Creating your account and choosing a role
How to sign up, why Open Lance asks you to pick a role before anything else, what email verification unlocks, and what to do first depending on whether you are here to hire or to be hired.
Signing up takes a minute. The decisions inside it are worth understanding, because one of them shapes the entire product you see afterwards.
Choosing a role
At sign-up you choose whether you are here to hire or to work. This is not a preference setting. It decides which workspace you get, which navigation you see, and which parts of the platform exist for you at all.
Clients get a workspace for posting jobs, reviewing proposals, sending offers, funding escrow and managing contracts.
Freelancers get a workspace for finding work, sending proposals, publishing Drop-Ins, logging hours, and getting paid.
The two are genuinely different products sharing an account system. That is why the platform asks first rather than showing everybody everything and hoping they find their half.
What if you picked the wrong one
It happens, usually within about thirty seconds of arriving. Contact support and it can be corrected. It is deliberately not a self-service toggle, because an account that has already posted a job or sent a proposal has history attached to a role, and quietly flipping it would leave that history pointing at a workspace it does not belong in.
If you genuinely need both — you hire people and you also take on work — say so when you get in touch. That is a real situation and there is a sensible way to handle it, but it is worth a short conversation rather than a switch you find by accident.
Verifying your email
After signing up you are sent a verification link. Until you click it, your account is in a pending state and most of the platform is closed to you.
This is not bureaucracy. A marketplace where money moves cannot let unverified addresses post jobs, send proposals or receive payments, because an unverifiable account is the first tool of anyone intending to defraud someone. Verification is the cheapest possible check that a real person with a real inbox is behind the account.
The email has not arrived. Work through this before contacting anyone, because it is nearly always one of these:
- Check the spam or junk folder. Automated mail from a platform you just joined is exactly what spam filters are cautious about.
- Check you typed the address correctly at sign-up. A single wrong character sends the mail somewhere real but not yours.
- Wait a couple of minutes. Delivery is usually fast but not always instant.
- Request a new link from the sign-in page. Links expire after a period, and an expired one will not work no matter how many times you click it.
If none of that works, the address may be rejecting our mail at the server level, which happens with some corporate domains. Contact support from a different address and it can be sorted out.
The link says it has expired. Request a new one. Each new link invalidates the previous one, so use the most recent email.
What happens the first time you sign in
Freelancers are taken through a short profile setup. It asks for the things a client needs in order to take you seriously: what you do, the category you work in, and enough about your experience to be worth reading. You can skip parts and come back, but a thin profile competes badly, and some things on the platform are gated behind having a reasonably complete one.
Freelancers also receive a one-time grant of free bids on that first sign-in, so you can start applying to work immediately without buying anything. It arrives with a notification and an email, so you will know.
Clients are asked for company details. Less is required to get going — you can post a job almost immediately — but the details matter more than they look. Freelancers deciding whether to spend a bid on your job look at whether your account appears real and whether your payment method is verified. A blank client profile gets fewer and worse proposals.
Setting up security straight away
Two things are worth doing on day one rather than after something goes wrong.
Turn on two-factor authentication. An account here can move money. Two-factor is the single highest-value five minutes you will spend on the platform. See Two-factor authentication.
Use an address you will keep. Your email is how you recover an account, how you are notified about money movements, and how support identifies you. An address tied to a job you might leave, or a domain you do not control, is a problem waiting to happen.
What to do next, depending on why you are here
If you are here to hire, the useful next step is to read The four ways to hire before posting anything. The four models are funded differently and choosing the wrong one for your work is the most common source of friction later. Then add a payment method, because a verified payment method is a strong trust signal to the freelancers deciding whether to apply.
If you are here to work, complete your profile properly before spending a single bid. Every bid you spend against a thin profile is wasted, because clients look at the profile before the proposal. Then read How and when you get paid, so the payment timeline holds no surprises later, and set up a payout method early — verification takes a couple of days and you do not want to discover that on the day you first want paying.
Signing in later
Sign in with the email and password you registered. If two-factor is enabled you will be asked for a code as well.
Forgotten password. Use the reset link on the sign-in page. It goes to your registered address, which is another reason to use an address you control.
Cannot get in at all, and the reset email is not arriving either: contact support. Be ready to answer questions that establish the account is yours. Support is deliberately careful here — an account recovery process that is easy to talk your way through is an account recovery process that can be used against you.
Accounts are for people, not for sharing
One person, one account. This is not a licensing restriction, it is how accountability works: reviews, verification, reputation and payment history all attach to an identity, and a shared login makes all four meaningless.
If you need other people to work inside your account, there are proper mechanisms for that rather than sharing a password. Freelancers can add teammates who bid on their behalf with their own logins. Sharing credentials instead puts your money and your reputation in someone else's browser, and it breaches the terms you agreed to.
Your dashboard, once you are in
The dashboard is the summary of everything that needs you. It is worth understanding rather than skimming past, because it is where the platform tells you something is waiting.
Clients see active contracts, work submitted and awaiting approval, proposals arriving on open jobs, and escrow currently committed. The number that matters most is work awaiting your approval: a freelancer who has delivered is waiting on you, and sitting on it is the most common complaint clients receive.
Freelancers see active contracts, work due, proposals in flight, your bid balance, and your earnings split between pending and available. The pending figure is money already yours that has not finished clearing.
Both see notifications and any restriction notice. A restriction always appears here with its reason, so if something is not working, this is the first place to look.
Keeping your account details current
Three things are worth revisiting occasionally rather than setting once and forgetting.
Your email, because it is how you recover the account and how you are told about money. Changing it requires confirming both the old and the new address, which is deliberate: an attacker who gained access should not be able to lock you out by silently changing where recovery mail goes.
Your country, which affects available payout methods, the currency you are shown, and some verification requirements. If you move, update it.
Your name. For payouts the legal name has to match the account receiving the money, so a display name that differs from your bank is a rejection waiting to happen. See Payout methods and getting verified for withdrawal.
Closing your account
If you want to leave, contact support rather than simply abandoning the account.
There are things to settle first, and they are in your interest. Any balance you hold should be withdrawn. Live contracts should be completed or properly ended rather than left. Money owed to you is still owed and will be resolved as part of the closure, not quietly kept.
Abandoning an account with live contracts leaves the people on the other side stranded and damages your record, which matters if you ever come back.
Common questions
Can I have two accounts, one for hiring and one for working? No. One person, one account. If you genuinely need both sides, contact support and it will be handled properly.
I signed up with the wrong email address. Contact support before doing anything else. Do not create a second account with the right address; that is the situation the multiple-account rules exist for.
Do I have to use my real name? Yes for anything involving money, because payouts and verification require a legal name that matches your bank. You can present a business name alongside it.
How long does it take to be able to work? Verify your email and you can use the platform immediately. Verification of identity or a payout method takes a day or two, so start those early.
Related
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