Dedicated Hires: monthly engagements
A Dedicated Hire is a flat monthly amount for ongoing availability. This covers the reserve held in escrow, how each month settles, what you should agree before starting, and how to end one without damaging the relationship.
A Dedicated Hire is the closest thing on Open Lance to employing someone: a flat monthly amount for ongoing availability, renewing each month until one of you ends it.
It is the right model when you have stopped evaluating whether someone is good and started wanting to keep them.
How the money works
Rather than funding per deliverable or per week, a Dedicated Hire holds a multi-month reserve in escrow. Each month settles at the cycle boundary and the reserve is topped back up from your card.
The reserve is larger than a single month deliberately. Someone reorganising their working month around your business should not be one missed payment away from being unpaid, and a reserve that only ever covered the current month would give them no more security than an invoice. This is what makes the arrangement worth committing to from their side.
Each month, the settled amount is released to the freelancer after a short holding window, and an invoice is produced for that month.
What to agree before you start
A Dedicated Hire has no milestones and no deliverable list, which is the point and also the risk. Agree these explicitly, in the offer:
What the month covers. Not a task list, but a scope: which areas of work, which systems, what kind of request is in and what is out.
Availability. Days per week, hours per day, or simply "available during these hours". "Full time" means different things to different people and to different countries.
Timezone overlap, if it matters. This is the most common source of friction in ongoing engagements and the easiest to settle in one sentence.
How work is assigned. Who decides priorities, and through what — messages, a board, a weekly call.
What happens to unfinished work at month end. Usually nothing, because it continues, but say so.
Written down, these take five minutes. Not written down, they are the argument in month three.
Running one well
Have a rhythm. A short weekly check-in beats a monthly surprise. The failure mode of retainers is drift: work slowly diverging from what you wanted, nobody saying anything, both sides quietly dissatisfied.
Keep the conversation on the platform. Not only for protection — it also means the record of what was asked for exists when you need it.
Do not over-fill the month. A retainer person consistently at capacity has no room for the urgent thing you will inevitably need. The value of the arrangement is availability, and availability requires slack.
Review it periodically. Every few months, ask whether the amount and the scope still match reality. Work grows. A retainer that has quietly doubled in scope without changing price does not last.
Changing the amount
You cannot change a live contract's monthly amount. If the arrangement has outgrown its price, end the current contract cleanly and start a new one at the right number.
This sounds like friction and it is deliberate: a recurring commitment whose amount could change underneath either party is not a commitment. Ending and restarting takes a few minutes and leaves both histories clean.
Ending it
Either side can end a Dedicated Hire. The current month settles as normal and the remaining reserve is returned to your wallet.
Practically, give notice. There is no contractual notice period enforced by the platform, but somebody who has arranged their month around your work deserves to hear before the month ends rather than after. It costs you nothing and the freelance world is small.
If you are ending it because something is wrong, say so. Most problems in ongoing engagements are fixable and the person often does not know there is a problem.
When not to use it
Do not start with one. A Dedicated Hire with someone you have never worked with is a large commitment based on no evidence. Run a project or an hourly engagement first, then convert once you know.
Do not use it for defined work. If you have a project with a shape and an end, fixed-price milestones give you checkpoints a retainer does not.
Do not use it to avoid scoping. A retainer does not remove the need to say what you want; it removes the need to price each thing separately. If you cannot say what you need in a given month, the problem is not the payment model.
Paperwork
Each month produces an invoice for that month, emailed as a PDF and kept in your billing area. For an ongoing engagement this is what your finance team wants: a document per month rather than a running total. See Invoices and receipts.
Comparing it against the alternatives
Against hourly, a Dedicated Hire trades flexibility for predictability. Hourly pays for time actually worked, which is cheaper in a quiet month and more expensive in a busy one. A retainer costs the same either way, which is the point: the freelancer is holding capacity for you.
Against a series of fixed-price projects, a retainer removes the negotiation overhead. If you find yourself scoping and pricing something small every week, that overhead is costing you more than it looks.
Against employment, a Dedicated Hire is not employment and should not be treated as it. There is no notice period enforced by the platform, no employment protection, and the freelancer remains independent. If what you actually want is an employee, hire one — dressing employment up as a freelance retainer creates problems for both sides in most jurisdictions.
The first month
The first month of a retainer is the one that sets the pattern, so treat it deliberately.
Over-communicate at the start. Agree how work will be assigned, when you will check in, and what a normal week looks like. Both sides are calibrating, and things that go unsaid in month one become assumptions by month three.
Review it at the end of the first month explicitly: is the scope right, is the amount right, is the rhythm working. It is a much easier conversation then than after six months of drift.
What a good month looks like
Retainers work when both sides know what the rhythm is. A pattern that works for most engagements:
A short check-in at the start of the week, agreeing priorities. Fifteen minutes, or a message thread if timezones make calls awkward.
Work through the week, with the freelancer flagging anything blocked rather than waiting.
A brief summary at the end of the week of what was done. This is the thing that stops a retainer feeling like a black box, and freelancers who do it unprompted keep retainers for years.
A monthly look at the whole thing: was the scope right, was the volume right, is anything drifting.
None of this is enforced by the platform. It is simply what distinguishes retainers that last from retainers that quietly end after three months.
Signs it is not working
Worth naming, because both sides tend to notice these and say nothing.
The month keeps filling with urgent small things and the substantial work never happens. Usually a prioritisation problem rather than a capacity one.
The freelancer is consistently at capacity with no slack. The value of a retainer is availability, and a person with no room is not available.
You have stopped talking. A retainer that has become invisible is one where nobody knows whether it is working.
The scope has grown without the amount changing. Common and corrosive. Address it directly rather than letting resentment build.
All four are fixable, and all four are easier to fix in month two than in month eight.
Converting from another model
Most Dedicated Hires start as something else. The usual path is a project, then some hourly work, then a retainer once it is clear the person is reliable and the work is continuous.
Converting is a matter of completing the existing contract and starting a new one. Do not run both at once, and do not try to convert in place — the funding mechanics genuinely differ and the platform does not support it for good reason.
Before you commit
Three questions worth answering honestly before starting a retainer.
Do you have enough continuous work to fill it, month after month? A retainer with nothing to do is money spent on availability you are not using.
Have you worked with this person enough to know? A Dedicated Hire is a poor first engagement.
Can you describe roughly what a month contains? Not a task list, but a shape. If you cannot, the arrangement will drift and neither of you will be able to say whether it is working.
Common questions
Is there a minimum term? No. Either side can end it, and the current month settles normally.
Can I have more than one Dedicated Hire? Yes, each is a separate contract.
What if the freelancer takes holiday? Agree it between you. Most retainers accommodate reasonable leave; it is worth settling expectations at the start rather than in month four.
Can I convert an hourly contract into one? Not in place. End the hourly contract and start a Dedicated Hire.
Related
Did this answer your question?
Did this not answer it?
Open a ticket and a person will read it. You do not need an account.