As a freelancer, how much does YJ cost to use?
YJ is free to use as a freelancer.
When you are booked for a contract and following a weekly timesheet being signed off by the employer, we invoice the employer your rate plus our booking fee. Unlike other platforms out there, we'll never take a cut of your earnings, every penny is yours.
I'm part of a creative team, do we need to register individually?
Yes, please.
You can add to your bio and title that you are one half of a team, but your profile needs to be in your name, with your individual day rate.
Support for hiring teams (e.g. art director + copywriter) is on the roadmap. If this is of interest please get in touch - the more people ask for it, the higher up it gets on the backlog.
How long will it take for my profile to be approved?
We review every profile individually and it can take us up to 7 days. The more information you provide at this stage, the easier it is for us to verify your experience.
There are a few things you can do to help us speed up the approval process:
Add a bio of around 200-400 characters to highlight and explain your expertise.
Add any additional links showcasing your work. Please make sure your portfolio does not require logging into another service, and if it’s password-protected that you mention the password in your bio.
Provide at least one reference email
Add a short description of each work experience you provide.
You can always add more references and build a more thorough work history to form a truly exceptional YunoJuno profile.
If you have been asked to sign up to YunoJuno to accept a brief from a particular client, it’s not necessary for you to have your profile approved - the client will link with you on the platform.
If you’re encountering any issues in this process, please contact hello@yunojuno.com.
First contract - what happens next?
Yet to take a contract through YunoJuno and want to know the next steps? Here’s a quick run down of the process:
If you have applied directly to a brief, the client will receive a notification and will review your profile. Don’t forget to include a cover note as a summary as to why you should be considered for the brief. You can also ask any additional questions about the work involved.
If you are responding to a client’s direct shortlist request, please reply with your interest, availability, and a cover note to state why you're perfect for the work. The client will receive a notification once you’ve responded.
The client will then review all of the profiles they’ve selected, and will often at that point reach out for a phone call or meeting. This can be either via the YunoJuno messaging function, or directly if you’ve shared your contact details via the platform.
If selected from that process, the client should always raise a contract through YunoJuno. Do not start work until you have agreed to and signed a YunoJuno contract, otherwise you will not be protected by our terms of engagement.
Review and sign the contract, promptly raising any queries with the client or YunoJuno’s help team.
Once your contract begins, you can submit your timesheets weekly.
Once you have submitted your timesheet, you can then upload your invoice directly to YunoJuno for payment. Do not invoice the client directly, as this will cause delays to payment.
Click on timesheets and invoicing for more information.
Why do I have to do a Right-to-Work?
YunoJuno completes a range of compliance checks, to ensure your bookings are fully compliant with the law, and you only need to worry about doing your best work when working with our clients. Our right-to-work checks form part of these preliminary compliance checks.
What is a right-to-work check?
This check allows YunoJuno as an intermediary between you, the freelancer, and the client, that’s hiring you, to confirm you have the right-to-work in the UK. This check is conducted by our trusted partner, Onfido, who will check key information with you, and confirm that you are legally allowed to work in the UK.
Why do we ask for the right-to-work?
As an intermediary, we need to show that the freelancers we introduce to clients have the right-to-work in the U.K, as per the Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Act 2006. To comply with this law, we have partnered with a third-party service called Onfido for freelancers to complete their right-to-work checks.
Who needs to complete this check?
Whether you need to complete a right-to-work check will be dependent on your location as the freelancer, not the location of the client.
Freelancers working in the UK will need to complete a right-to-work check to complete work for our clients.
If you’re a non-UK freelancer that has been invited to complete work for a UK company you will only need to complete an identity check in Onfido (just to make sure you’re who you say you are!)
What is the process?
Once you secure your first booking you will need to complete a right-to-work check via Onfido before you can accept it. This check includes sharing standard identity details with Onfido (such as your name and date of birth, address history). You will also be required to scan an identity document, for example, a passport. Onfido will then prompt you to upload a quick selfie, to ensure the document you’ve uploaded belongs to you. Finally, if you’re a non-UK resident, you will also need to provide your visa document.
How regularly do I have to complete a right to work check?
We understand that your right to work status is unlikely to change frequently. You will only be required to complete a right-to-work check once a year unless the platform notes that your right to work may have expired or changed.What happens if I don’t pass the Onfido check?
In some instances, you may not pass the Onfido check, this may be because you have not uploaded all the necessary documents, or your visa is currently in the process of being extended. YunoJuno reviews every freelancer on a case-by-case basis to better understand your circumstances. Whilst our internal compliance team will do their best to support you in accepting your opportunity promptly, this will take longer than the automated Onfido route. We encourage all freelancers to do their best to upload complete and full documentation to the Onfido portal to ensure a streamlined process.
I have completed my right-to-work checks now, however, I want my data to be deleted.YunoJuno is legally obligated to store your information for 5 years post-booking in order to comply with our responsibilities as an employer. If you wish to have your data deleted, we will do our best to ensure the only data we have in relation to you, is that which we are legally obliged to keep.
To discuss the deletion of your data please contact: hello@yunojuno.com
As a freelancer, how can I provide my services?
Choosing how to operate as a freelancer in a legal and business sense is an important decision for all freelancers as it will designate how you may work, which laws apply, how you are taxed and which clients can work with you.
At YunoJuno, we ensure this decision is yours and allow you the freedom to operate with clients in a number of different ways and we also allow you to change this on a per-contract basis, to aid in being flexible when you need it.
When a client decides to offer you a contract on the platform, these details are baked into the contract and cannot be changed after you have accepted the contract. You must continue to operate under the same structure for the length of the contract, or communicate with your client to start a new one under any new business structure.
The options available are split into whether you are operating via a GB (United Kingdom) entity or internationally.
The options are:
GB: via a Personal Service Company (Limited Company)
If you’ve registered your company at Companies House, and you’re the sole shareholder and director, then it's very likely you fall into this category. You will be subject to IR35 (Off-payroll) regulations when accepting contracts, please see our section on IR35.
GB: via an Umbrella intermediary
An umbrella company is a company which you have registered to be an employee of, so that they run PAYE on the revenue you receive for providing your services.
We only allow freelancers using FCSA-accredited umbrella companies.
Freelancers taking this route will submit timesheets to YunoJuno which get passed to approval with your client; once approved, you may notify your Umbrella company to invoice us and we will pay them as your intermediary. They will then in turn deduct the relevant taxes and pay you.
GB: via a Sole Trader
A sole trader is someone providing business services as an individual in the United Kingdom. We expect freelancers operating via this structure to maintain a separate Sole Trader business account.
Freelancers taking this route will be paid directly by YunoJuno.
International
If you are a non-GB freelancer, you may operate on our platform with a business structure relevant to the country in which you reside. Please speak to our support team if you would like more information on this route.
How do I see more briefs?
Currently, you can see briefs by your role category, and by your day rate.
This is so that employers can see the most relevant freelancers for the role and rate that they are looking within.
To ensure that you're seeing the best briefs for you, make sure that your role and day rate are correctly selected.
How are the briefs I see selected?
The briefs that appear on your ‘Briefs’ page are based on the category you selected on sign-up (Creative, Project Management, UX, etc), your location, and your day rate.
The 'Available' tab contains all of the live briefs that you can apply to based on your discipline. You can also filter your list to find the briefs that match your preferences, by Roles, Full / Part-time, Work location and IR35 status(if you provide your services through a Personal Service Company).
We are constantly refining the 'matching' process, so this will change over time to incorporate more of your profile information (previous clients, skills, work experience).How do I track my applications?
The ‘Active’ tab is where you can manage any applications you have in progress. You can view the status of each of your briefs and also filter them.
If a brief is no longer available, it will be moved to the Archived tab and you will also receive an email letting you know that it has been closed by the client.
Archived briefs will be removed after 30 days.How YunoJuno Freelancer bookings count work
As part of supercharging YJ freelancer profiles this year, we are adding the number of positively rated bookings a freelancer has had to all profiles and other areas of the platform. This is to showcase our fantastic freelancers and the great work they do.
When a freelancer completes a booking on the platform, the client gets the opportunity to say if it went well. Every booking we can verify as successful contributes to the freelancer’s count of positive bookings.
And that’s it. The score you see is simply the total count of positively rated bookings a freelancer has completed.
Your availability
We’ve recently updated the way you can set your Availability on the YunoJuno platform, giving you more flexibility to tell us if you want to show up in clients’ search results and the option to boost your profile to show higher in the results.
‘Open to opportunities’ means clients can see you in search results and will know you're available. This is usually your default status and it won’t change automatically when you have an active booking, allowing you to look for your next role or another project to work on.
Use ‘Boost me!’ to let clients know that you’re actively looking for a new role and are available immediately. This will bump you up in their search results when you match the skills searched. After a period of time, your status automatically reverts back to ‘Open to opportunities’.
Top tip: Make sure your profile and skills are up to date to ensure you appear in relevant searches.
Are you busy working on a brief and don’t want to be contacted? Select ‘Not looking right now’, to remove yourself from search results. Once you’re available again, you can return to your dashboard to update your status.
Your current status is also indicated on your profile icon. Click on this, to access a shortcut to your availability controls. The ⏸ , and ⚡️ represent the same statuses you can set on your dashboard.
