Understand payment guidelines

Gain insight into Smartcats work completion, acceptance, billing, and payment processes, from client review and invoice creation to payment methods, freelancer payouts, and invoice management for a seamless and efficient translation project experience.

Work completion and acceptance

Before the job to pay appears in the Payment section, a client has to accept a freelancer's work first. On a linguist end, the translation task is considered completed when the linguist confirms all segments in the Editor and clicks Done. Then the document changes the status to Reviewed by Manager . The document is automatically assigned this status when all segments are confirmed and the linguist has not been active in the Editor for 30 minutes.

The client has five days to review the work after its completion. During this time the client has to either accept the work or request the linguist to make adjustments if there are any drawbacks.

To accept a linguist's work, the client should change the status of the document or project to Completed. After this, the linguist will not be able to edit segments while the task will be listed as awaiting payment in the Jobs tab of the Payment section. Smartcat allows paying linguists or companies which do not have Smartcat accounts at the moment of your first payment. That is, you may still pay a freelancer who translates outside Smartcat by forming a job manually.

Billing

The list of jobs completed and awaiting payment is shown in the Jobs tab.

To initiate a payment, a client should select jobs to pay and hit the button Create invoice & Pay. A client may also choose in which currency an invoice will be formed. An invoice may include one or several jobs that the client can pay via a wire transfer, a bank card, or PayPal.

The wire transfer option is called Standard processing. Please note that an invoice is marked as paid when Smartcat receives the transfer, which might take up to 3 business days depending on the corresponding banks in the chain. To download an invoice with the Smartcat payment details hit Standard processing and choose a path for an invoice in the PDF format.

PayPal or a bank card option is called Express processing, which means that an invoice will be marked as paid right off the bat after a client has done the payment.

If this is your first payment via Smartcat, you will be offered to enter your payment details, like the legal address and tax identification number, before an invoice is formed.

If you have created an invoice and not paid it yet, the jobs included in the invoice will have the Awaiting Payment status.

Invoices and payments

The invoices you create are shown under the Invoices tab whether it's paid or not.

  • Hit Pay -> Express processing to pay a bill via a bank card or PayPal

  • For wire transfers, click Pay -> Standard processing

  • To pay from your corporate balance, you shouldn't form an invoice but mark jobs' checkboxes and hit the button Pay from balance

Whichever option you prefer, a paid invoice will be available for downloading in the Invoices tab.

How do freelancers receive payments?

After an invoice is paid, a linguist will receive an email notification that the payment has been credited to the linguist's Smartcat balance or an invitation to sign up if the linguist does not have a Smartcat account yet.

The linguist should select one of the available payout options for their county. More information here.

All payments are processed automatically within 5 business days after filling out the payout form of a method.

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FAQ

If I use your payment system, do I still need to send 1099 forms to my freelancers?

If your freelancers are located in the USA and paid through the Smartcat Payment Automation system, 1099 forms will be sent automatically to them at the beginning of the year.