Refund

The limits are in Upwork's help article. You can refund at most the lowest of two amounts: the net total of transactions on the contract in the last 180 days, or your available balance, including pending transactions and submitted milestones. The window is 180 days from receiving the client's payment, on an active or a closed contract; for payments made between 180 and 365 days ago you have to contact support. If your account does not hold enough to cover a refund, Upwork asks you to reach out to it.

Refunds touch reputation. Upwork states that "a full refund does remove the public feedback from your profile". The same article says clients can still leave private feedback that counts toward the JSS, but Upwork's feedback article now says private feedback is no longer requested and no longer affects the score: see private feedback. Either way, Upwork's advice is not to refund to avoid a review but to resolve the client's concern.

Several kinds of refund are easy to confuse:

• A refund you give, described here, comes out of your earnings.
• A refund request on a deposit happens when a client ends a fixed-price contract without releasing escrow; you approve it or open a dispute.
• Refunded hours follow an hourly dispute the freelancer accepts or loses.
• A Connects refund returns Connects, not money, and has nothing to do with the client.

For an agency, earnings and refunds sit in the agency's account rather than the member's, so a refund on one member's contract reduces what the whole agency can withdraw.