As an administrator of a project, you or your company administrators may chose to participate in paid projects with learners. The experiences that have payments are clearly marked as such and you will be well informed as to their requirements while matching your project with them.
This guide will take you through what to expect and how to work with payments while learners complete your paid projects.
General
Experience payment configuration
Experiences have a whole host of payment configuration options they can set, including but not limited to:
What work product constitutes payment
How payment will be (or not be) divided between the experience and project
Minimum thresholds for paid work
and more
While you are matching your project to a paid experience, be sure to take note of the payment options set by the experience administrators.
Invoice generation
While learners complete work on your paid project, invoices will be automatically generated for that completed work based on the invoice type set by the experience administrators.
Hourly - an experience can be set to hourly, meaning that as learners make entries to their work logs, an invoice will be generated once they meet the experience's invoice hourly threshold. For instance, if a an experience is set to hourly invoices with a 15 hour interval, once a learner logs 15 hours worth of work log entries, an invoice for 15 hours will be generated with any additional hours rolling over to the next applicable invoice. The invoice generated will be for the applicable (15) hours at the hourly rate set by the experience. Any work log entries above the experience configured maximum hours for the project will not be invoiced.
Flat fee - an experience can be set to flat fee, meaning that only once a learner makes a final submission to the project, a single invoice be generated. The invoice generated will be for the full allotment of the project payment amount.
Invoice payments
Depending on how the experience is configured, payments will be generated for the invoice for the appropriate payers. For example, if an experience is configured so that payment of invoices is split 50% to the experience and 50% to the project, two payments will be generated for the invoice with the appropriate amount for the given split.
Any time an invoice is generated with a payment your project is responsible for, you will be notified.
Invoice approval
Once an invoice is generated, you will be able to approve the invoice and thus allow the payments to be processed. Depending on experience configuration, you will have a specific number of days to review the invoice.
If you do not review and approve (or dispute; see below) the invoice in this time, it will be automatically approved and payments will be processed.
To avoid work product quality issues, it is imperative that you collaborate with your learner through the whole project.
If your project is being paid hourly, make sure you review work log entries as they are created.
Always conduct regular reviews of student work throughout the whole project.
If an experience is configured with split payments, meaning both your project and the experience are making payments towards an invoice, each party will have a separate ability to approve the invoice and only once both parties approve (or automatically approve at the deadline) will the invoice be processed.
Invoice states
At any point, an invoice will have a state associated with it indicating it's current state and likely what actions will be taken next.
State | Meaning |
Blocked | The invoice has been created but the learner must complete additional steps before it can be reviewed by the applicable parties. |
Pending | The invoice is pending approval from the applicable parties. |
Ready | The invoice has been approved, but the learner must complete further action to have the invoice processed |
Processing | The payment(s) for the invoice are currently being processed. |
Paid | The invoice has been paid in full. |
Paid partial | Some of the payments associated with the invoice have been processed but others are still pending. |
Cancelled | The invoice has been cancelled and payments will not be processed. |
Disputed | The invoice is currently being disputed. |
Declined | Upon dispute resolution, the invoice will not be processed. |
Payment states
Payments within an invoice each have a state associated with it indicating it's current state and likely what actions will be taken next.
State | Meaning |
Pending | The payment has been created, but is not ready for processing and is blocked by the invoice approval. |
Ready | The payment is ready to be processed. |
Processing | The payment is currently being processed. |
Accepted | The payment has been processed successfully. |
Errored | The payment has failed to process. |
Invoice disputes
If you believe there has been a breach of requirements between you and a learner in regards to your paid project, you will be able to dispute an invoice. You will need to provide forensic evidence of such a breach including but not limited to work product produced vs project scope.
To ensure your safety and reduce risk, always keep communication and work product produced on Riipen. Any dispute evidence submitted from tools outside of Riipen such as screenshots, data exports, etc, will be subject to Riipen's subjective analysis and may or may not be considered legitimate while reviewing a dispute.
Once submitted, a Riipen staff member will review your dispute, reaching out to you directly when it is necessary for more information.
All disputed invoices are reviewed by Riipen staff and any decision made by Riipen staff is binding and final.
How to
View an invoice
To view an invoice on one of your paid projects:
Navigate to the team page for the learner completing your project
Click the "Invoices" tab
Click the invoice you want to view
View history for an invoice
All invoices contain a full history of any interaction with them. To view this history:
Navigate to the team page for the learner completing your project
Click the "Invoices" tab
Click the invoice you want to view the history of
Click the "History" tab
Approve an invoice
To approve an invoice on one of your paid projects:
Navigate to the team page for the learner completing your project
Click the "Invoices" tab
Click the invoice you want to approve
Click the "Approve" button
Dispute an invoice
To dispute an invoice on one of your paid projects:
Navigate to the team page for the learner completing your project
Click the "Invoices" tab
Click the invoice you want to dispute
Click the 3-dot menu and then click the "Dispute" action
Follow the prompts on screen