Payment Protection for Offline Work

[jennysnoodle]

Hello! I'm new to Upwork. I'm an illustrator working with offline tools so all of my hours would be manual. Since Upwork does not offer payment protection for manual hours, is it recommended that I only apply for fixed-price contracts? Thank you!

[petra_r]

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Jennifer B wrote:

Hello! I'm new to Upwork. I'm an illustrator working with offline tools so all of my hours would be manual. Since Upwork does not offer payment protection for manual hours, is it recommended that I only apply for fixed-price contracts? Thank you!

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Different people will advise different things.

It is true that there is no protection for manual time. That said, the "protection" for fixed rate contracts has limits too. If a client really, REALLY does not want to pay you, "forcing them" is hard to impractical to impossible in some cases unless your contract is hourly and tracked 100% according to the rules-

That said, I have never NOT been paid for any work, hourly or fixed rate, even back in the day before escrow.

Choosing your clients wisely and carefully managing the contract and the client relationship may be worth more in the long run on many different levels than relying on a fragile layer of protection.

[prestonhunter]

No, you do not need to use fixed-price.

Manually logged hourly contracts work just fine. As long as you trust the client to not dispute your time, go ahead and use manual time.

I don't consider fixed-price to be "safer" for freelancers than manually logged time. Both require honest behavior by clients.

[robin_hyman]

I've had great experiences working with clients and logging in my time manually.  As Preston mentions, you have to trust the client.