Fees & Assurance

 

     Fees Transparency

 

Elderberry.work’s pool of hard-to-find, experienced businesspeople enables swift matches to Businesses' requirements. Our aim is to keep as much money in the pockets of age 45+ expertise and Businesses as possible, by providing the lower all-in cost solution (expertise fees plus our fees).

Most online marketplaces make it very hard to find out what fees they charge users. Elderberry.work believes in fees transparency, and is happy to provide that information readily available below.

 

The Best of 4 Solutions

 

Elderberry.work is like a composite of the best aspects of 4 types of talent acquisition and consulting services, but at a much lower cost and much faster speed:

• Like a recruiter, bringing you well qualified candidates; but their high fees increase even more for searches for hard-to-find requirements – ours do not, we specialize in the hard-to-find

• Online job boards – where companies can post their talent requirements; but these are generally for fulltime roles, whereas we can do that plus provide non-employees for shorter duration

• Online marketplaces – where freelancers post their expertise and companies can browse to hire them for skill-focused projects, mainly with young adult freelancers; we excel in providing a pool of very experienced candidates for a full range of work arrangements

• Consultancies – often found through word-of-mouth or awareness of large companies, which limits it to your network; risk of “bait and switch” where the senior partner pitches you but the junior consultant does the work, at high fees; our large pool of expertise enables you to find the right fit, and that expertise is the person doing the work, at lower fees.

 

We are user-friendly in that:

• Businesses can find expertise 2 ways, not just 1 as the 4 other types noted above: browsing and posting gigs, and so can age 45+ expertise, who can browse jobs and list their expertise

• There are no fees – subscription nor upfront - for expertise nor for Businesses to browse, sign-up, create a profile, list expertise, post a job, or to contact candidates of interest; you only pay fees when a job transaction is agreed to and earn fees when you earn money from completing a job.

 

Elderberry.work’s Fees:

Our fees are as follows, where Expertise and Businesses share equally, to keep costs down for each, which helps us continue to grow our user base to provide ever increasing value to both groups:

 

		Expertise	Businesses
		Deducted from Job Price. Paid at job's end.	Added to Job's Price. Paid at job's start.
Jobs priced <$1,000	Minimum Fixed Fee*	$100	$100
Jobs priced between $1,000 & $5,000	Transaction Fee %*	10%	10%
Jobs priced between $5,001 & $10,000	Transaction Fee %*	7.5%	7.5%
Jobs priced over $10,000**	Transaction Fee %*	5%	5%

 

*Note: Fees include Stripe fees for processing payments – see the fee calculations in the table below.

**Note: For jobs priced significantly more than $10,000, please contact us to discuss our reduced transaction fee rate: Kim@elderberry.work .

 

Payments Processing

We are pleased to use the globally leading expertise of payments provider Stripe, with its best practices for data security and privacy protection. It should be noted that at no time does Elderberry.work see any of its users’ financial/banking information. When you input that information, it goes directly into Stripe's system with its leading security and privacy protocols.

 

Example Fees Calculations

The following table provides the calculations for a job price of $7,500:

 

	Fees	Example	Comments
For Businesses		$7,500 job price, paid by Business to Expertise, through Elderberry.work. Job prices include applicable sales tax.*
Elderberry.work Business Transaction Fee	7.5%	+ $563	Business transaction fee is added to the job price.
Payment Processing Fee (to Stripe)	2.9% + $0.30	[$218, included]	Payment processing fee is included in the Business transaction fee, and is paid by Elderberry.work to Stripe.
Total cost to Business *		$8,063
For Age 45+ Expertise		$7,500 job price*
Elderberry.work Expertise Transaction Fee	7.5%	-  $563	Very low fee, compared to other marketplaces norm of 20% or more charged to the freelancer. Fee is deducted from the job income.
Payment processing fee (to Stripe)	0.25% + $0.25	[$19, included]	Payment processing fee is included in the Expertise transaction fee, and is paid by Elderberry.work to Stripe.
Income to Age 45+ Freelance Expertise		$6938	Age 45+ keeps 93% of the job price (before any income taxes paid by the freelancer).

*Note: Age 45+ Expertise is responsible for charging the appropriate GST/HST depending on which province they're based in and the correct tax for their category of service, collecting it and remitting it to the CRA. The tax amount should be included in the Expertise's fees charged to their Business Customers.  

 

Assurance of Expertise Serving Businesses

We at Elderberry.work aim for the best practices to ensure you have a safe, secure, and easy to use experience with us. These are some of the steps we are taking to achieve that, including methods of assuring Age 45+ Expertise, as freelancers.

1. Identity Confirmation and Protection

 

• Our global payments processing provider, Stripe, has expertise in assuring identities during the onboarding process, and protecting consumers' financial information. No need to download a new app. In the background, Stripe just handles the processing between you and your bank/credit card. Find information on Stripe here.

• Age 45+ Expertise provide their banking information to receive payments from SMEs, and each bank has its identity verification practices, as do credit card companies for customers

• Self-declaration: sellers must agree to our terms of use, which include declaring that all the information provided is true and accurate, and a code of conduct

• Our Data Privacy Policy and practices

 

2. Expertise Verification

 

• Sellers list their experience, with additional information optional including testimonials/references, certifications, accreditations, etc.

• 1st Level validation: Elderberry.work manually discusses the profile and expertise of each age 45+ expertise signed up to our website. This helps support the further assurance done by Businesses for any candidates they decide to agree to a job with.

• Reviews: Age 45+ expertise on Elderberry.work are reviewed by Business customers after job transactions are completed, and Businesses are reviewed by Age 45+ Expertise too, in a “double blind” process which ensures neither sees the other’s review until completing one too

 

3. Financial Credibility and Protection

 

• Elderberry.work never captures nor accesses its users’ (Age 45+ and Businesses) financial information; it is all handled by Stripe with its extensive data protection methods as a core of its business success

• Payments assurance: Customers are charged upfront for the work to be done by the seller, and the funds are held by Stripe until the customer confirms completion of the work and the seller agrees, then payment is transferred to the seller

• Fees transparency: Elderberry.work provides full disclosure with easy access to our fees information, so there are no surprises

• Fraud prevention: our 3^rd party payments processor, Stripe, has developed rigorous fraud risk assessment artificial intelligence data tools to help avoid fraud; in addition, with its expansive global network of consumers, it has prior experience with 89% of users it encounters