How To Make a Company Account on Upwork

Let’s clarify something from the beginning: While lots of people have questions about the type of account they should create for their business, there isn’t a specific company account type on Upwork.

Instead, you can use a set of features called teams to consolidate individual client accounts in a way that enables a group to collaborate, track projects and spend funds, and refer talent to each other. You can use these features to connect any group of users—you don’t need to have a formalized business or organization.

In this article, we’ll explain the different types of accounts that are available, describe what each can do, and show you how to get started.

Understanding Upwork accounts

People use the Upwork platform for two main reasons:

• To find work. We often refer to this group as freelancers.
• To find skilled talent to hire. We typically refer to this group as clients.

Sometimes these types of users are distinct, pursuing their own unique goals. And sometimes they overlap: The same person may be looking for clients as well as freelance professionals to support their work.

As a result, there are four types of Upwork accounts: client, freelancer, agency, and enterprise. Each type has a different purpose, and the same user can create a client, freelancer, and agency account if they need to.

Here’s a quick overview:

Which account should you use to build a team?

Only client accounts can be linked together as a team, even if an individual user might also have other account types. This also means that each user will continue to use their individual login to access the Upwork marketplace. However, once a client account has been set up for everyone in your group, you can start building your team and access team-friendly features!

Benefits of company accounts

A company account is a collection of individual client accounts linked together through one designated account—someone who’s effectively a team lead. This group of members makes a team. Once the team has been formed, members can access features that make it easier to work together, scale up, and track the big picture.

Team features facilitate:

• Easier collaboration. Work more efficiently when your team can quickly source, hire, and work with independent professionals from one place.
• A shared reputation. Attract better talent as your team establishes its presence on Upwork through collective statistics such as the number of jobs and hires, overall spend, and reviews from talent you’ve worked with in the past.
• Better visibility. Follow what colleagues are up to and support each other’s efforts: See when new jobs are posted, follow current projects, and get status updates via shared messages.
• Better reporting. Access combined reporting to quickly see who is spending what and when, so you can produce clearer financial statements for your team.
• Different permissions for different users. Use permissions to delegate responsibilities within your team and better control how your organization uses Upwork.

Using team features can also benefit the independent talent your company works with by simplifying internal referrals; since they’re already on your company’s Virtual Talent Bench, it’s easier for them to connect with other teams about new projects.

How to create a company account

Once you decide that a company account is the right step for your group on Upwork, it doesn’t take much preparation to move forward. Let’s walk through the four main steps that will get your team in sync.

To establish a team on Upwork:

1. Choose a primary account
2. Create one or more teams
3. Add team members
4. Transfer ongoing contracts

1. Choose a primary account

To start gathering a group of client accounts into a team, you need to identify one particular account to serve as the team lead or primary account.

If only one person in your organization has an Upwork account, this can be an easy decision: Use that as the primary account.

However, if multiple people in your organization already have client accounts, you’ll need to decide which is the best one to use as primary. Previous contracts and data can’t be transferred between accounts so the one with the most useful data and spend statistics—usually the most active account—is often the one to stick with.

That said, it may be necessary to transfer ownership of the account to someone else, like the company owner. Only the holder of this primary account will have access to all the administrative tools, such as delegating permissions or closing the account.

Once you know which account to use as the lead, check the user info for necessary updates:

• Go to client account settings and start on the My Info screen.
• Beneath the top section with your personal details, review the sections called Company details and Company contacts.
• Confirm that the information is correct and up to date and make any necessary changes.

2. Create one or more teams

If it’s helpful to organize your group by department, project, or function, you can add one or more teams to keep things better organized.

Within a team, members can:

• Create reports to track milestones, hours logged, payments, and more
• Organize projects into groups
• Customize permissions and controls
• Streamline and customize billing

Here’s an example of what your team setup might look like:

3. Add team members

Once you’ve created one or more teams, you can start to add team members through the Members & Permissions screen in the left-hand navigation. All you need is:

• The appropriate email address to send each invite to, or
• The email address or username associated with any existing Upwork accounts

Build your team by clicking on the “Invite New User” button. Indicate the team you want to add to, then add one or more email addresses to the distribution list. Choose the permissions that should be given to everyone on your invite list. You can also adjust these permissions later on a per-user basis.

If you add an email address for someone who doesn’t have an Upwork account, they’ll be prompted to create a new client account.

If someone has an existing Upwork account, they’ll see a new client profile show up under the user avatar in the upper-right corner. This new profile is their team or company account. Existing accounts won’t be deleted or otherwise affected but they won’t be connected to the team. To avoid confusion in the future, it may be helpful to close those old accounts. However, before that happens, make sure any active contracts have been restarted under their new company account.

4. Transfer ongoing contracts

If you started this process with just one account, you’re done! You don’t need to move your contracts anywhere. However, if your new team brings together multiple people with active client accounts, this next step is important—and it can be a little sensitive.

Contracts can’t automatically be moved from one account to another. This means that any member of your team with open projects on their individual account will need to end those contracts and restart them, if appropriate, using their new team-linked account.

As you might imagine, this can be potentially disruptive and even alarming to an independent professional who’s working hard and in the midst of a project!

How can this process go more smoothly? Here are a few best practices:

To end an open contract in a non-team account:

As you end an hourly contract or a fixed-price contract:

To get back to work with a new contract:‍

Plan to reengage an independent professional or agency with as brief a time gap as possible.

• Confirm that you’re using the appropriate account from the drop-down menu in the upper-right corner. For this step, you’ll want to use the new client account that’s connected to a team.
• Navigate to each talent’s profile—maybe you saved the links you’ll need as you ended the contracts.
• Click on the “Hire” button at the top of the profile.
• Complete and adjust job details before you send an offer. For example, you may want to copy the original job post and link to it in your new offer.
• If you’re connected to more than one team, make sure the right one is selected, since contracts can’t be moved between teams once they’ve started.

Once you’ve sent the job offer, the independent professional will be asked to review and accept it. As the new contracts slide into place, your whole team can go back to getting things done!

Once your company account is set up

Establishing a company account doesn’t really impact day-to-day work, as long as job posts and new contracts are arranged under the appropriate teams. It has a bigger impact on oversight and management.

Grouping contracts within teams gives your business or organization an overview of what’s happening on Upwork. For example, you can access:

• Reports. A weekly billing summary, available online or via email, provides a breakdown of spending overall or by team. You can also track each team’s milestones and activities.
• Permissions. You can customize permissions for each team member, designating roles and access to specific types of information as appropriate.
• Finances. You can manage interdepartmental budgets more efficiently by setting payment method and PO information by team.

Company account FAQ

Can I create more than one company account?

If you’re involved with more than one business or organization and want to use Upwork for both, you may find it helpful to create two unique client accounts.

For example, let’s say you have one account for your day job and want to start a personal venture. These businesses don’t overlap so it’s important to keep all the projects and billing separate.

• If you create multiple teams for your day job, you can organize one large organization into smaller groups. However, all the activity, contract, and billing information will be organized under your day job.
• By creating a new client account, you’ll have one client account that’s connected to your personal venture and another client account that’s connected to your day job and colleagues.

It will be important for you to switch between these client accounts as you work on different projects. You can do this by clicking on the user avatar in the upper-right corner. Giving each profile a distinct avatar can be helpful so you can quickly see which account is active.

My freelance business is registered as an LLC. Should I create a personal account or a company account?

Upwork doesn’t provide tax advice so we would recommend checking with your local tax advisor. However, we can explain the different types of user accounts that are available:

• Freelancer account. Use a freelancer account if you plan to use Upwork to find new clients to work with. Set up your account.
• Agency account. If you work with employees or other independent professionals to help deliver client projects, an agency account may be a great fit. Start with a freelancer account, then go into your account settings to create a new agency.
• Client account. Use a client account if you plan to engage talent on Upwork, whether you’re a business of one person or part of a large company. Creating a client account is also the first step to creating a team or company account for your business. Create a client account.

Build a better business with Upwork

Upwork’s team features make it easier for groups to keep their activities on Upwork in sync, from hiring, to billing, to tracking progress on current projects. Once your company account is set up, you can put more of your energy into the things that matter most instead of juggling admin.

Bring your organization together and set up a team or shift attention to your next big project and post a job today.