How to get money from a client to pay for third-party services?

[4b12e6b8]

To complete the order, you must pay for access to a third-party service. Since the upwork takes 20%, it is not logical and not profitable to get this money through payment for hours or as a bonus.

Also, I am afraid to give my payment details and write in messages so that the client makes me a transfer. I'm afraid the upwork will ban me.

How to get such payment from a client? Has anyone come across?

[petra_r]

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Egor V wrote:

How to get such payment from a client? Has anyone come across?

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Get the client to pay for the third party service directly.

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Egor V wrote:

Also, I am afraid to give my payment details and write in messages so that the client makes me a transfer. I'm afraid the upwork will ban me.

They will. That would be forbidden

[filip_knezevic]

Egor, sharing other payment methods can surely get you banned.

There are no "third party services" that YOU must pay for. You sell your OWN services. If a client wants to buy something, they have their credit card and they can pay for anything which is needed. 

If a customer tells me they need a router, surely I will not buy a router with my money and have it sent to the client, the client will simply purchase it online. That makes sense, I think.

So, can you elaborate the "To complete the order, you must pay for access to a third-party service. " part? If the client needs to pay for any third party involved in a work (let's say a vendor service or hardware) it's going to be on their bill.

Otherwise, it seems like the client is trying to scam you.

[slavkoa]

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"To complete the order, you must pay for access to a third-party service. "

If your client need a dedicated server from "third-party service" or similar service is up to the client to purchase account and provide you with access data. You will need to instruct them what to purchase , after all this "third-party service" is part of final project because is dependable on it. So is fair to provide way for your client to be able purchase and pay this service after project is delivered. If price or rules of third-party service change.

[1065e4ee]

A potential project requires me to pay a third-party for certain costs.  How do I bill the client for these costs?  It doesn't seem fair that I pay Upwork's fee on costs I incur. 

[the-right-writer]

What kind of costs? Why would you have to buy anything? Any project that requires you to buy something to do the job is a scam. Since you are new, you need to learn about the TOS and safety.

There is no mechanism for billing the client. Clients should be hiring you for your skills. If in the course of your job you have agreed to do something you can't without buying equipment, that is on you. Why would Upwork pay for that?

If this is a situation such as establishing a non-profit where filing fees need to be paid, that will fall to the client, not the freelancer.

Read the TOS. If you violate the TOS, you can be tossed off the platform. Never go off the platform to speak to anyone in any way until you have an Upwork contract. And never purchase anything for a job. Read through the forum and see what has happened to many people. Thousands of hours and dollars are lost with no possible way to recover them. It has happened to an untold number and continues. It is sad but avoidable. Don't let it happen to you.

Here is a link to a beginning video - https://community.upwork.com/t5/New-To-Upwork-101/The-advantages-of-freelancing/ta-p/1084668

This is a video on staying safe https://community.upwork.com/t5/New-To-Upwork-101/The-advantages-of-freelancing/ta-p/1084668

[yofazza]

In my field (web development) let's say you want to have an app that'll require payment to a few third parties such as domain name registration & payment, also cloud micro-instances registration and monthly payment (which is different each month), which usually too boring for most clients.

In other fields maybe; travel cost, lunch cost, where client can't easily pay by themselves while it's also not easy to include them in the project cost.

This is the case where it's easiest to just forward the bills to the client. 

In this case your options are:

1. Include the costs in the bid (after calculating the fees), although I know this might not be easy or even applicable on everyl situations.
2. Make the client to deal with it themselves. Again, might not be easy.
3. Use your imagination.

[prestonhunter]

Radia:

Get the client to pay for the third party service directly.

[yofazza]

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Preston H wrote:

Radia:

Get the client to pay for the third party service directly.

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Yes.

But I find that indivual clients (not companies who have financial & IT staffs) prefer to trust me to do all the tasks of registration, settings, and payments. It's too boring for them to view "micro-instance dashboard" for example. Let alone risking wrong settings, missed payments, etc.

Of course there are options such as having a shared account, or account with different privileges, etc. which is a part of option #3.

I'm actually just pointing out that Michael's question is valid and he's on an entirely different field as well. We don't actually know how this "problem" affect him, but I believe he knows about the ToS because he thought about including the cost in the bid.

[1065e4ee]

Thanks Radia, that's correct.  I'm an attorney, and we pay for costs on behalf of our clients regularly, and the clients reimburse us for those costs.  Does Upwork have the ability to bid on a project in a hybrid flat fee/hourly structure?  That would allow me to incorporate the costs in the flat fee portion, and charge for my services hourly.

[martina_plaschka]

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Michael E wrote:

Thanks Radia, that's correct.  I'm an attorney, and we pay for costs on behalf of our clients regularly, and the clients reimburse us for those costs.  Does Upwork have the ability to bid on a project in a hybrid flat fee/hourly structure?  That would allow me to incorporate the costs in the flat fee portion, and charge for my services hourly.

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Your client could pay a bonus for expenses on an hourly contract, or you could have two contracts. But no matter how you arrange for it, you have to pay the upwork fee on any money you receive. Upwork doesn't have an expense management system - it is simply not set up that way. Most freelancers don't need it, and it would be cost-prohibitive.

[6bfcdaf8]

For server and infrastructure related costs i help my clients create a cloud provider account on a zoom call. They enter their credit card information into the provider page and i only get technical admin access so payments are on their responsibility and i can create any resource i like. In the end it will be billed into their card. 

If you can find such a way for your own case that should also be convenient for the client, than just proxying clients money for a third party service.