Rent A Coder Help

Custom Software Buyers
(End Users)

1) Post your bid request
2) Receive bids from coders (and communicate further)
3) Accept a bid and put payment in escrow
4) Work is done by seller
5)  Receive and approve work
6) 

  		 Rate coder

Software Buyer FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions)
Work is Done By Seller

How you do this depends on the project payment type you chose when you posted the project:

Pay for deliverables

We highly recommend corresponding regularly with your Seller to best guarantee that the end result is exactly what you want. There are 2 ways to do this:

1) Onsite Communication: Via the same Rent A Coder bidding system that you used to communicate with your Seller before you accepted their bid.

This is the recommended method for communication, because it fully protects you in case of a dispute.  Onsite communication is legally binding, and offsite communication (for example, via direct email) is not.  If a dispute occurs, we cannot protect you concerning non legally binding changes to the contract.  As an example, if you communicate via direct email and the Seller agrees to add 3 features to the deliverables, and later changes their mind...they could do so without penalty.  That is because you would have no legal proof of the change to the contract.  On the other hand, if you communicate onsite, then the 3 features become a legally binding part of the contract.  On your behalf, we would either force the Seller to complete the terms or face the penalties for not doing so.

The other reason to communicate onsite is that it is a convenient place in which to save a complete reference of all your conversations about a project.


2) Communicate offsite with the Seller (Email, IM, Skype, etc.).

This can be a fast way to contact the Seller. However it is potentially dangerous because everything you agree upon is NOT legally binding.

Despite this, it is possible to communicate offsite AND still protect yourself at the same time against a possible dispute. To do this, after your offsite session, simply come back onsite and summarize everything you agreed upon.  Then get the Seller to post onsite that they agree to everything that you posted.  In this way you can have the convenience of offsite communication with the protection of onsite communication.

If your project is > $150, then you will also be receiving weekly status reports from the Seller via email. This helps you keep tabs on the project progress so you can make adjustments, if necessary. You can see a complete history of status reports online at the bottom of your bid request (don't forget to login).


If there are problems at any time, you can contact a facilitator to work out difficulties.  Or if you do not get 100% of what you asked for, you can initiate an arbitration for a full or partial refund (Simply click on the 'contact arbitrator' link from your buyer control panel).    

Pay for time

Your seller logs the time they are working on your project on a timecard, and every few minutes the Rent A Coder desktop application takes an image of their camera (so you can confirm they are present at their computer) and their desktop (to confirm that they are not working on another project). This information appears on the timecard page, which you can find by clicking on "Time Card List/Review" in your bid request shortcuts:
 

and then clicking the current time card. The weekly view shows you an overview of the Seller's weekly progress:


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  You can click on any colored space to view the detailed images and notes (if any):

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  While Rent A Coder can guarantee that your seller is working, it is still up to you to confirm that they are working to your level of satisfaction. We highly recommend checking the seller's work at the end of each day, to make sure that you are satisifed with what you are paying for.

Back on the time card weekly view page, you can also stop/restart the time card (for example, if you go on vacation or want to stop the seller while you review work), as well as view a list of any manual timecard entries the coder is requesting:


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  As a buyer, you have the right to reject any manual entry at any time. You can do this in the above screen by clicking on "reject".