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1fdc80f3
Community Member

Reports

Is this correct? I now need to pay a fee to see reports summarizing the the money I spent and who I spent it on?   So you don't charge a fee for hiring people, but charge a fee to track my expenses.    
Are you seriously?
Craig

ACCEPTED SOLUTION
BojanS
Community Manager
Community Manager

Hi Craig,

 

As part of the Basic plan you have access to several reports:

-Transaction report. This gives you a detailed view of all your Upwork transactions.

-Freelancer work diaries. As Petra explained, you can visit the Contract Room for any project to see a freelancer’s Work Diary.

-Weekly Summary email. Account admins will get this weekly email report, which includes details such as the hours logged by your freelancer(s).

Based on data about how clients use reports, we expect that the tools above will give the majority of clients the information they need to manage their projects. However, in cases where clients need more information, we are offering the paid Client Plus plan.

 

Thank you.

~ Bojan
Upwork

View solution in original post

30 REPLIES 30
emonuzzamanmd
Community Member

You can visit here to know more details about clients membership plan. 

This was a terrible decision. Eliminating the reporting tools for basic plan users does not make anything "easier." It makes managing freelancers -- and using Upwork -- harder. I had relied on the simple spreadsheet downloads for years. Because of Upwork's terrible decision, I will be curtailing my usage of Upwork.  

BojanS
Community Manager
Community Manager

Hi Craig,

 

As part of the Basic plan you have access to several reports:

-Transaction report. This gives you a detailed view of all your Upwork transactions.

-Freelancer work diaries. As Petra explained, you can visit the Contract Room for any project to see a freelancer’s Work Diary.

-Weekly Summary email. Account admins will get this weekly email report, which includes details such as the hours logged by your freelancer(s).

Based on data about how clients use reports, we expect that the tools above will give the majority of clients the information they need to manage their projects. However, in cases where clients need more information, we are offering the paid Client Plus plan.

 

Thank you.

~ Bojan
Upwork
6a86f59f
Community Member

As a paying customer of Upwork I have a right to know what I'm paying for so I can accurately bill my clients and do my taxes. Why should I have to pay $50 for a detailed 'receipt'? Downloading a .csv file showing the hours and tasks performed is a BASIC function.

 

As a BASIC customer who spends tens of thousands of dollars through Upwork I am insulted. Annoying your good customers by forcing us to hunt and peck though data points day by day and hour by hour is not going to convince us to 'upgrade'. I will convince me to seek alternatives, so it's crap marketing on your part.

 

By my calculation, when I pay a freelancer $10,000 Upwork receives $1,300- 10% from the freelancer and 3% from me. That's not enough to get a .csv file? You need another $50?

 

You should change your BASIC description to read:

"…includes everything an individual or small team needs to succeed on Upwork." except the ability to know what you're paying for unless you spend hours compiling fragments of data yourself.

Hi Eric,

 

We're sorry for the frustration the new membership plan changes have caused. Although you're unhappy with the changes, we sincerely appreciate it that you're sharing your thoughts. The new memberships are designed to make it easier for businesses to be flexible and select the plan that works best for them at any given time. I understand you're unhappy with the report features available on the Basic plan and will be sharing your feedback with our Product team for their consideration.

~ Vladimir
Upwork

I agree with Eric. It is absurd that you want to now charge us for the reports that were available as part of your service. You have increased your fees AND now want to charge us additional fees for the reports. Time to find a new time and billing platform. Goodbye Upwork.

Maybe a compromise plan could be put into effect:

 

Upwork changes its client membership plans to EXACTLY what they have proposed...

 

BUT... CURRENT clients who have already been hiring on Upwork could continue to have the same level of reporting features that they had before. Their reporting functionalty could be "grandfathered" in.

 

New client would be presented with the available plans, and if they choose a basic plan, they won't be missing anything because they never had it.

Or perhaps the $49 fee should be credited toward the 3% Upwork commission. So a basic user like me who routinely pays freelancers more than $1,500 per month would not see any increase. 

Both comments you made were spot on Eric.

 

Upwork, you are not listening, you are only performing damage control, it’s a little obvious.

Vladimir G, thank you for replying.  You mentioned “new memberships are designed to make it easier for businesses to…”  Stop right there and take a bow.  Your plans are obviously not designed to make it easier for the client (me), my life is now harder. 

 

These plans are designed to make you money because we would be idiots not to want easy to read summary reports and we are foolish enough to give you money for it.  Well, not me😊.  I need simple reports so I can find out who I am paying, how much, how fast I am spending money and I also need to see if anyone is taking advantage of the freedom, I give them to manually upload hours.

To all Upwork personnel, especially those that reply to this comment, the tide has shifted on businesses, humans are the biggest commodity on earth, you need us, and we do not need you.  Apple needs us, Netflix needs us, every company needs us because everyone makes everything and now companies must fight for us.  Anyone can copy and paste a webservice, have you ever heard of myspace?

 

I signed up thinking the service was easy to use, I presumed I would always have access to those reports.  Please reinstate the Weekly summary, Budget report, timesheet by freelancer, time by active, etc.

 

Thank you,

Craig

AveryO
Community Manager
Community Manager

Hi Craig, and Eric,

I would just like to note that you should still be able to access your Work Diaries, Transactions, and Weekly Summaries (through an email). 

While the Work Diary no longer appears in your Reports tab, you still have access to view it and all contract details on a contract-by-contract basis in the Contract Room. You can access the Contract Room from two places: My Jobs>Contracts for active contracts or Jobs>All Contracts.

To be able to access your Transactions report, please hover your mouse over the “Reports” tab and then click on “Transactions.” 

 

Upwork Client Basic customers will still be able to see their weekly transactions through the Weekly Summary email. For more information, please visit this Help Center article.


~ Avery
Upwork
1fdc80f3
Community Member

Hi Avery and all Moderators,

 

I am wrong, I apologize.   I think I was wrong to request seeing  reports.  I think I should get the reports from my emails as you suggested, easier, more convenient and timelier.   I was wrong to assume I should receive more helpful reports over time and not less.  I think Upwork make the right decision in taking away easy to use features and easy to read and access reports.  If I want to see those reports I should pay $600 per year.  One clink links to reports should cost $600 per year at the minimum.  I apologize.  I think you should also make report blurry and charge me and extra $1,000 to unblurry them.  I think you should take away the alerts and charge $1,000 to receive them from now on.  You should do the same thing with emails.  Why not take away the chatrooms and charge us for them too.  I should be the next CEO of Upwork, my ideas are crazy awesome, clients will love me!  Again, I’m just looking out for Upwork, because I care, I’m cool like that.

 

I think I should be more grateful to you; I should be more thankful to Upwork.

 

Thank you for seeing things from my perspective.  Thank you for taking the time out of your day to better understand your clients.  Thank you for making the time I spend on Upwork easier.  Thank you for upgrading your platform.  Thank you for scaling out your platform's features.  Thank you for growing alongside your clients.  Thank you for placing as much value on my time and money as I do.  Thank you for creating and adding new and convenient features to make your clients happier and the time they spend more efficient.  Thank you for helping me track my contractors better so they don’t take advantage of me (That’s a big one, thank you!).   Thank you for listening to your company's clients and really going beyond things like "You can see stuff in an email".   Thank you for not taking advantage of clients and putting the client first.  Thank you for making changes based on the needs of your clients.  Thank you for removing a line of code that prevented me from seeing everything I’ve always seen.  Thank you for making your product more efficient.  Thank you for putting people first and not profits.  Thank you for supporting the small business community. 

 

If any moderator cared to investigate and look at the amount of money I spend, look at the amount of feedback I give, read the feedback I’ve been given and finally, take a look at the number of bonuses I give out and the amount of those bonuses, you will see that it’s not about the $600.  Clearly, I don’t care about $600.  What I care about is not being taken advantage of.  I want you to create better features that makes me WANT to pay $600, not take features hostage, take them and make me pay to see them again.  Think of it this way, you gave me a choice, pay $600 or be less informed and less efficient, awesome!  Do you not understand this?  Do you not get it this?  Again, why didn’t you just make the report blurry and charge me $600 to unblurry it?  It’s the same thing. 

 

No “mediator” should reply to this, there is nothing to mediate.  Instead of replying, you should all get together and find the smart guy who made this decision and tell that person “This guy Craig, he sort of has a point, maybe we should rethink our strategy of taking features hostage, after all, we want to improve the company, we want to make the company the best company ever and since this guy Craig makes sense and is a total gangster and super good looking, we should probably listen to him.”

 

If nobody understood this, tell Stratis to give me a call.  Congratulations on your IPO, the company is not yet profitable but that takes time and long-term viability means long-term planning and that means putting clients first before shareholders.  Sorry, that was rude of me, I stole that line from your CEO.  Kidding.

Don’t worry, this is the last of my comments, I am burnt on it and I give up.  In the end, you will never get $600 from me to see a report.

He's my client! 

Smiley Happy

kat303
Community Member

Way to go Upwork. The bread and butter of your company, clients. without clients there would be no Upwork. Lets face it, freelancers are a dime a dozen. Every day hundreds register here. If 100 leave there will be 200 with the same skills willing and able to work. But if a client leaves. and they ARE leaving. And without that job/client the freelancers have nothing to work on. 

The email reports are brilliant!  But I have a suggestion.

 

There are two links in the email , "View Weekly Summary" and "View Timesheet details"  both links lead you to the page "Need additional Reports" 

 

How about also adding a link to my "Work Diary"?    Make sure that link is completely useless  as well.   

 

Upwork director Dan Marriott sold 1.2M shares on August 9th for $18M.   Go Dan!  

 

 

AveryO
Community Manager
Community Manager

Hi Craig, 


I'm sorry that this has been an inconvenience. I would like to clarify that all clients regardless of the membership plan receives the Weekly Summary email is sent to clients on Upwork. The links will redirect to the reports noted if you are currently on the Upwork Client Plus Plan. 

And as noted on my previous reply, you should still be able to access your freelancer's Work Diary through your individual contract rooms. 


I would like to clarify that the "Solved" note shows when a post in the thread is accepted by a Community member, or a Moderator as the Best Answer/solution. 


~ Avery
Upwork
arooj78
Community Member

Okay Craig, what I just observed.
Satire, Tragedy, Grief, Honesty, Irritation, Logic, Emotion & Sense. ( All in one comment ) 
IDK why am I enjoying the "series of thank you" more than breaking bad. 

bellbeth
Community Member

No No No, this is NOT ok.  I am not paying $50/month for a simple report you used to give me for the cost of doing business with you.  We have spent 100's of thousands of dollars with Upwork.  You are going to risk nickel and diming me now?  Not wise.  Please have a manager contact me ASAP, this is not acceptable. 

1f5f8f3b
Community Member

Very dumb move and a rediculous answer. Too hard to get basic information about how much was paid to each vendor.

 

Add me to the list of clients for whom this does not work at all. I was using upwork more and more, but your have forced me to try upwork alternatives.

 

not enough people complained so they do not care what you think.   

342a7acd
Community Member

This is BS

 

You have my data locked from me. MY DATA. I need previous years data for taxes, so I can report the astronomical fees you charge, not only to my company, but also my Freelancers. 

 

I want a customer service rep to contact me ASAP. I will be escalating this. I will also be spreading the word about your shady practices.

 

Disgusting

Hi Joseph,

 

I'm sorry to hear how this has inconvenienced you. I can see that you've already raised a support ticket regarding your concern. You can access your support tickets here. Note that support requests are responded to in the order they are received. Kindly allow 24-48 hours for the team to follow up with you and assist you further.

~ Luiggi
Upwork
1fdc80f3
Community Member

You are  brilliant! This is not solved.  Thanks for listening!  Thanks for reading everything everyone wrote! .

 

take off the "Solved" comment please.  Oh wait, you don't read and don't listen.  Guess it's going to stay "Solved". lol

I fully agree with what the other users have said here. How is it reasonable to remove the reports that show the time each freelancer put in? What you have done is caused the freelancer to spend additional time (unbillable) filling out paperwork because now we require them to submit their hours in a separate document and we don't pay them to fill out that document.

AveryO
Community Manager
Community Manager

Hi Craig, 

I would like to confirm that you should still be able to access your freelancer's Work Diaries. While it no longer appears in your Reports tab, you still have access to view individual Work Diaries, and all the contract details by going to your Contract Room. You can access the Contract Room from two places: My Jobs>Contracts for active contracts or Jobs>All Contracts.

For Contract ID 21897158, you should be able to access the Work Diary here.


~ Avery
Upwork
86dd8b62
Community Member

Thanks for the response however like everyone else on this thread has pointed out, that would require that I go day by day and manually record the information. That is simply not acceptable and a waste of time since Upwork has the data and can supply it again. As I said before, it is just going to be more work for the freelancer since they will now need to submit their hours manually.

 

What was Upwork's goal here? If it was to collect additional money, not only is that not going to happen, it just just ticking people off.

Can everyone share what alternative sites you are now using to replace
Upwork?

What are the best platforms to find freelancers, and where the platform is
friendly toward the clients?


Charles B wrote:
Can everyone share what alternative sites you are now using to replace
Upwork?

What are the best platforms to find freelancers, and where the platform is
friendly toward the clients?


The problem is, this is the best one. Well, the best freelancers are on Upwork and they still have some useful tools. But they are in the process of changing their business model into something that may not suit small clients.

 

 

-----------
"Where darkness shines like dazzling light"   —William Ashbless
7660b3ec
Community Member

Yep, Upwork is being extremely greedy. Their transaction log is grotesque and hard to read. So why not put other basic reports behind a paywall so they can milk MORE money out of the clients...

 

Because I guess charging a transaction fee on the front end and then charging the freelancer a large percent is not enough. 

 

**Edited for Community Guidelines**

So, @Upwork, do you have a solution to this?

BojanS
Community Manager
Community Manager

Hi Craig,

 

As part of the Basic plan you have access to several reports:

-Transaction report. This gives you a detailed view of all your Upwork transactions.

-Freelancer work diaries. Visit the Contract Room for any project to see a freelancer’s Work Diary.

-Weekly Summary email. Account admins will get this weekly email report, which includes details such as the hours logged by your freelancer(s).

Based on data about how clients use reports, we expect that the tools above will give the majority of clients the information they need to manage their projects. However, in cases where clients need more information, we are offering the paid Client Plus plan.

 

Thank you!

~ Bojan
Upwork
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