Client has given new work in Fixed-Price contract which was not part of contract before

[prat3ik]

I am working with the client on Fixed budget contract, Now the problem is client has given me work which was not part of contract before,  and Actually I am trying to help client so I had tried on new task but since it was out of my expertise I could not able to achieve it, now he is not approving the milestone which I have already completed just because I didn't finish the new work(Which was not part of the contract.)

Now, What should I do now?

[petra_r]

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@Pratik P wrote:

Now, What should I do now?

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 Promise yourself to not mismanage contracts like that in future.

• Do NOT agree to do work you are not able to do.
• Do NOT start new milestones or parts of a project until the previous milestone has been approved.
• Communicate with your clients properly.

What you should have done is either not agree to the extra work at all, or have said "Well, Fred, that is actually both outside my area of expertise and outside the scope of our current contract. If you want to go ahead and approve the completed milestone and close the contract I'll check if I can help out and if so, we can start a new contract."  or something along those lines.

[prat3ik]

Thank you so much Petra for the explanation and providing me the correct direction.

But actually:
1) I was not AGREE to that work, And I have made a clear statement that I AM NOT EXPERT AT THIS SO I COULD NOT ABLE TO DO IT. However, the client made me convince by saying that he would be okay if results are not met for new work, and I was also afraid that If I say him NO directly then he can put BAD REVIEW  after contract gets finished, so in order to procrastinate that I'd started the new task.

2) I never start working on new milestones if my current milestone is yet to be approved.
And for this particular contract I have completed, all the milestones except the last one which client named as "FINAL ACCEPTANCE"

3) Yes, I will try my best because I have learned so much from this event. 

[chrisquinn352]

You have to be upfront with the client about everything, don't be scared, sometimes the client doesn't realize what they are doing, and what is "included" and not "included" when it comes to how the contract / hiring works.

what I would have done in this scenario is:

1) Told the client before starting any new work, outside of the original proposal that this new task is outside the original proposal - and that you may or may not be able to perform the work because it's out of your skill set (if you didn't know it was out of your area of expertise, then mention this part later)

2) Inform the client hat they need to open an a new fixed price project and immediately send you an invite to that project, that way you are protected by uupwork in the event that anything should go wrong.

3) once you have accepted the offer, then you treat it as a an entirely seperate entity from your original proposal.

I've done this at least twice so far with two clients, trying to slip in "extra" work.

If you explain this to upwork they may be able to help you. But don't get caught up in that "i'm tyring to help the client thing" because you never knwow when, it will come back to bite you in the a$$.

Always protect yourself, go out of your way to use the systems UPWORK has in place ot protect US, the FREELANCERS, that are the ones performing the work. FREELANCE WORK IS NOT FREE.

if the client, comes back at you and says, "Oh, it's too difficult to go back and create a new project, blah blah blah" - then tell them you'd be happy to finish the tasks you are working on current, and afterwords help them setup the new project and so forth.

Bottom line is that UpWork has put together a wonderful ecosystem that protects the buyer and the freelancer from being screwed over.  So PLEASE, don't feel bad if you have to tell the client to open a new project and an invite to you, TRUST ME THEY KNOW HOW TO , OR CAN FIGURE IT OUT VERY EASILY!