to go through the hassle of setting up Teams. It seems like a no-brainer that I should be able to set a different payment method for each contract, doesn't it?

[Samantha P]

Yes I agree. We really need an option of being able to select which billing method we can use for each job. I hope this is something you are looking into doing in the near future.

[Jean S]

You can use PayPal for personal jobs as it can come off of any credit card you set up. Then use your business credit card for business and paypal for personal.

[Petra R]

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@Jean S wrote:

You can use PayPal for personal jobs as it can come off of any credit card you set up. Then use your business credit card for business and paypal for personal.

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That doesn't really address the issue though. Clients can also set up a whole bunch of different credit cards in payment methods, plus PayPal of course, and switch to which one to set as primary, but that will not help if there are several contracts running at the same time, especially if they are hourly, because it will be the primary payment method that gets charged for everything.

So say I have a personal hourly contract with Freelancer A and a business hourly contract with Freelancer B, whatever Payment method I have set as primary will be charged Monday afternoon UTC in one transaction for both contracts.

The only ways to pay different contracts via different payment methods at the moment is to either stick to fixed rate contracts and switch as and when setting up milestones, which is cumbersome, or to set up teams and set the different payment methods to suit.

So one team could be for company contracts, with the company card, and one for personal projects, with the personal card.

Its not actually a big deal to set up at all and keeps everything under one "roof" so to speak, but with the flexibility to set up different payment methods for different contracts.

Then, using my example above, every Monday the contract with Freelancer A in "Team Private" gets charged to my personal card or Paypal, and the contract with freelancer B in "Team Corporate" gets charged to the company card or PayPal

[KimBerly K]

Thank you Valeria for that suggestion.  It worked perfect for allowing me to separate payment methods.

[Andrew H]

Hi Valerie, the customer support links you posted are not working. Can you please send me instructions on how to set up teams? 

Regards,

Andrew

[Goran V]

Hi Andrew,

Please refer to this guides on how to Enable Teams and Add or Remove Members from your Team. If you need further help let us know, thank you!

[Josh M]

How do you customize payments between each team? I don't see any options to assign payment methods.