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michaelncarlson
Community Member

Billing for "brainstorming" with a client's team

Hello,

 

I started a new contract with a client and met with a team to discuss ideas for memes and song parodies to promote their business. 

 

I thought it was an hourly position, and that the time I spent developing ideas would be billable.

 

But after submitting the bill, the client said that any ideas the team comes up with will be paid when they approve the ideas. 

 

Is this standard practice, and is the time I spend coming up with ideas basically for free unless they decide they like the ideas?

 

They've already used some of my ideas to create memes, but they object to paying for development time. 

 

Thanks for your help figuring this out so I can be more clear about my billing process in the future.

ACCEPTED SOLUTION
petra_r
Community Member


Michael C wrote:

 

I started a new contract with a client and met with a team to discuss ideas for memes and song parodies to promote their business. 

 

I thought it was an hourly position, and that the time I spent developing ideas would be billable.

 

But after submitting the bill, the client said that any ideas the team comes up with will be paid when they approve the ideas. 

 

Is this standard practice, and is the time I spend coming up with ideas basically for free unless they decide they like the ideas?

 

They've already used some of my ideas to create memes, but they object to paying for development time. 


What do you mean you "submitted the bill?"

 

If it is an Upwork contract and on an hourly basis, you simply track the time you spend working, and the client is charged automatically every week. No "invoices" or anything of the sort.

 

In general, any time spent working on an hourly contract should be tracked (!) an paid. Did you track your time using the tracker? 

 

Or did you eventually find out that the hourly contract wasn't hourly? What does your contract say?

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18 REPLIES 18
michaelncarlson
Community Member

Oh, and I really need them to be happy with this contract because it's my first one and I want to get more clients in the future, of course. 

petra_r
Community Member


Michael C wrote:

 

I started a new contract with a client and met with a team to discuss ideas for memes and song parodies to promote their business. 

 

I thought it was an hourly position, and that the time I spent developing ideas would be billable.

 

But after submitting the bill, the client said that any ideas the team comes up with will be paid when they approve the ideas. 

 

Is this standard practice, and is the time I spend coming up with ideas basically for free unless they decide they like the ideas?

 

They've already used some of my ideas to create memes, but they object to paying for development time. 


What do you mean you "submitted the bill?"

 

If it is an Upwork contract and on an hourly basis, you simply track the time you spend working, and the client is charged automatically every week. No "invoices" or anything of the sort.

 

In general, any time spent working on an hourly contract should be tracked (!) an paid. Did you track your time using the tracker? 

 

Or did you eventually find out that the hourly contract wasn't hourly? What does your contract say?

I manually entered the hours on the work diary. 

 

The contract was for $75/hour. 

 

I entered the hours for the time I spent developing ideas. This included writing original lyrics and recording a demo of the song, creating a parody of another song, and creating captions for memes. The clients had expressed that they wanted a song in the style that I wrote.  

 

This was as a member a client's ad hoc marketing team. 

Hi Michael. I take it this is the job on your profile that shows 10 hours worked already.

 

If these hours were recorded last week, the client will be automatically billed for them this Friday, unless they dispute them. Since you didn't use the time-tracker, any dispute will automatically be decided in the client's favour, and you won't be paid. You are entitled to be paid for the hours you've worked, but you'll be out of luck if the client disputes.


It sounds like the client may be new to Upwork, and didn't really understand that they were entering into an hourly paid contract. I think you need to discuss this with them, and sort something out. Even if they don't dispute, they may be unhappy and leave poor feedback. (If you want to, you could refund some of the money after it's been paid.)

 

I always try to make sure that my clients have some idea of what I'll be billing, so they won't get an unpleasant surprise. But it's unfortunate for you that this happened on your first contract, when apparently neither you nor the client understood what you were getting into.

Thanks, Richard. Yes, it was poor communication both ways.

 

I am going to refund most of the hours worked, but i can't afford to put in time with no compensation. I'm hoping the client and I will be able to come to an understanding. In the future, I am considering working on projects that are fixed rate at completion rather than hourly. 

 

 


Michael C wrote:

Thanks, Richard. Yes, it was poor communication both ways.

 

I am going to refund most of the hours worked, but i can't afford to put in time with no compensation. I'm hoping the client and I will be able to come to an understanding. In the future, I am considering working on projects that are fixed rate at completion rather than hourly. 

 

 


Don't refund until you know the charge went through. Wait until next week to refund. If you refund now,  it'll come out of your available balance.

petra_r
Community Member


Jennifer M wrote:

Michael C wrote:

Thanks, Richard. Yes, it was poor communication both ways.

 

I am going to refund most of the hours worked, but i can't afford to put in time with no compensation. I'm hoping the client and I will be able to come to an understanding. In the future, I am considering working on projects that are fixed rate at completion rather than hourly. 

 

 


Don't refund until you know the charge went through. Wait until next week to refund. If you refund now,  it'll come out of your available balance.


He doesn't have an available balance, this is his first contract.

 

 

lysis10
Community Member


Petra R wrote:


He doesn't have an available balance, this is his first contract.

 

 


oh, safety measure for him. 😄

 

I'm waiting for when clients figure out this trick. So I feel like I gotta keep nagging people not to refund without knowing the charge has gone through.


Richard W wrote:

Hi Michael. I take it this is the job on your profile that shows 10 hours worked already.

 

If these hours were recorded last week, the client will be automatically billed for them this Friday, unless they dispute them. Since you didn't use the time-tracker, any dispute will automatically be decided in the client's favour, and you won't be paid. You are entitled to be paid for the hours you've worked, but you'll be out of luck if the client disputes.


It sounds like the client may be new to Upwork, and didn't really understand that they were entering into an hourly paid contract. I think you need to discuss this with them, and sort something out. Even if they don't dispute, they may be unhappy and leave poor feedback. (If you want to, you could refund some of the money after it's been paid.)

 

I always try to make sure that my clients have some idea of what I'll be billing, so they won't get an unpleasant surprise. But it's unfortunate for you that this happened on your first contract, when apparently neither you nor the client understood what you were getting into.


FYI, the client gets billed today. 🙂  Monday mornings (US) are when everyone gets billed. If the charge fails, Upwork will keep trying. I believe they try three times throughout the week. I think there is some law that restricts the number of times a vendor can attempt to charge a card. I seem to remember something like that back in my programming days. It's to protect people with financial issues who are behind and suddenly they pay their CC bill and booom a charge hits it from 6 months ago.

 

If the charge fails, you can see that the payment method flips to unverified in your contracts. That's how you know it fails and it might be a good time to ping the client and tell them to look into it if you are on manual time. If you use the tracker, I guess you can leave it. I don't say anything if I've tracked time, but thankfully every time this has happened the client fixed the issue.

Thanks for the info about billing and refunds. I already issued a refund for all but three hours, even though the client was billed today for the hours that I had put in the work diary. That's okay, though, because I am hoping that we can all get on the same page from now on about how I will be paid and then we can both decide about whether to continue the contract or not.  

I don't mind putting in some comp time to get a contract, but once the contract is initiated and I am working on what the client has requested, I assumed that I could bill for these hours. Perhaps since this is a marketing gig and we are "throwing spaghetti at the wall," as they say, the compensation works differently?

 

But it does take resources to buy the noodles, sauce and meatballs, fuel to heat up the stove, pots and pans, a wall to throw the spaghetti at, etc.


Michael C wrote:

 

But it does take resources to buy the noodles, sauce and meatballs, fuel to heat up the stove, pots and pans, a wall to throw the spaghetti at, etc.


You're so not invited to dinner in my kitchen....


Michael C wrote:

Thanks for the info about billing and refunds. I already issued a refund for all but three hours, even though the client was billed today for the hours that I had put in the work diary. That's okay, though, because I am hoping that we can all get on the same page from now on about how I will be paid and then we can both decide about whether to continue the contract or not.  


ok, so hopefully this works out well but with manual time, you could actually be *paying* the client if you do this. With manual time, you should wait until the money is available and then refund.

petra_r
Community Member


Jennifer M wrote:


ok, so hopefully this works out well but with manual time, you could actually be *paying* the client if you do this. With manual time, you should wait until the money is available and then refund.


How?

So far, today on Thursday, there are no funds available to me or due the client. There is my initial invoice from the time tracker, the fees to upwork, my refund issued on the invoice, and upwork refunding the appropriate amount of the fees they charged due to my refund. 

 

 

 

Michael,

 

First, you're working in an area that UW does not understand. You're developing intellectual content, done by perhaps 0.1% of freelancers. The bulk of the value is created in the kind of activity you described. Your process needs to be described to the client in the response to the job posting, pointing out where in the process value is created. No amount of time tracking, disputing, what have you, substitutes. If prospective clients don't want to pay for the part that creates value, you don't want the clients. Unfortunately, UW doesn't understand your domain and can't explain that to them. You're likely to get fewer clients that way. On the other hand, the clients you do get will understand your value and pay you for it.

 

Secondly, you selected a response as the "solution" before the issue was ever resolved. The "solution" is no solution at all. There's no way to recover with this client. I feel your pain. After an hour on the phone with a prospective client who had no understanding of his target customers nor of what they valued, he closed it with "Thanks for the conversation." You can't fix a lack of imagination.

Thanks, Bill. That's a good summary of the situation, and I've come to many of the same conclusions. 

 

It looks like I hit the ground running and then found a wall right away. I'll definitely have more conversations about projects in the future and how they are compensated for creative content.

 

As for the "solved" button, I hit it by accident but still got some great responses afterwards.

The client paid me for the remaining 3 hours (after I refunded 6.5 hours of work), and they cancelled the contract. Not the best outcome, but there was no effect on my review so I'll take this as a learning experience on keep at it.

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