How to accept and pay for a Direct Contract

In this article

• How do I review and accept a Direct Contract offer from a freelancer?
• How do I pay for work on a freelancer-initiated Direct Contract?

How do I review and accept a Direct Contract offer from a freelancer?

Direct Contracts go straight to your email, and once you sign up for Upwork, you can review the proposed contract before you accept it.

1. Check your email for an email from Upwork. You’ll see a few contract details, like your freelancer or agency’s name, cost, and delivery date
2. Sign up for Upwork and verify your contact information
3. Review contract details. The contract may be set up as hourly or fixed-price:
   • Hourly — The freelancer works for a set price per hour. You agree on a maximum number of hours that can be billed per week.
   • Fixed-price — The freelancer sets a price for the completed work. The work and pricing may be broken down into steps called milestones. You and the freelancer can add more milestones later, and you’ll only pre-fund one milestone at a time
4. Choose Approve and fund to accept the contract
5. Enter your billing method. We accept PayPal and credit cards. (Later, you may become eligible for paying with a bank account.) Learn more about billing methods.
   • For a fixed-price contract, you’ll deposit funds to activate the contract, but we won’t release funds until the freelancer submits work and you’ve had a chance to review. If you’re using milestones, you’ll only fund one at a time
     Example: If a contract has five milestones at $100 for each milestone, the contract total is $500. You'll fund Milestone 1 with $100 to get started. Once that milestone is complete, you can fund and activate the next one
   • For an hourly contract, we’ll invoice you each Monday for the hours the freelancer worked during the previous week, which you pay weekly
6. Select Fund milestone and hire (fixed-price) or Send offer (hourly)

Once you’ve completed these steps, you and your freelancer will both receive confirmation emails from Upwork, and your contract can begin.

How do I pay for work on a freelancer-initiated Direct Contract?

For fixed-price contracts, when the freelancer completes the work, you can review the results and release a payment. For hourly contracts, we’ll bill you weekly for the previous week’s hours.

For fixed-price contracts:

1. After they’ve completed the work, your freelancer can send a payment request, which you’ll see in your email
2. You can accept the request and release funds, or decline it and request changes to the work
3. If you don’t respond within 14 days, Upwork will automatically release the payment to your freelancer’s pending payments, as authorized by the instructions you and your freelancer agree to

You can also choose Pay now from the contract if the work is done and you don’t want to wait for the freelancer’s request

For hourly contracts:

1. We’ll invoice you each Monday for the freelancer’s hours from the previous week. We’ll automatically charge your billing method but we won’t release the funds to the freelancer until the end of the review period
2. You’ll need to review and file a dispute, if needed, before Friday, or we’ll automatically release the funds to your freelancer’s pending payments

Learn more about how payments for hourly contracts work

You're all set! Your invoice and receipt are ready

• Once funds are released, we'll email your confirmation with an invoice/project receipt for your records 
• You can also find your invoices and receipts at any time under Manage finances > Transaction history in your main navigation bar