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saad-jamal
Community Member

Inactive/No Feedback contract and JSS

Hi

The client has previously created 5 to 6 milestones within the contract. All work done, submitted, and paid for. Now the client is saying he will add another milestone but would take him some time. Around 5 to 6 days. The contract is idle now

I want to ask will the contract being idle for this amount of time affect my JSS. or not.

Since the client does not want to end the contract he wants to work on another project with me.

 

Please let me know about this

Thank You

Regards

Saad Jamal

ACCEPTED SOLUTION
AndreaG
Moderator
Moderator

Hi Saad,

 

Keeping contracts with no recent activity open will not affect your score negatively. If you have contracts that are still open but no further work needs to be done, you can still consider asking your clients to close them or go ahead and close them yourself. Please, note that when you close a contract, the client is notified and will have 14 days to provide their feedback on the contract. If no feedback is provided on the contract by them, it will not have an impact on your score.

 

In the case of contracts without earnings, while the parties won't be able to provide public feedback on a contract that didn't have any payments, they can still provide private feedback. If the client provides positive private feedback on a contract with no earnings, that contract will be excluded from JSS. If the client specifies in their feedback that the contract had a negative outcome, that will be counted in the score.

If the client doesn't provide any private feedback on a contract with no earnings, that contract will be excluded from the JSS calculation.

 

~Andrea
Upwork

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268 REPLIES 268
petra_r
Community Member


Saad J wrote:

I want to ask will the contract being idle for this amount of time affect my JSS. or not.


It will never affect your JSS unless the client leaves bad private feedback

 

A contract isn't "idle" after a few days. 

Hi Petra, 

Client requirements was different on start but now, when i accepted the contract and started to work client requirements changed totally, how i can proceed with this client, will cancelling a job will impact my work on upwork?

 

aqibmumtaz
Community Member

I want to know that if we cancel the client contract after accepting the offer then what would be the impact on JSS next time? JSS affected or not? 

Thank you in advance. 


Aqib M wrote:

I want to know that if we cancel the client contract after accepting the offer then what would be the impact on JSS next time? JSS affected or not? 


That depends on the private feedback the client leaves.

Good or no private feedback - no impact on the JSS

Poor  private feedback - negative impact on the JSS

Thank You so much Petra 

Hi Petra!

I hope you are doing well.

I need your help again.

I have a query,  if direct contracts are cancelled then would that impact JSS. I have a direct contract client and now he asking for job cancellation.

Thank you Petra

Hi Aqib,

 

Since your client and you will only be using Upwork for payments, any Direct Contracts will not impact your Upwork reputation metrics (for example your Job Success Score or Top Rated status). These contracts also will not be included in your other Upwork profile stats, such as total earnings, number of jobs, etc.

 

~Andrea
Upwork

Thank You so much Andrea, Its really helpful for me


Aqib M wrote:

I want to know that if we cancel the client contract after accepting the offer then what would be the impact on JSS next time? JSS affected or not? 

Thank you in advance. 


You don't have an agency, so how do you have a team of people?

baljit1290
Community Member

Hi everyone,

 

I have 3-4 contracts idle on my profile which also shows to new client as "Jobs in progress". Consequently, new client avoid to interview freelancers who have many jobs in progress on their profile. Due to this, I also lost some good opportunities.

 

I asked many time to these clients to end contract if they don't any work for me but no response.

 

If I end contract from my side and client doen't provide feedback, Does it effect my JSS?

Or should I keep open such contracts ?

 

Any suggestion to this issue would be appreciated


Baljit S wrote:

If I end contract from my side and client doen't provide feedback, Does it effect my JSS?


No

 

Just close them.

Thank you for your suggestion. I would close them one by one

Baljit S.,

 

You might as well close them all at once and be done with it. There is no longer a negative effect on your JSS from projects you close without feedback from the client.

 

I suggest you send a message to each client thanking them for using your services and encouraging them to think of you for future projects (if that's true). Always leave a project on a positive note; it annoys me when clients close a project without so much as a thanks of any kind. But, maybe that's just me.

Baljit, please note that Will's advice is half right, half risky.

Indeed, as you already planned, you should close the projects one by one, 15 days apart. This way you can be sure that IF any of the clients wake up somehow to give you a nasty feedback, you still have options in the future.

It all of your clients reacted at the same time somehow, you'd be done over here. 😬

From your side, there no hurry as the delay doesn't cost you anything, so you can play it smart as you suggested. 👍

Sensing one last polite and positive message to each client as Will suggested is a good way to go. Then, a couple of days later, just click the button and don't worry.

Think tactically and succeed. All the best.

Mikko seems right to me. I'm a client, and I never check to see how many contracts are active with a freelancer before inviting him or her to a project, nor before interviewing and hiring. Why do you believe you're being held back?

Hi Bill,

 

I have an interview experience with a potential client, who asking about my "in progress" projects to make her sure if I would be able to finish the job on time. Therefore I think active projects without works indeed affect some of the clients' decision to continue their interest to freelancers' proposal.

Baljit S.,

 

I occasionally have potential clients contact me asking me to submit a proposal on their job if I “have enough bandwidth” or some other reference to how busy I am, so there are certainly some clients who, as you say, “avoid to interview freelancers who have many jobs in progress.”

 

Knowing that at least one client does not care how busy you are is interesting, but irrelevant. It would be foolish for a freelancer to ignore that their list of “active” projects is growing larger due to projects that are actually inactive (and have been for a month or more).

 

If you close only one project every two weeks, then that may effectively mean you will only close one project for up to every four weeks when you take into account that the client then has up to two weeks to reply and you then may not see the effect on your JSS for up to two more weeks.

 

And if you see a single client’s feedback adversely affected your JSS and exercise your perk to remove the feedback from the calculation of your JSS, will you wait another few months (at the very least 10 weeks) before you close another idle contract yourself?

 

Meanwhile, if you are a busy freelancer, yet more actual and inactive “active” projects are bulking up the number potential clients see in your stats.

 

If you have waited a month or more before closing an idle contract and a client has ignored messages from you during that period, it is my experience silent clients remain silent. They do not leave any feedback at all.

 

You will have to decide whether you want to find out if that is also true for the types of clients you work with. (I can’t guarantee that will always be the case, but if I wanted a guarantee I’d buy a toaster.)

 

Whether an approach is risky or just half risky, Upwork has, for some reason, purposely made sure that this challenge poses some risk to all freelancers. And you have to decide how important it is to you to increase the number of potential clients asking you to submit proposals on their projects versus what is the risk of your JSS being adversely affected by closing idle projects yoursle.

 

There is no perfect answer. Good luck finding the solution that is right for you.

roberty1y
Community Member

There's a client I've a four month contract with, but I haven't heard from them in a month. When I first looked at the job posting, there was a job history for the client, but now there is only one job, listed as being "in progress", (even though the freelancer who's supposed to be doing it no longer has a profile on Upwork, it seems).

 

The client's history says they've spent over $20k, but they no longer have a star rating. All the money for what I've done is either paid or in escrow, so there's no problem there. There was nothing wrong with this client, I'm just wondering what might be going on there, that's all. 

 

By the way, how can I close the contract if the client has gone, and will an open inactive contract affect my JSS? If I cancel it, won't that affect my JSS too?


Robert Y wrote:

There's a client I've a four month contract with, but I haven't heard from them in a month. When I first looked at the job posting, there was a job history for the client, but now there is only one job, listed as being "in progress", (even though the freelancer who's supposed to be doing it no longer has a profile on Upwork, it seems).

 

The client's history says they've spent over $20k, but they no longer have a star rating. All the money for what I've done is either paid or in escrow, so there's no problem there. There was nothing wrong with this client, I'm just wondering what might be going on there, that's all. 

 

By the way, how can I close the contract if the client has gone, and will an open inactive contract affect my JSS? If I cancel it, won't that affect my JSS too?


WHo knows what happened to the client, no one can tell. 

 

You can leave the contract open and it has no impact. 

 

You can close the contract on your end. The client will be notified to leave feedback, but if they are MIA, they likely won't. If they leave good feedback, that's good for JSS. Bad feedback, bad. No feedback, neutral. 

Better close it while they are not responsive.

tlbp
Community Member

Make sure any submitted milestone has been released to you before closing the contract. 

Thanks for your replies. I was only concerned about what it might do to my JSS if the contract was left open. I was told that contracts open for over two months with no activity can affect JSS. The rules change, and it's hard to keep up.

 

As soon as I submitted the last milestone for payment, I got a notification saying the job had been closed or had expired. I presume this happens automatically once the last open job is submitted for payment on an abandoned contract.

 


Robert Y wrote:

I was only concerned about what it might do to my JSS if the contract was left open. I was told that contracts open for over two months with no activity can affect JSS.


It will do absolutely nothing to your JSS whatsoever at all. It used to be that contracts with nothing **EVER** paid affected the JSS. So you'd be fine even under the old rules. Contracts with payment made were always fine. I have contracts open that constantly go idle for months and then clients pop back up. Nothing to worry about at all.


Petra R wrote:

Robert Y wrote:

I was only concerned about what it might do to my JSS if the contract was left open. I was told that contracts open for over two months with no activity can affect JSS.


It will do absolutely nothing to your JSS whatsoever at all. It used to be that contracts with nothing **EVER** paid affected the JSS. So you'd be fine even under the old rules. Contracts with payment made were always fine. I have contracts open that constantly go idle for months and then clients pop back up. Nothing to worry about at all.


Thanks. I'll probably close the contract, as it'll add another job to my work feed, and I'm sure the client has gone for good, so there's no chance of any additional work there.

saad-jamal
Community Member

Hi,

The client created two milestones, Worked submitted on 1st milestone, and payment is approved. Now the second milestone is not funded either active. The client is also not responding. The contract is idle now. 

If I end the contract will it affect my JSS as the second milestone is only listed neither funded nor active,

Please help

 

Thank You


Saad J wrote:

If I end the contract will it affect my JSS as the second milestone is only listed neither funded nor active,


No, it won't unless the client leaves poor feedback.

aziz_92
Community Member

I've got 3 projects that due to one reason or another, I haven't logged anytime in the past few months. Are they effecting my JSS score?

petra_r
Community Member


Aziz U wrote:

I've got 3 projects that due to one reason or another, I haven't logged anytime in the past few months. Are they effecting my JSS score?


As long as you have, at some point in the past, logged time, and don't have too many of such contracts, they don't hurt. If you have never (ever) earned from such contracts, they do hurt your JSS after a couple of months. They may also hurt if you have a very high number of such contracts.

 

If the contracts are basically dead, it would be best to just close them.

karinskold
Community Member

Hi If I end a contract from my end, before starting earning anything..will that be negative for my Jss? ( unfortunately, something was not clear before accepting the contract) Guess no feedback can be given. But to cancel it does that have any effect on the score? Thanks


Karin S wrote:
Hi If I end a contract from my end, before starting earning anything..will that be negative for my Jss? 

Unless the client leaves poor private feedback, the contract will have no effect on the JSS.

Can client give feedback on a job without anything earned?
And no work is done to give feedback on...


Karin S wrote:
Can client give feedback on a job without anything earned?
And no work is done to give feedback on...

Private feedback, yes.

maggiedacut1422
Community Member

I can understand that a canceled contract reflects dissatisfaction but what if your client changes the task right after you accepted the contract? A task that is not agreed upon during negotiation. Obviously, I will refuse. I don't want to be exploited. 

Following this topic.

Hi Mary,

 

I understand your concern. I'd like to clarify that contracts without earnings will only be included in your JSS calculation if the client leaves negative feedback. If the client leaves positive feedback or no feedback at all the contract will not impact your JSS. You can learn more about what affects your JSS here.

 

Thanks!

~Andrea
Upwork

Thank you for your answer. I appreciate it but that's not the answer that I am looking for. Please can someone help me?

I want to know why clients can still leave feedback from a canceled contract.

This can be misused by offering you a contract and changes your task after you accepted the contract. Anyone can be exploited. 

Can someone enlighten me on why Upwork changed this feature? If I won't stand up and ask, then who will?


Mary Margarette D wrote:

I want to know why clients can still leave feedback from a canceled contract.

This can be misused by offering you a contract and changes your task after you accepted the contract. Anyone can be exploited. 

Can someone enlighten me on why Upwork changed this feature? If I won't stand up and ask, then who will?


Nothing has changed - clients have always had the ability to leave feedback once a freelancer accepts a contract. Upwork actually improved matters for freelancers when it changed the JSS calculation so that "nothing paid" contracts don't affect your score (unless the client leaves negative private feedback).

 

I don't think that it would be fair to clients if a freelancer was able to accept a contract and then change their minds or disappear with no possibility of negative consequences, so this works both ways. The best way to protect yourself is to ask questions before you accept a contract and clearly explain the deliverables that you'll provide. And if a client actually threatens you with bad feedback if you won't do out of-scope-work for free, you can report them because it's against the ToS.

 

 


Mary Margarette D wrote:

what if your client changes the task right after you accepted the contract? A task that is not agreed upon during negotiation. Obviously, I will refuse. I don't want to be exploited. 


Rather than just "refuse", renegotiate. There is no need to throw out the entire contract.  Talk to the client in a friendly and professional manner, without any accusation or animosity, and negotiate a solution. Such a solution could be to get back to the originally agreed to work, or to do the extra or different work for additional money.

 

And as Christine pointed out, clients have always been able to leave private feedback even when nothing was paid.

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