How can I refund an hourly contract.

richardrader · ‎06-08-2020

I need to refund a client who I had an hourly contract with. Out of all my contracts I had a very poor experience with a client recently and I just want to refund the hours that I worked. I was working on a WordPress project, fixing errors on her site. Once I fixed them she argued the changes I made to her site changed her Google Page Speed Test for the worse (by -5 points). Now I checked her page speed early on (before the project started) to see her JS execution time of her site (she has a ton of JS files) and the score I received for her site was the same when I finished the project. Plus page speed tests can fluctuate based on many different factors over a day. I know for a fact my changes did not negatively impact her page speed score on google.

She would not accept this and asked for me to revert the changes. I did and the page speed remains the exact same even after reverting. Now that the changes are reverted she wants a refund. She became very snarky and rude. Even going as far as insulting me. I did notice her tone changed when I told her the errors I was fixing would likely not have an affect on her SEO as they were minor.

Now the issue I have is that I closed the contract after letting her know I wouldn't be working with her any longer. I told her I would refund her. Well obviously I should have just deleted the time from my tracker but I was so angry I wasn't thinking and hit the end contract button. I guess I have to wait for when the money is in review to give the refund?

AleksandarD · ‎06-08-2020

Hi Richard,

I'm sorry to hear about your experience with the client. If you would like to refund time on an active contract for the current week, you can remove the time from your Work Diary and your client will not be billed for the removed hours. However, if you would like to refund a payment from a previous billing period or on a closed contract, you have the ability to issue a refund for 180 days after the payment is received. Once you issue a refund, you can't reverse it, and your account will reflect the refund immediately.

To issue a refund

Go to My Jobs > All Contracts and click on the contract title.
Click on the 'Give a refund' from the (...) options menu
Choose the invoice to be refunded and click on 'Give Refund'

Feel free to check out this help article for more information.

Thank you.

~ Aleksandar

petra_r · ‎06-08-2020

Aleksandar D wrote:
I'm sorry to hear about your experience with the client. If you would like to refund time on an active contract for the current week, you can remove the time from your Work Diary and your client will not be billed for the removed hours.

He can't do that, because he closed the contract and when a contract has been closed, the freelancer no longer has any access to the work diary.

Richard, unfortunately you'll have to wait until the client has been charged.