Can freelancer see their work diary like I can as "client"?

[jduq]

I am a client.

Does a freelancer have the abiltiy to see their own "work diary" the same way I can?

For example, if a freelancer billed me 40 hours through upwork, and I asked them to please give me a little not-too-complicated breakdown of what specifically they worked on during those 40 hours and how long they spent on each specific accomplshement, not like down to the minute but like to the hour or half hour — is it not be possible for the freelancer to use the "work diary" and screenshots to sort of job their memory and create a little report like 

I spent about ______ hours working on/ doing this: ________

I spent about ______ hours  working on/ doing this:  _________

etc. etc. until it added up more or less to the amount billed to the client?

Should that not be fairly doable for a freelancer to do using the screeshots of the work diary as a guide to help them?

Thanks in adavnce!

[petra_r]

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John D wrote:

Does a freelancer have the abiltiy to see their own "work diary" the same way I can?

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Yes.

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John D wrote:

Should that not be fairly doable for a freelancer to do using the screeshots of the work diary as a guide to help them?

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You should be able to work that out yourself using the memos on the freelancer's work diary, which are supposed to describe what they are doing!

If a client I have an hourly contract with asked me for that I'd add it up, but I would track the time it takes me to do so. I don't know what you pay your freelancer, but at my hourly rate that would work out a bit expensive.

[jduq]

Thlanks for letting me know that the freelancer has the same access to their work diaries that I do.

This freelancer has not been leaving memos from what I can see.

But thanks for letting me such a thing can be done and probably what I shold have been asking for, and should ask for in the future.

The freelancer just used a very general heading for the entire block of time.

"If a client I have an hourly contract with asked me for that I'd add it up"

Gerat, I just wanted to know if you, as a freelance, would find this to be fairly doable and not too hard to do.

I'm glad you make good money, Petra! In this case I'd gladly pay the hourly wage for them to do this for me — as long as they coudl do it in an hour or two — which really should not be that hard.

Here's a related quetion:

CAN A FREELANDER CO BACK AND ADD MEMOS TO A WORK DIARY FROM THE PAST? 

SEGMENTING THEIR TIME BY MEMO?

Thanks!

[petra_r]

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John D wrote:

This freelancer has not been leaving memos from what I can see.

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You should totally ask your freelancer to add proper and meaningful memos (they would show as white text in the green bar above the screenshots. It is in the freelancer's interest to do so as they lose all protection if there are no memos.

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John D wrote:

Gerat, I just wanted to know if you, as a freelance, would find this to be fairly doable and not too hard to do.

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It's totally doable, if tedious.

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John D wrote:

Here's a related quetion:

CAN A FREELANDER CO BACK AND ADD MEMOS TO A WORK DIARY FROM THE PAST? 

SEGMENTING THEIR TIME BY MEMO?

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Changes to the work diary inc. memos can only be done during the current week and up to midday on Monday UTC. After that the work diary locks and can not be changed anymore.

There is no such thing as segmenting time by memo as such. There is such a thing as activity codes, but I believe those are not available to clients on the basic plan. With activity codes you could run reports how much time was spent on what code and the cost etc, which can be useful if you need to account for parts of your freelancer's costs differently (different projects for example, or different cost centers.)

I would suggest you ask your freelancer to use the memo-field in the way you like (adding meaningful descriptions of what they are working on) going forward, and ask them to create a breakdown at the end of the week, on the clock of course.