Clients can send a Bring Your Own (BYO) invitation to agencies they know outside Upwork. They're asking you to join Upwork and continue doing business with them through our platform.

Benefits of joining Upwork


Upwork helps you connect with top businesses around the world, or near you. We simplify the process of managing your agency, collaborating, and invoicing clients. With Upwork, you’ll experience:

  • Simplified invoicing and payment processing; work is covered by Upwork Payment Protection and clients are invoiced automatically on hourly contracts
  • Get paid within days of completing work; payments become available for withdrawal within days of completing your work
  • Find additional work with global companies; with hundreds of thousands of active clients, finding new work has never been easier

As an agency owner, you’ll have a free Agency Plus membership, which includes access to Uma and be able to add agency members as you grow your business.

Before creating an Upwork account, you should

  • Identify the agency account owner; this person will have full access to and responsibility for the agency account
  • Identify account email address to receive project requests and client communications

* Please note that if you received a BYO freelancer invitation and not a BYO agency invitation, you will need to create a freelancer account prior to creating your agency.


Setup your agency account


Once the agency account “owner” receives an invitation, it’s time to set up your Upwork account.

  1. Click on the link from your invite to activate your account
  2. Enter basic information to set up your account

Once the agency account is created, the next step to getting started is to accept the contract. Then, you can go back to your Settings to:

Add additional team members

  1. Go to Membership & Connects
  2. Enter your promo code or credit card to upgrade to an Agency Plus membership
  3. Go to Members & Permissions
  4. Select Invite New User

Tip:

If the agency member will not be working on Upwork outside the agency, you can set their profile to exclusive. You should discuss this and come to an agreement with your team.

How does Upwork work?
To learn more about how Upwork works, click here.
Why does Upwork charge fees?
Upwork charges service fees for the services it provides to make running a freelance business easier — communication, invoicing, reporting, dispute resolution and payment services that it provides to freelancers and agencies — so that freelancers and agencies can focus their time on growing their businesses.
How do I find new projects on Upwork?
You can search for jobs under Find Work to find projects with other clients on Upwork.
How do I add someone to my agency?
To add someone to your agency
  1. Go to SettingsMembers & Permissions
  2. Select Invite a New User and fill in the form, including choosing roles and permissions.
  3. Select Invite User. The person will receive a notification to join your team and can accept or decline your invitation.
What’s involved with the compliance process prior to accepting a contract?
Depending on the type of client and project, you may be asked to provide a questionnaire and business documents to prove that your agency qualifies as a business. Read more on the process here.
I only want to work with my BYO client. How can I hide my profile?

All agency members must have their profile visibility set to private to ensure the agency is not discoverable on Upwork. To manage your agency members’ profile settings, go to Find WorkAgency Roster.

To set your own profile to private

You can set your own freelancer profile account to private from your Find Work page.

  • In the dropdown under your profile picture in the top right corner, select your freelancer account
  • Choose Settings > Profile Settings
  • In the Visibility section, choose Private

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