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prastello
Community Member

How to Cancel a Milestone

Hi, does anyone know how to cancel a milestone that has been funded and activated? My freelancer pointed out that we already completed the work in the milestone last month. Without canceling, I can't assign the next milestone.

10 REPLIES 10
prestonhunter
Community Member

One simple way to handle this is to agree between the two of you (freelancer and client) to use the funded money for this milestone for a different milestone.


Although technically, that would mean that the "book keeping" doesn't match what actually happened.


Another thing you could do would be to CLOSE the contract, and request a refund of the funded milestone. The freelancer can then AGREE to that refund request, and the full amount of funded money will be returned to the client.

 

Then a new contract can be set up for the next milestone.

Thanks Preston, I have done the 'milestone shuffle' before and it is my first line of defense. Canceling the contract is not preferred as I will need to rebuild it which is too much work. It seems Upwork should have a way to cancel a milestone without complicated gymnastics, but I guess not.

re: "It seems Upwork should have a way to cancel a milestone without complicated gymnastics, but I guess not."

 

Somebody else may have other ideas.

 

I typically only use single-milestone contracts, so I'm not an expert.

Exactly! This is very user-unfriendly and frustrating. 

Hi Fritz,

 

Feel free to share more details with me and I would be more than happy to assist you further, thank you.

~ Goran
Upwork

Your post for cancelling a milestone is for clients.  How about freelancer.  I am currently in a job with a new client but was given a milestone by a previous client.

 

I cannot cancel a milestone but have informed him about the ongoing work.  Is there any other way to cancel a milestone on the freelancer side?

 

petra_r
Community Member


Joel S wrote:

I cannot cancel a milestone but have informed him about the ongoing work.  Is there any other way to cancel a milestone on the freelancer side?


You'd have to close the contract to cancel the milestone. Is there no way you can do the work, maybe with an adjusted deadline?

mtngigi
Community Member

Why not just release a nominal amount from the existing milestone ... like $5? Then the balance will automatically move forward into the next milestone.

 

If you have a good relationship with this freelancer and at the end of things agree to an adjusted amount for the work, I would hope the freelancer would refund any overpayment at the end of the contract.

 

Unless there's something I'm not understanding.

Thanks Virginia, good idea. However, what I ended up doing was to ask the freelancer to just work on the next milestone and attach the completed files to the one I wanted to cancel. Then I just deleted the next milestone.

Not a perfect solution because now the record is not clear, but I bolstered the solution with comments in the message queue.

I think your suggestion is the better solution and if I face this problem again, will use it. I didn't think it was possible to change the amount after a milestone had been funded - are you certain this would work?

 

Thanks!

 

-- Peter.

Just checked it out - it is possible to change the amount after funding a milestone. disregard my last question, your solution should work.

 

-- Peter.

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