Agency Connects

Who buys, who spends. Only the agency owner and agency admins can buy agency Connects. Every member who submits an agency proposal, and every business manager submitting for a member, spends from the same balance. Upwork says Connects "can't be assigned or restricted to specific agency members". If an agency wants limits, Upwork says to set rules internally, and it puts the responsibility for monitoring the team's activity on the agency.

Plan rules. Buying requires Agency Plus; Upwork's Connects article says an agency still on the free Agency Basic plan sees an error at checkout until it upgrades. The agency can roll over up to 400 unused Connects each month, and Connects expire one year from the date of purchase.

Two balances, never mixed. Agency and freelancer plans are billed separately, and Connects cannot be shared between an agency account and a freelancer account, even when one person owns both. An exclusive member cannot buy Connects at all. A non-exclusive member buys their own for individual proposals and uses the agency's for agency ones.

Beyond proposals. Members can spend agency Connects to boost their profile or turn on the Availability Badge, with the agency's name shown on their profile.

What Upwork does not report. Since the balance is shared and cannot be restricted, Upwork's agency articles describe no per-member Connects report: the agency sees what it spent, not who spent it.

How Upsight uses it. Upsight's Connects ledger reads the agency's Connects transactions and attributes each proposal's spend, boost included, to the member it was sent for. An optional auto top-up buys Connects when the balance falls below a threshold the workspace sets, within a per-purchase and a monthly limit, and records the reason when an expected purchase did not happen.