How do I speak with somebody at Upwork

[upworkparastudio]

Is there a way to speak with sombody without having to explain your issue with the Upwork community or create a ticket?

[cylver1z]

Hello Michael, 

You can post your concern here so that we can assist you further,

Thanks.

[upworkparastudio]

I have a client who needed to close a contract and open a new contract to change payment type, but UpWork system would not allow him to do it. Seems very reasonable to me. I have accepted the new contract already and am billing new hours. Am I able to migrate hours to the new contract from the old contract? Who do I or my client contact directly to resolve this outside of the public forum. 

[prestonhunter]

re: "Am I able to migrate hours to the new contract from the old contract?"

No.

Upwork does not have a tool in either the client-side or freelancer-side user interface for migrating hours from one contract to another.

re: "Who do I or my client contact directly to resolve this outside of the public forum."

You are the freelancer. You logged time using the Upwork time-tracker tool. As long as you did this properly, you will be paid for your work.

The simplest thing for YOU to do is to tell the client that freelancers do not have a tool for migrating hours between contracts, but that you do not mind at all if the client contacts Upwork Customer Support to ask them for help. Provide him with this link:

https://support.upwork.com/hc/en-us

[upworkparastudio]

So I understand this clearly. 
1. I'm not able to remove hours from old contract. 
2. I'm not able to manually add them to the new contract.
3. The client must contact https://support.upwork.com/hc/en-us to resolve the payment issue.
4. I'll get paid either way if I tracked it right.

[cylver1z]

Hi Michael,

You can't transfer your timelog from one contract to another. You can add time manually but with the approval on your client. I just check your first contract and I can see that you are able to log your hours. Please check this link on how you will be paid in hourly contracts. You can also go to your Overview page to keep track on your earnings.

Thank you.

[prestonhunter]

You can't move hours that were logged by the desktop time-tracker application.

But (as long as a contract is still open) you can ALWAYS remove hours from the CURRENT week, for any reason.

And you can ADD manual hours to the CURRENT week on another contract, if the client has allowed manual time.

So, theoretically... you could "move" hours from one contract to another if you are willing to delete hours from one contract and add manual hours to the other contract. (Of course, you aren't "really" moving hours from one contract to another, but the result would be the same, ableit unprotected.)

As long as your client is okay with that, the Upwork interface will indeed let you do that.

[petra_r]

There was no need for a new contract at all. (for an hourly contract)

All the client had to do was to add the new payment method and set it to primary.

All hours logged this week would have been charged to the new payment method automatically.

There is to need to remove hours logged this week, hours logged this week haven't been charged yet and will be charged automatically to the new payment method on Monday.

[petra_r]

---

@Preston H wrote:

But you can ALWAYS remove hours from the CURRENT week, for any reason.

---

 No, he can't. The contract is ended, so it is impossible to make any changes to the work diary.

Apart from being impossible, it serves no purpose because it does not alter the payment method that gets charged (which was the whole point,) so this is as ridiculously useless as ending one contract and starting another was.

[upworkparastudio]

Correct, the contract is now closed and I can no longer make chages and the time-tracked hours are still in there. I'm not worried about not getting paid, everything was documented. Regarding this issue, since it's early in our engagement everything was discussed via upwork messaging +  the other contract was opened immediately.  My question is, why did the client think it was necessary to open a new contract in the first place simply  to change his form of payment - clearly the documentation is not clearly visible to both clients and freelancers. 

It's really about perspective - another angle could be if there are tax, HR or legal reason, but I wouldn't know because it's not explained. I am mostly frustrated there is no administrator that can easily resolve this seemingly simple issue easily via chat, phone or within the system. How often to you change your form of payment on Amazon?  I don't want the client to get screwed because of a simple administration issue and I don't think it's right for me to change hours - its somthing an administrator should do.  I could forsee a client quitting upwork alltogether because they weren't able to resolve this. Upwork will lose their 20%, 10% from my future labor, I lose 100%, Client loses even more because they don't get the work product they need for their business. Food for thought.

[prestonhunter]

re: "No, he can't. The contract is ended, so it is impossible to make any changes to the work diary."

Petra: thank you for catching that. For the flow of conversation, I left my post in tact, but added a note to clarify, so as to avoid giving any casual reader of this thread the mistaken impression that a freelancer can remove time from a CLOSED contract.

And perhaps more importantly, you pointed out the fact that simply changing or adding billing methods would have been a better approach for the client than the workarounds discussed in this thread.