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by Francis
(April 30, 2013)

Yes, there is surety of payment if you managed to get hired in oDesk. On the other hand, this surety of payment only applies if you actually do the work you’re supposed to do. In other words, you cannot abuse the system or goof off and be paid for it. But as long as you do work on the project you’re supposed to work on, you will get paid for your time.

In which cases will you not get paid?

If for example you are surfing on Facebook while you are logged in and getting money from your employer, this would probably not work out well.

How the System Works To Make Sure Payment Is Given For Your Work

oDesk uses its own screen recording software in the so-called oDesk Team Application. This software will record, as long as you login into your project at a random point in time every 10 minutes, a screenshot from your computer.

As long as those screenshots show that you are working on your project, you will get paid for that.

For example, if you are hired to research and record a report about a certain subject; then, your screenshots will show all sorts of Google research results relevant to the topic. Perhaps, a Word file opened while you copy and paste the relevant information; perhaps, an Excel sheet or something to that nature. All those screenshots proves that you are working on the project.

If a screenshot shows you playing an online game, for example, then the employer has the right to deny you the payment for that chunk of time. Since each screenshot is recorded every 10 minutes, you would lose – and only if your employer points that out – that 10 minutes chunk of time. For the remaining 50 minutes, you would get paid.

Word of Warning – Your Work Quality and Your Reputation Are Of Crucial Importance

As you are working on your projects, you must try to stay as focused as you can. If you feel you are going to procrastinate, log off from your team. Do what you need to do then log back in and work.

The possibility to lose 10 minutes of time paid work is the lesser problem you might have if you don’t work when you’re supposed to work. Your employer could end the contract with you. At that time, he is freed from the guarantee that he needs to pay you for your work. This can happen. Of course, an employer would likely contact you but he’s not required to.

So the best way to guarantee that you are paid is to do what you are actually supposed to do. As long as you do that, oDesk protects you, your work and your payment and guarantees it.

As an employer, if I were to protest against rightfully done work for my virtual assistant; my virtual assistant would be right and he would keep his payment. So, there’s no possibility for an employer to deny you your payment. Actually, it gets retracted from the credit card of the employer automatically.

The Skillfulness of Your Work Is Not Of Relevance for the Payment Guarantee

As I said, the payment is not dependent on the skill of your work, only if you do the work. If you work slowly or if you work inefficiently, you will still get paid. But only, of course, for how long the employer will put up with that.

If at some point in time he will fire you because you work too slowly or too inefficiently, after that you would not be able to earn anymore from this contract. But all the work you have done until to that point, you will be guaranteed your payment.

On the other hand, you should have worry about your work feedback. If you do bad work and your contract gets cancelled, you will get the payment for the work you have done. But you can also risk getting a bad feedback. If you have a bad feedback, future employer will possibly not hire you.

You shouldn’t worry about being ripped off. oDesk is a very big respectable service. Thousands or tens of thousands of virtual assistants and employers are using it. oDesk has an interest in protecting both sides of the contract since they earn on every dollar paid to you by adding an additional fee to the employer.

So, this service protects and guarantees your payment. The more important problem you must solve is to be successful in getting hired.

Bottom-Line

Your payment is guaranteed as long as you work on the job you’re supposed to do.

Focus on worrying about the quality of your work and your online reputation in order to get more and more jobs and also better paid jobs.

And finally, if you ever encounter any problem with payments from oDesk, be sure to come back here and report it in the comments. I’ll try to help you out with advice or any other way I can.

Also, if you enjoyed this article, be sure to leave a comment too. I will love to hear from you.

Comments for Is There Surety of Payment after Being Hired In oDesk?

Sep 07, 2014

VA qualifications by: JomvieI am not familiar with how oDesk works, but in my opinion, if you wanted to work online you must be prepared in the nature of the job and discipline yourself from logging in to social media platforms.This will not only help you from being distracted, but keeps your focus to your tasks as well and later in the end a good outcome and a nice feedback from your employer.. Online workers should have all these kind of qualities..

 

by Virtual Assistant
(March 14, 2013)

Although in the past it was possible to access your teammate’s work diaries, now this provision is limited to only those who have admin access of the team.

In my personal opinion, it is a really good move by oDesk support to block the access for everyone else. I am sure it would have caused some privacy and disclosure issues.

Especially when you have a private discussions with your clients or another team member, or providing someone some confidential login details of their payment account, when in the meantime the Team Room captures the screen and add the same screenshot to your work diary, the screenshot is almost public to everyone.

However, as I mentioned earlier, it is possible to view screenshots of your teammates’ work diaries when you have the admin access of a particular team.

For All Employers: If you want to upgrade a team-member’s role by giving him/her the administrative permissions, please go to this helpful post.

“I Have Admin Access – How to View Other’s Screenshots?”

If you have admin access of a particular team, then please follow this step-by-step procedure to review your team member’s work diary and screenshots:

Step 1:

Select the correct team

Step 2:

Click to ‘Manage My Team’

Step 3:

And click the sub-heading ‘Work diary’

Step 4:

Select the contractor you want to view screenshots of

Step 5:

Select the date of which you want to view screenshots

Step 6:

Now you will see all the work screenshots of the selected day

Step 7:

Click to a screenshot to see in full window

Hope this will help you understand how you can review a provider’s work diary when you have admin access to any team.

Feel free to share your thoughts and comments about this post!

Comments for How to View Other Team Member’s Work Diary in oDesk Team Room

Mar 14, 2013

Great ‘How To’ instructions on Viewing Each Other’s Work Diary in oDesk by: AnonymousI’d like to say thank to my virtual assistant. This research was really eye opening especially the screenshots. Even as an employer I’ve learned something.Sometimes as an employer, you overlook privacy questions like these if you get too used to using the oDesk Team Room application. On the other hand, just for this functionality you should not make all your virtual assistants administrators. Because if you make them administrators, they will have access to few functions that can be misused. My own virtual assistant does have these administrative rights, but that’s because he has earned my trust. For a beginner, you should keep the settings as they are. With regards to the question about seeing login information or any other critical secret data, here is my take on this. If you want one solution to effectively save your passwords as a virtual assistant or as an employer, then use LastPass.