Bid identity

Upwork separates who sends from who bids. A business manager can submit on behalf of any member, and the rules decide what happens next: on an hourly job the proposed member needs an individual profile and the manager must submit from the agency profile, since a proposal sent from the manager's personal profile assigns the contract to the manager; on a fixed-price job the manager can submit as themselves and assign the freelancer later. A member can also bid as an independent freelancer from the same login, in a personal scope that is not the agency's at all.

The client sees the bid identity and nothing else: the JSS, badges, rate and work history of the profile proposed. The same letter sent as a Top Rated Plus member and as a new member with no score is two different proposals, and a proposal sent from the wrong scope lands on the wrong contract.

Choosing it well is a staffing decision. The best member for a job is the one whose history matches the post, who is available, and whom the agency has agreed may be bid for; a member who is not exclusive may decline to be staffed, and an agency with nobody staffable for a category should not be bidding in it.

How Upsight uses it. Each campaign names its bid identity: the agency profile, a fixed member, or best fit, where the scorer picks the member whose knowledge profile matches the job. The bidder then sends through the connected login in the right scope, switching to the member's personal account for a personal bid, and the ledger keys every proposal to the identity that bid so that reply rate and Connects are counted against the profile the client actually saw.