Will L wrote:
Muhammad,
As long as you understand that no client has any obligation whatsoever to pay you for any hours you add manually to Upwork's system, even if Upwork tells you the client has "allowed" you to post manual hours, then your arrangement is between you and your client.
Some freelancers here have claimed they regularly add manual hours on their projects and never have a problem with client payments. I only work with most of my clients for a few weeks or months, so I only get to know a very few of them well enough to trust they'd unfailingly pay me for any manual hours I booked.
Will, I have a question for you: When referring to something another FL has said that does not align with your own practices, habits or beliefs, why do you always characterize it as their "claiming" to do something or believe something or know something? The implication is that nobody but you can be relied on to speak truthfully here.
In any case, I think it's nice that the nature of your work lends itself to using tracked hours only, so you are not burdened with the sort of client management entailed in establishing sufficient mutual trust and rapport to make manual hours feasible. The work I do involves too much non-screen activity for tracked hours to be useful, and I've happily earned tens of thousands of dollars through manual hours over the past couple of years. (Many of my projects last months, but some are done and dusted within a few weeks or even a few days.)
