Milestone for an hourly contract

[#1]

I´m negotiating a project with a new client. My proposal was hourly and the client agreed, however, she wants to set milestones to make sure we have a timeline in place and certain delivery dates agreed. Can this be done? and if so, how?

Thanks for your help!

Thanks everyone for your suggestions and comments. As I expected there is no way to do milestones on an hourly project. Either convince the client to go hourly, accept a fixed price with milestones or use to-dos. All your inputs were helpful. I Think using to dos is the technical solution here.

[#2]

Yes, you and a client are ALLOWED to agree to "milestones" while using an hourly contract.

This would be done entirely on your own, not part of Upwork.

Upwork will not enforce milestones for an hourly contract in any way.

[#3]

If in any case the client wasn't new and he "prefer" payment with "milestones" instead of hourly, means the client is politely telling you that he/she wanted a fixed-price contract instead, you can try telling him/her that there's nothing wrong with using hourly where you can agree to do a "milestone" in X hours max, and let them know that they can limit the hours if they want, and they don't need to pay upfront where they can check the work and stop it at any logged hours if something goes wrong, etc.

Radia L wrote:

Hourly is actually more convenient and can be safer for clients if they know the how tos. Unfortunately, most of them are clueless, and of course there are freelancers who just run the tracker all the time without noticeable progress or even the project went south resulting in some clients becoming "allergic" with hourly.

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[#4]

Milestones aren't an Upwork-specific thing and aren't tied specifically to fixed pricing in the larger world--they are simply landmark goals within a larger project. For example, they are commonly used in construction projects.

[#5]

Andres,

If there is no Contract in place, then create a Milestone Contract that both parties accept and begin working.

Do you have any other questions?

[#6]

I have one...why would you suggest creating a fixed price contract when the freelancer wants to use hourly and the client has agreed? 

[#7 · Accepted solution]

You can try 'To-dos' feature.

Other than that, you can give and agree on timeline and milestones without setting them in Upwork.

[#8]

Hi Andres, 

I would follow Nabeel's suggestion and use the To-Do Lists function on your hourly contract. You may read more about it here. This is a simple tool to help you and your client monitor the progress of your project. This does not affect your Job Success Score or other stats and is not the same as using the milestone system of a fixed-price contract.