What's the deal with Paused or Inactive contracts

[poukhov-yulia]

This is both a question and a bit of a rant...

Why do paused or inactive contracts have to negatively affect our JSS score at all?

I find that most clients who liked the work that you did for them will want to keep the contract open with you for future work. Pausing the contract after the work will still negatively affect your JSS unless the client has new work for you "soon enough" (whatever that means, according to what I read on here). Shouldn't it be dependant on the client's schedule when they're ready for you to do more work?

Yes, I know I can tell them "it's easy to start a new contract when you're ready" and then pester every one of them to close the contracts (which I reluctantly do), but guess what? CLIENTS almost always feel it's easier to just keep the contract open! So why don't we let them? 

Example of recent annoying situation: I just had a client who a did a small project for and after it was done he announced he'll have another similar one sometime in the future for me, of course keeping the contract open. After about a month went by I told him he has to close the contract or it's bad and blah, blah, blah....So he paused it, thinking that's what's supposed to happen. Now I have to pester him again that the pausing is not good enough and he has to actually close it because he happens to not yet be ready to start his next one.  

I have many clients (not on upwork) that will wait months or even a year and then hit me up with another awesome project. As long as they've paid for the work done they should be able to have all the time they need, no?

Also I think clients should be able to leave you a review on a paused or inactive project, that will solve the problem of "but they need to close the contract to be able to review and rate".

If it was that intuitive and easy for clients to close and reopen contract then why do most of them not intuitively want to do that? They are not rewarded or have an incentive for closing not are they penalised. But we will be.

Or what about a solution that doesn't punish anyone:

Contracts automatically close themselves if inactive after some time.... why can't we implements something like that?

Bad JSS should be from work not done, not delivering what you agreed to...that kind of stuff.

[lysis10]

No they don't have an effect. Clients really should pause contracts if they need some time but most don't. There are plenty of losers who think that it's ok to continue to bill on a contract just because it's opened. The only time it's a pain is if the client hits you up every few weeks or so. If they don't remember to unpause it, then you have to tell them that they need to before you can do anything.

[petra_r]

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Yulia P wrote:

Why do paused or inactive contracts have to negatively affect our JSS score at all?

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They don't, provided payment has at some point been made.

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Yulia P wrote:

They are not rewarded or have an incentive

for closing not are they penalised. But we will be.

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No. we won't be.

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Yulia P wrote:

Or what about a solution that doesn't punish anyone:

Contracts automatically close themselves if inactive after some time.... why can't we implements something like that?

Why would we need that? You can close a contract any time you like. Why do need Upwork to do it for you?

[poukhov-yulia]

Thanks for the replies,

I was totally under the impression that inactive contracts will negatively affect JSS (yes I'm refering to the ones where payment has been made) - that's what I read here. 

I know I can close the contract myself but I've been reading all over the forums that it's not a good idea because it can affect JSS, that the client should close the contract instead, and in a timely manner unless they have more work.

If it doesn't affect JSS I don't care,  but I've seen it written again and again about having to remind clients to close contracts etc. or people worried about inactive contracts and their score going down because of it.

[petra_r]

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Contracts with money paid don't hurt your JSS. If a contract has gone seriously inactive, and you want to keep your profile tidy, just close it and be done with it.

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Yulia P wrote:

I know I can close the contract myself but I've seen it written again and again about having to remind clients to close contracts etc. or people worried about inactive contracts and their score going down because of it.

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It USED to be that if you had an insaneley high percentage of "no feedback" contracts, that could (theoretically) affect your JSS. However, there was a chap with over 80% of his contracts bein "No feedback" and a 100% JSS.

In November, Upwork did away with such contracts hurting the JSS at all, but this was never a big (if any) factor at all.

You have to take posts about why people think their JSS has dropped with a pinch of salt. It's almost invariably poor private feedback, but people like to think it's something that has nothing to do with them or the work they did.

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Yulia P wrote:

I was totally under the impression that inactive contracts will negatively affect JSS (yes I'm refering to the ones where payment has been made).

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I have at least a dozen long term inactive contracts, and another several clients who only pop up once a year or so. My JSS is and stays at 100%