Is the advance refundable?

Yes, in full, until work starts. The 50% advance is not a non-refundable booking fee. Cancel before I begin work described in the scope and you get all of it back with no deductions. Once work starts it is drawn down against completed stages instead.

When do I get a 100% refund?

If you cancel before work starts, if I cannot deliver what the written scope describes, if I end the project for my own reasons, if I miss the deadline by a margin you cannot work with, or if nothing usable was delivered and I cannot fix it. Duplicate payments are also returned in full.

What happens if I cancel half-way through a project?

You pay for the stages already completed and the rest is refunded. Completing discovery costs 15% of the fee, a delivered written scope 30%, and a delivered working build 80%. A stage only counts once its deliverable is in your hands, so work in progress is not charged.

Can I get a refund after the work is delivered?

Defects are fixed free during your support period, and if a defect cannot be fixed that part of the fee is refunded. Changing your mind about what you wanted is not refundable, because the work matches the scope you approved before paying. Changes are quoted separately.

How long does a refund take?

Within 14 days of agreeing the amount, usually sooner. It goes back to the same account and method you paid from. Where a bank or processor deducts a transfer or conversion fee I cannot recover, the refund is of the amount I actually received.

Do you charge a cancellation fee?

No. There is no separate cancellation fee, admin fee or restocking charge anywhere in this policy. You pay for work completed and nothing else. If no work was completed, you pay nothing.

Refund & Cancellation Policy | Emerging Freelancer

The short version

You pay for the work that gets done, and nothing else. If a project stops, I charge for the stages that are finished and refund the rest. That is the whole rule — the table and the examples below just show what it comes to in practice.

If this happens	You get back
You cancel before I start work	Everything paid, including the full advance
You cancel part-way through	Everything except the stages already completed
I cannot deliver what we agreed	Everything paid, whatever work I had done
A defect I cannot fix	The part of the fee covering what does not work
You change your mind after delivery	Nothing — but defects are still fixed free

Why this is a cancellation policy, not a returns policy

A returns policy covers goods you can post back. This is custom work. Once a workflow is built, an assistant is configured against your business, or a site is designed around your content, there is no object to return and the hours are already spent — so “send it back for a refund” has nothing to attach to.

What actually comes up is cancellation: one of us stops the project, and we need a rule for the money. That rule is below, and it is based on work completed, not on whether you still want the result.

The one sense in which something is returned is access. On any cancellation I hand over everything produced and paid for, delete or return any files of yours I hold, and remove my access to your accounts. You are never left with my credentials inside your systems.

The advance, and when it comes back

Needs your input: Confirm the advance percentage. It comes from advancePercent in src/lib/legal.ts and needs to match what your invoices say.

Every project starts with an advance of 50% of the agreed fee, paid after you accept the written scope and before I begin. The balance is due on delivery.

What the advance is for, stated honestly:

It reserves your delivery window. I work on a small number of projects at a time. Accepting yours means turning down or delaying others for those dates.
It funds the first stages. Discovery and scoping happen before anything is visible, and they are where most of the thinking goes.
It is a commitment, not a penalty. It is part of your fee — not an extra charge, and not a fee for the privilege of booking.

The advance is fully refundable until I start work. It is not a non-refundable booking fee, and this page does not contain the words “all deposits are final”. Once work begins it stops being refundable in full and starts being drawn down against completed stages, exactly as set out below.

“Started” has a specific meaning: I have begun work described in the scope. A discovery call, a quote, a scope discussion or an email exchange is not starting — those happen before you pay anything.

When you get a full refund

You get 100% of everything paid, in these cases:

You cancel before I start. No deductions, no explanation required, no questions about why.
I cannot deliver what the scope describes. Whether because I misjudged the work, something turned out to be technically impossible, or a platform will not allow it — if I cannot deliver the agreed result, you get everything back regardless of how much I had already done. Any finished work is yours to keep anyway.
I end the project for my own reasons. Illness, capacity, circumstances — if I am the one walking away, the cost of that is mine, not yours.
I miss the agreed deadline by a margin you cannot work with, and the delay is mine rather than a wait for something from you or a third party.
Nothing usable was delivered. If the project reached handover and what arrived does not do the core thing the scope said it would, and I cannot fix it, the whole fee is refunded — not a portion of it.
You paid twice, or paid the wrong amount. Duplicate and overpayments are returned as soon as I notice or you tell me, whichever is first.

A full refund in the second and third cases is not conditional on you giving back partial work. You keep what exists. I would rather hand over something half-finished you can take to someone else than hold it hostage against money I did not earn.

Cancelling part-way through

Either of us can end a project in writing at any time. If you are the one ending it, you pay for the stages completed and the rest is refunded. The stages are the same four shown on the services page, so you can see at any point in a project where your money stands.

Stage reached	What that means	Payable	Refundable
Not started	Scope agreed and advance paid, but no work begun	0%	100%
Understand	Discovery call held and the written problem summary delivered	15%	85%
Plan	Written scope, workflow and timeline delivered	30%	70%
Build and test	Working software delivered for you to try	80%	20%
Launch and support	Live, documented and handed over	100%	0%

A stage counts as reached only when its deliverable has actually been handed to you — a written summary, a written scope, working software you can try. Work in progress on the next stage is not charged, so there is no argument about how far through something I had got.

The jump between planning and build is the big one, because that is where most of the hours are. If you are unsure about a project, the cheapest moment to stop is after the written scope: you walk away having paid 30% and holding a document that describes exactly what should be built, which you can take to anyone.

Three worked examples

All three use a $300 project with a 50% advance of $150 paid up front. The figures are illustrative — your scope states your own fee.

1. Cancelled before work started

Advance paid: $150
Payable for work completed (none): $0
Refunded to you: $150

You get the whole advance back. Nothing is withheld.

2. Cancelled after the written scope was delivered

Advance paid: $150
Payable — stage 02 complete (30% of $300): $90
Refunded to you: $60

You have paid for the discovery and the plan, you keep both documents, and the remaining $60 of your advance comes back. Nothing further is owed.

3. Cancelled after the build was delivered for testing

Advance paid: $150
Payable — stage 03 complete (80% of $300): $240
Balance you still owe: $90

This is the case worth understanding before you start, because it is the one where cancelling costs you money rather than returning it. The working software exists, so it is payable, and $240 is more than the $150 advance. You receive the build and whatever documentation exists at that point.

After delivery: defects versus changes

Every package includes a support period — 7, 14 or 30 days depending on the package, stated in your scope. During it I fix defects free: cases where the delivered work does not do what the written scope says it does.

If I cannot fix a defect, that portion of the fee is refunded. If the defect means the whole thing does not do its core job, the whole fee is refunded — see the full-refund section above.

What is not a defect, and so is not refundable:

Wanting something different. If the work matches the scope and you now want it to do something else, that is a change. Changes get quoted. This is the most common refund request on freelance projects, and the reason the scope is written down before anyone pays.
Third-party platform changes. An API changing, a model being deprecated, a tool raising its prices or shutting down. Keeping a system working through those is maintenance.
Breakage after handover caused by edits made by you or someone else, or by revoked access or an unpaid platform subscription.
An AI assistant giving an unexpected answer inside its agreed scope. Models are probabilistic. What I guarantee is the scope boundaries and the human handoff that contain that — not that a model will never be wrong. This is stated in the Terms too, because it is the single most important expectation to get right before you hire anyone for this kind of work.
Business results. No number of leads, bookings, sales or hours saved is promised anywhere on this site, so none can be refunded against. If someone promises you a figure, ask them to put it in the contract and watch what happens.

Third-party costs are not refundable by me

Model usage, platform subscriptions, telephony minutes, domains and hosting are billed to you by those providers, in your own accounts. I never hold that money, so I cannot refund it — their own policies apply, and most charge for usage already consumed.

This is deliberate. Your accounts stay yours, which means you keep control of the running costs and can cancel them the moment a project stops. Where I can see a configuration that does the same job for less, I will say so during the build rather than afterwards.

How a refund is paid

Back the same way you paid, in the same currency, within 14 days of us agreeing the amount — usually sooner. You will not have to chase it, and there is nothing to fill in or apply for.

Where a bank or payment provider deducts a transfer or conversion fee that I cannot recover, the refund is of the amount that actually reached me. That is the only deduction there is.

Orders placed through a marketplace

If you order through a platform such as Upwork or Fiverr, that platform holds the money and its own refund and dispute rules decide what happens to it. This page describes work contracted directly with me. Where the two differ, the platform’s rules win for orders placed on it, because I cannot overrule an escrow.

How to ask for a refund

Write to me through the contact form or by email and tell me three things: what you expected, what you got, and what you would like to happen. You do not need to argue a case or quote this page back at me.

I would much rather hear that something is not right early, while it is still cheap to fix, than find out through a chargeback. A chargeback costs us both a fee and takes weeks; an email usually takes a day. If you do raise a chargeback or a platform dispute without contacting me first, I will respond to it with the scope, the deliverables and this policy — but nobody wins that version of the conversation.

Common questions

Is the advance refundable?: Yes, in full, until work starts. The 50% advance is not a non-refundable booking fee. Cancel before I begin work described in the scope and you get all of it back with no deductions. Once work starts it is drawn down against completed stages instead.
When do I get a 100% refund?: If you cancel before work starts, if I cannot deliver what the written scope describes, if I end the project for my own reasons, if I miss the deadline by a margin you cannot work with, or if nothing usable was delivered and I cannot fix it. Duplicate payments are also returned in full.
What happens if I cancel half-way through a project?: You pay for the stages already completed and the rest is refunded. Completing discovery costs 15% of the fee, a delivered written scope 30%, and a delivered working build 80%. A stage only counts once its deliverable is in your hands, so work in progress is not charged.
Can I get a refund after the work is delivered?: Defects are fixed free during your support period, and if a defect cannot be fixed that part of the fee is refunded. Changing your mind about what you wanted is not refundable, because the work matches the scope you approved before paying. Changes are quoted separately.
How long does a refund take?: Within 14 days of agreeing the amount, usually sooner. It goes back to the same account and method you paid from. Where a bank or processor deducts a transfer or conversion fee I cannot recover, the refund is of the amount I actually received.
Do you charge a cancellation fee?: No. There is no separate cancellation fee, admin fee or restocking charge anywhere in this policy. You pay for work completed and nothing else. If no work was completed, you pay nothing.

If we disagree

Tell me what you think is fair and why. Almost every dispute on projects this size traces back to a scope that was vaguer than either of us realised, and rereading it together settles it more often than not. If it genuinely cannot be settled, the Terms of Service set out the governing law and the limits of liability.

Your statutory rights come first. If consumer-protection law where you live gives you a right to cancel or a refund beyond what is written here — a statutory cooling-off period, for instance — that law applies and this page does not reduce it.

This policy is a draft describing how I intend to handle cancellations and refunds. It was prepared without legal advice and has not been reviewed by a lawyer. Consumer-protection rules in your clients’ countries may give them rights beyond what is written here, and those rights take precedence — have this reviewed before relying on it commercially.