First Hourly Contract Question

[aabramowitz]

Hello everyone, 

Firstly, thank you for your future replies, this community forum has always been really useful for me. 

I'm on Upwork for a while now as a freelancer, and so far all my contracts were fixed price. Last week, I did my first hourly work and the client close the contract after 4 hours of work as agreed. I have been reading about how the pay cycle works according to hourly work.

The new cycle has started and the amount I was paid moved to "review", how long does the amount stay in review and move to "pending"? Or the client needs to approve something in his end to move to pending? 

Thank you, 
Andre. 

[AleksandarD · Accepted solution]

Hi Andre,

Thanks for reaching out to us. 'In review' represents hours logged last week that are now under review by your clients. Clients have 5 days to review your work diary. After the review period, the funds will move to the 'Pending' section which represents the standard security hold period in which funds cannot be withdrawn. Hourly payments are in the security period from the time the client review ends on Friday to when the funds are released on Wednesday. You can check out this help article for more information.

Thank you.

[aabramowitz]

Hello Aleksandar, 

Thank you for your help and reply. 

I just have another quick question: Does the client need to approve the weekly hours in order for the payment to be released like in Fixed-Price contracts? 

Thank you!

[prestonhunter]

re: "Does the client need to approve the weekly hours in order for the payment to be released like in Fixed-Price contracts?"

No.

Hourly work is paid automatically.

There is no button for "approving" the work.

[wlyonsatl]

Andre,

Keep in mind that any time you enter into your timelog manually is treated differently than time tracked by TimeTracker and properly documented with a meaningful memo describing how you were spending each period of your work time tracked.

[aabramowitz]

Hello Will and thank you for time and reply! 

I lodged the hours manually and now the amount has been under "Review" for a while. Do you what I should do have the funds released from Review? The contract was finished last week and from what I understood the funds should be pending this week but they haven't moved out of Review. 

What do you think I should do? 

Thank you!

[petra_r]

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Andre A wrote:

I lodged the hours manually and now the amount has been under "Review" for a while. Do you what I should do have the funds released from Review? The contract was finished last week and from what I understood the funds should be pending this week but they haven't moved out of Review. 

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No, the payment will remain under Review until Friday night midnight UTC, then move to Pending and then to available next Wednesday. Read this help article to understand how it works.

Only very few clients can manually "approve" payments to be available earlier. I've only had one such client in 300ish contracts.

[aabramowitz]

Hello Petra and thank you so much for your reply! 

It really helped me, thank you again and have a lovely day!