Sending an offer and starting a contract

An offer is the formal proposal that becomes a contract when accepted. Everything before it — proposals, shortlisting, conversation — is exploration. The offer is the commitment.

What is in an offer

The work. A title and a description of what is being engaged for. Do not simply repeat the job post; by this point you have had a conversation and know more than you did when you wrote it. What you agreed in messages belongs here, in the offer, because the offer is what a mediator reads if it ever comes to that.

The model and the money. Milestones for fixed price; rate and weekly hour cap for hourly; monthly amount for a Dedicated Hire.

Attachments, if there are briefs or specifications.

Terms, including an NDA where your organisation requires one, which the freelancer signs as part of accepting.

Structuring milestones

For fixed-price work this is the part worth thinking about, because milestone structure is the main control you have over risk.

Smaller is better. Five milestones surface a problem at the first one. One large milestone surfaces it at the end, after everything has been spent on both sides. The instinct to keep it simple with one milestone is the instinct to find out late.

Each milestone should be independently checkable. "Design phase" is not: you cannot tell whether it is done. "Homepage and two inner-page designs, delivered as Figma files" is.

Front-load something small. A first milestone that is genuinely small — a day or two — tells you how someone works before either of you is committed to much. It is the cheapest information you will ever buy.

Write what each covers, not just what it costs. The description is what an approval is measured against. A milestone with an amount and no description is an argument waiting to happen.

Funding when you send

Money is committed as part of sending the offer, and this is where clients are sometimes surprised.

You do not fund the whole project. Only the first milestone is funded when the contract starts. The rest are created on the contract and funded one at a time as the work reaches them.

What is charged at this moment is the first milestone, plus the escrow handling fee, plus the one-time contract initiation fee. All of it is itemised on the funding screen before you confirm, and a receipt is emailed and kept in your billing area.

Your wallet balance is used first if you have one, with your card covering the difference.

For hourly, what is funded is the first weekly buffer rather than a milestone. For a Dedicated Hire it is the initial reserve. See The four ways to hire.

After you send it

The freelancer is notified and sees the full offer. They can accept, decline, or come back with questions.

Offers expire. There is a window, shown on the offer, after which it lapses. This exists so a stale offer does not sit open indefinitely against money you have committed. If it expires you can send another.

If they decline, the funding is returned to your wallet. You are not charged for an offer nobody accepted.

If they accept, the contract is created immediately and work can begin. Both of you get a contract page which is the home for everything from then on: milestones, submissions, approvals, files and the conversation.

Changing an offer

Before acceptance, the practical route is to withdraw it and send a corrected one. Offers are deliberately not editable while someone is deciding on them — an offer that changes underneath the person reading it is not an offer.

After acceptance, the terms are the contract. You can add milestones later for additional work, which is the right way to handle scope growth: fund it as new milestones rather than stretching existing ones. What you cannot do is retroactively change what was already agreed.

You also cannot convert a contract from one model to another. Complete or end it and start a new one.

Sending an offer without a job post

You do not always need a public job. If you already know who you want, you can invite them directly and move to an offer. A private job still exists underneath as the container for the contract, but nothing is publicly listed.

This is the usual path for repeat work with someone you have hired before, and it is much faster.

Before you send, check three things

The scope is written down, in the offer, not only in your head or in a chat.

The first milestone is small enough that being wrong about this person is cheap.

You can fund it now. An offer you cannot fund when accepted wastes everyone's time and is visible to the freelancer as exactly that.

After the contract starts

The freelancer works and submits. You approve, or request a revision. Approval releases that milestone's money and, on a fixed-price contract, opens the next.

See Approving work and releasing payment for what approval actually does and the difference between the two release modes, because that choice has consequences for both sides.

Writing milestone descriptions that hold up

The milestone description is what an approval is measured against, and if it ever comes to a dispute, it is the primary document. It is worth ten minutes.

A description that works states the deliverable, the format, and the definition of done.

Weak: "Homepage design."

Strong: "Homepage design, desktop and mobile, delivered as a Figma file with components. Includes two rounds of revision on the layout. Does not include copywriting or photography."

The exclusion line is the one people leave out and the one that prevents the most arguments.

Common mistakes when sending

One milestone for everything. The most common, and it removes every checkpoint you have.

Milestones that are stages of your process rather than deliverables. "Research", "design", "build" are phases. A client cannot check "research" and a freelancer cannot demonstrate it.

Vague amounts with no descriptions, which is an argument scheduled for later.

Sending before you can fund it. Visible to the freelancer and wastes both parties' time.

Copying the job post verbatim. By offer time you have had a conversation and know more. Put what you learned in the offer.

Offers to people you have worked with before

Repeat work is much faster and there is no reason to pretend otherwise. Invite them, agree the work in messages, send an offer.

Two things still worth doing even with somebody you trust: write the scope down properly, and keep the milestones sensible. Familiarity is exactly when people get casual about scope, and it is why disagreements with long-standing collaborators are often worse than with strangers — nobody wrote anything down.

What the freelancer sees

Worth knowing, because it affects how you write it.

They see the full offer: the title, the description, every milestone with its amount and description, any attachments, and the terms. They see who it is from and can look at your client profile and reviews.

They decide from that. A thin offer from a client with no history is easy to decline, particularly for somebody with other options. An offer that clearly reflects the conversation you have had, with sensible milestones and a description that shows you understood what they proposed, gets accepted.

If you discussed anything specific — an approach, a constraint, a date — put it in the offer. Its absence reads as either forgetfulness or a change of mind, and both cause hesitation.

Attachments and terms

You can attach briefs, specifications, designs or examples. Anything the freelancer needs to do the work well belongs here rather than being sent separately afterwards, because the offer is the document that becomes the record.

If your organisation requires an NDA, it is signed as part of accepting the offer, which is cleaner than a separate exchange and means the signature is attached to the engagement.

After acceptance

The contract exists and work can begin. The contract page becomes the home for everything: milestones, submissions, approvals, files and the conversation.

The first practical step is usually yours. Most projects that start slowly start slowly because the client had not prepared access, assets or a decision that the freelancer needed on day one. If they asked what they would need from you, have it ready.

Common questions

Can I send offers to two people for the same job? You can, but funding is committed per offer, and hiring both may not be what you intended. Decide first.

What happens if the freelancer does not respond? The offer expires and the funding returns to your wallet.

Can I change the milestones after acceptance? You can add new ones for additional work. Existing agreed terms stand.

Do I need a job post first? No. You can invite someone directly and a private job is created underneath.

Related

• The four ways to hire
• Approving work and releasing payment
• How escrow works