Manual Hours in 10 Minute Increments?

[jackie_linn]

Why does Upwork only let me add manual hours in 10 minute increments?  Say I worked an hour and 15 minutes on a job. I either have to undercharge myself, or overcharge my client.  I pay enough for connects, the 20% Upwork takes, on top of clients being so tight with budgets, that I don't want to lose any more money.  I know it's not much of a loss, but it adds up over time.

[bilal1983]

Manual time and hourly tracked time both are recorded in 10-minute segments. That's how it is. I work through the time tracker and it is frustrating for me too, because some times I just log in to work a few minutes and if it is less than 7 minutes, that 10-minute segment would show low activity levels.

I also log time manually some times, and I just go with the closest fit, so it is always slightly undercharge or overcharge.

The optimal way is to always work start and stop at the 10-minute mark, which is difficult to follow.

Otherwise, if you consistently add time manually, you can keep track of how much you're under/over charging, and then balance it out over a period of one week. If you charged 5 minutes extra once, try to cover it up by charging less later, or maybe work 5 minutes without charge later in the week.

[lysis10]

It's ok to bill in 10 min segments, so just bill for the 5 mins in a 10 min segment. People who think this is unfair to clients should be ignored because they don't know what they're talking about and are just wagie minds.

[paywell]

I am not a "Gig Guru" and prefer long-term jobs, with milestones instead of hours logged, yet I strongly believe, that doing even a 10-minute task requires more than that amount of time.

Therefore, I am a proponent of convincing the client, that for each started working session at least 20 or 30-minutes will be billed. 

But, to address the tight budgets you have mentioned, I believe that each minute should be counted as a full 10-minute segment.

Meaning that you start another 10 minute interval and end at 11 minutes, you should be able to count another 10 minutes into the client's bill.

In order to leave the possibility of a negative reaction out of the question, this condition should be negotiated beforehand and noted inside the Upwork chat.

If you would like to be accommodating to the client, you can "gift" him the 1 minute and bill him the 10 minutes, starting from the 2nd minute. 

Another solution would be moving to a hybrid billing method, something between milestones and hours billed. This would mean discussing, with the client, how much he is open to spend on every particular task.

You, in turn, accept the amount, indicating, that it is only valid, if the task takes less than a set amount of hours or minutes, and a bonus should be paid, in case you have to work more.

You would have to use an activation tracker other than the Upwork App to send your activity reports and screenshots to the client. Or even record each session with Loom or any other screen recording software, to upload it into the Upwork Chat (so you don't have to store it on your computer or cloud).

Hope this helps.

[2297e2bc]

One issue with "trackers"! I may have to be on another app, say researching for the job that my main app accomodates.

So, like a lawyer's office, I need to bill for time even though it is indirectly associated with the project at hand.

And do you charge the client for all the messaging too??

[d3e0f71e]

I think it's fairer both for freelancers and for the clients to get paid/charged only for actual time spent on the task. As noted in the post, even though the time difference seems small, it accumulates over time

Is precise time logging (e.g. up to seconds, or at least up to minutes) difficult to implement? The current limitation looks unnecesary

[wlyonsatl]

You could use a free time tracking app like Toggl to keep more precise track of your actual work time then use that to calculate the total manual work time you enter for each day. Rounding up or down to the nearest 10-minutes each day wouldn't make much difference to you or the client if the project lasts more than a few days.

You could also share the more detailed work time with your client, if need be.

[2297e2bc]

I was looking into Toggl yesterday. But my FREE Google database and sheet can do it to. I don't have an army to run.😀

-Dave

[wlyonsatl]

It's always good to consider all of one's options. I

'm not a Google-holic, so I'd use Excel if I thought a spreadsheet would do a better job for me than Toggl.