Freelance Users
How to use Hive as a Freelancer
How to use Hive as a Freelancer
So how does Hive 25 work in terms of bookings for freelancers?
Once you are all set up with your Hive25 gmail account, you've created your password and logged yourself into Hive, you can then begin accepting and rejecting any shifts that you're offered.
Hive is very easy to use, so it'll be made very clear when you have things to action or where your bookings are currently sat. As soon as an Agent or Client user invites you to a booking, you'll receive an email notification. You can click the link within this email to be taken straight to that booking within the Hive roster.
From here, you can accept the booking, which will turn it to a Purple colour state - meaning it's now up to the Client to confirm you. If they confirm you, the booking will turn green and you'll receive a booking confirmation email.
However, if you decline the booking, it will be removed from your roster view and will notify the relevant agent and client users.
There are 3 colour states you'll see within Hive.
Freelancer needs to respond to booking - Orange
The colour you need to pay most attention to is orange; shifts in orange are ones that you, the freelancer, need to action. These are when the Client or Agent have invited you to a booking, and it is now sat with you to either accept or reject the booking.
Client needs to confirm booking - Purple
When you accept a booking that was invited by the Agent, the booking will change to purple. Purple indicates the freelancer has accepted the invitation, and it is now sat with the client awaiting for them to confirm. If the Client invites you to a booking and you accept it, it will automatically confirm you and turn the booking Green.
Client has confirmed the booking - Green
Once all the above steps have been completed, bookings will appear as green - Green shifts are confirmed bookings, meaning you've accepted an invitation to a booking and the client has approved you. Therefore you are booked in to work this shift.
No pending invitation for substitution - Red
For jobs where substitution is allowed red is seen when an invite to another freelancer to sub has been rejected. Therefore you need to invite another freelancer in order to hopefully complete a substitution.
The dashboard view will list all pending bookings and contracts requiring action.
The red number indicating how many pending requests you have.
Much in the same way - selecting a booking request opens up the roster to action.
There are sections on this page that summarise recent bookings and recent decisions made.
You can click on any contract terms listed and they will open for signature. Once actioned a copy of the terms will sit on the dashboard view for future reference. You can also open them and download an offline copy for future reference.
As well as individual booking requests, you may also receive a notification for a Series of bookings. This feature allows for Clients and Agents to send Freelancers multiple dates, of the same shift, making it much quicker for you to accept or decline.
How does Series Bookings work?
Similar to individual bookings, your email notification will be presented in the same way. However, it will contain all dates that you have been invited to.
You will then click the booking invite link, in the same way you would for an individual booking, which will open Hive in a new window for you and present the bookings.
From here, you can either Accept or Decline the shifts highlighted on the mini calendar. However, you also have the ability to accept some of the dates and decline the others.
To decline bookings, de-select any dates you want to work, so that you are left with only the dates you cannot work as selected. You'll notice when you de-select a date, it will no longer be in a filled box, instead it will have an outline around this date
The column on the left hand side will update to display only the dates you have selected - once you've selected the relevant dates, you can then click 'Decline' to reject these.
Being Confirmed for Series Bookings
The same process follows for a Client. Once you've accepted the bookings, they will be presented with the same mini-calendar to confirm or decline you for the shifts.
Therefore - it's important you pay attention to the dates mentioned in your confirmation emails, so that you can be aware from first look as to what dates you are definitely working. These will also be displayed on your roster view.
Series Bookings via Mobile
When viewing or actioning Series bookings via the mobile version of Hive, the bookings will be presented in the same way as desktop.
You will be presented with a view of all the dates on a mini calendar from which you can select and de-select dates to confirm and decline, as show in the example below.
Clients and Agents will be able to see your availability and this will decide if they can offer you bookings or not, if you are marked as unavailable or currently booked you will not appear as visible for a prospective booking.
Hive will always assume you are available, unless you mark yourself as unavailable or are confirmed for a booking on any given date.
This means any clients you are working for will assume you're available, and expect you to respond booking requests.
So be sure to keep it as up to date as possible, you can always change it if you required!
If a Client cancels a booking the freelancer will receive an email notification which details the reason behind the cancellation. The confirmed booking will be removed from the roster. The freelancer will then automatically be marked as available again.
If a Freelancer needs to cancel a booking, they will need to email or call the Agent or Client. Freelancers cannot cancel shifts within Hive.
For roles where substitution is permitted by the end client the freelancer is able to select substitute to a confirmed booking.
Open up your confirmed booking and click the substitute button.
You will now see the available substitutes, from here you can invite individuals or select invite all. (Please note the substitution workflow is first responder gets confirmed)
Once you issue an invite the booking will turn orange and list the pending sub invitees.
The calendar will now show one confirmed green booking and one pending sub invitation.
*Please note substitution is not confirmed with the client until a sub confirms the invite*
VAT
If there are any potential substitutes with a different sales tax or VAT status to the booked freelancer this will be highlighted in red. As this freelancer would cost 20% more to cover the booking as sales tax would be applied.
In this example contractor 2 is going to accept the sub invitation.
Contractor 1 will receive a confirmation email and booking will turn green.
The end Client will also receive a booking updated notification.
Will see their name ruled out at the substitute listed below.
Two bookings are listed - the confirmed and the substitute.
The original confirmed booking is listed along with the substitute.
The substitute
Sees one green confirmed booking that upon selecting will show whom the booking is subbing for (contractor 1)
In this example contractor 2 is going to reject the sub invitation.
Contractor 1 will get a rejection message. The booking will turn red. Time to invite another freelancers to cover this shift.
Contractor 1 has a call to action to issue more sub invites or contact the agent user to cancel the sub request.
The substitute rejected the invite and there are no pending invitations.
Time to send out more substitution invites.
The original confirmed booking is still listed.
The mobile version of Hive lists all live bookings - so all bookings that are confirmed and those that are pending response - either from the freelancer or the client user. It does not list a calendar view of every date in a month, only dates where there is a booking or a request.
You can access the Hive application directly through a mobile browser - as a freelancer, if you go onto your emails and click a link from an invite, this will take you through to the mobile version. You could also bookmark the page in your browser or set a shortcut tile in iOS.
As soon as you open up the mobile version of Hive, it will automatically display all upcoming bookings that are relevant to that freelancer.
The bookings can then be expanded to see further details, e.g. rates, job notes etc. To do this, simply tap on the booking you wish to have a look into.
It's worth noting - you cannot update your availability via the mobile version of Hive.
Want to select an individual date?
There's a keyboard hack for when you just want to view bookings on one date at a time - simply hold down the CMD key on your keyboard and select the date you wish to view!
Want to select an entire month at once?
In order to have all dates within one month selected on your roster, you simply need to click on the name of the month on the roster - this will then highlight all dates and present all bookings within that month on the right hand side menu!
Opening Multiple Months
Within the main Hive roster view, you can open up as many months to view as you'd like.
This is done by clicking the arrow button next to each month.