Boost settlement

Upwork describes the sequence in its boosting article: "First, we temporarily charge your Connects to place your bid", then at the close the Connects are refunded "while final bid results are being sorted", and the winners are charged their final amount immediately after. The auction closes after seven days or at the first hire, whichever comes first, and a client interaction while the proposal is boosted brings the charge forward.

Before settlement everything about a boost is provisional. The proposal list shows a "Boosted" badge or not, which is a bid position read at one moment. Analytics that treat that badge as an outcome report boosts as lost that were later charged, and boosts as won that came back. The two errors do not cancel, because they fall on different proposals.

Settlement is read from the Connects ledger, per job and per member, with three rules:

• a final charge after the release means held, and that charge is the cost;
• a release with no charge after it means outbid, and the cost is zero;
• no release yet means the auction is still open, whatever the badge says.

One gap remains. A boost whose Connects lines were never captured cannot be settled, so it stays open rather than being guessed at.

How Upsight uses it. A settlement pass runs after each read of the Connects history and writes the verdict, the charged Connects and the refunded Connects onto the proposal, after which the badge no longer overrides it. Proposal tables show four states: boosted or outbid for now while the auction is open, and held or outbid once it has settled.