My payment milestone got validated without my consent, why ?

[bacbf3e2]

Hello everyone,

I just connected this morning and saw that a payment milestone asked by one of my freelancers got approved & my freelancer got paid in the night.

This wouldn't be a problem if my freelancer finished his work. But it is not the case. He submitted a not entirely working version about 3 weeks ago and we were working towards a fully working version together. Now that he is paid I don't know if he'll continue collaboration, this may jeopardize my entire project.

I don't have any apporved collaborators on this project and I wasn't connected in the night so this can't be a manipulation error either.

Why would this milestone be validated ? Does Upwork auto-validates milestones without client consent after a certain amount of time ?

Thanks in advance for any answers, J.D.

[boshoffirene · Accepted solution]

Yes. Within 14 days. If you were not happy with the work, you could have declined that initial milestone release request and the freelancer would have had to resubmit.

[bacbf3e2]

Thank you very much for your answer, Irene !

Ok I noted that. I didn't want to send a bad message to the freelancer, as I was satisfied with his progress so far, but the work just didn't fullfill my requirements. So I didn't decline his request. Next time I will decline any milestone immediately instead of waiting for adjustments if it is not complete.

I was just compeletely unaware of the 14 day auto-payment, and it quite surprised me as I tend to always look for the little lines in the bottoms of contracts.

[tlsanders]

Jaysen, just so you know from the freelancer end, the "decline" doesn't come through as a negative. What the notification says is that the client has requested revisions, not that it's been rejected or denied.

[mthornton-cpc]

To piggyback on what Tiffany explained - in many cases it's considered quite normal and even expected for a freelancer to submit work via the milestone and have it marked by the client as revisions requested. It's a way to track rounds of review/feedback/revision on the platform as well as keeping documentation of the job in the system. It keeps all files submitted in one place and can serve as a sort of version control. Sometimes there are several back-and-forth passes like this before a final acceptance and release of payment. 

[g_vasilevski]

Hi Jaysen,

Our Customer Support team will reach out to you so that you can provide us with the Contract ID and we will assist you further on your ticket.

Just to confirm that, once a freelancer has submitted their work, if no actions are taken for 14 days the funds will be released towards them. Thank you!