Selling Recurring Subscriptions

[wptophat]

I offer my clients ongoing WordPress care plans for a monthly subscription fee. I want to be able to do this with UpWork since I am not allowed to take work found on UpWork off of UpWork. But UpWork does not have such an option as recurring billing. 

Is there  any way to do this?

Perhaps UpWork should add this payment option. 

I hate that I am losing the opportunity to sell such plans to my UpWork clients.

[prestonhunter]

Upwork has four specific methods for clients to pay freelancers:

- hourly

- fixed-price

- pay bonus

- weekly salary (stipend)

If you want to use Upwork, you will need to fit what you do into one of these. Upwork does not offer all possible services.

If you want to set up recurring billing then possible ways you could do so would be:

- add a charge once per month using manual billing

- once per month, ask the client to use the "Pay Bonus" tool to pay you a specific amount

- use fixed-price contracts

- divide the monthly fee by four, and have the client set up a weekly salary (stipend) for that amount

[wptophat]

These are decent work arounds. I guess the only question that comes up for
me based on your response is this:

You offer a WEEKLY salary option. How hard would it be to add a MONTHLY
salary option. This seems to me to be a pretty simple solution.

[tlsanders]

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@wptophat wrote:
These are decent work arounds. I guess the only question that comes up for
me based on your response is this:

You offer a WEEKLY salary option. How hard would it be to add a MONTHLY
salary option. This seems to me to be a pretty simple solution.

Actually, perhaps not as simple as you think. The salary option is built into the weekly system that supports hourly billing, and that revolves around the fact that all review, payment processing, and release of payment to the freelancer happens at the same time on a specific day of the week. 

That's not to say it wouldn't be possible to build the solution, but it might be a lot more work than you realize, and for not a lot of gain when you can easily have the client set up a monthly milestone.

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[prestonhunter]

re: "You offer a WEEKLY salary option. How hard would it be to add a MONTHLY salary option. This seems to me to be a pretty simple solution."

This is a legitimate question.

But as always, you need to keep two things separate:

- Discussing how to use Upwork as it currently exists, to make the most use out of it.

[and]

- Suggesting changes, improvements, new features, etc.

You are welcome to ask about how to use the tool (such as the "weekly salary" feature and other payment methods).

You are also welcome to suggest changes (monthly salary or subscription billing, etc.)

You may do both right here in the Community Forum.

[damund]

I would like to know if such a feature is going to be available soon.

I too have clients who would like this option.
Having the option of a monthly recurring subscription would be huge for those of us who offer knowlege consulting and coaching as this is common place for us off.

Some advisors even take 3 and 6 month payments on subscription with payment made up front.
While I realize that 3 and 6 month option is not likely to happen, it would be nice if there was a monthly option. 

Best regards,
Daniel.