The practical guide to the freelancer space

The exchange, in one sentence

A Pacto program has you work at an increased daily rate, aiming at three times your usual rate. In return, you accept to be paid at the pace of the revenue actually collected by the company, and not on a fixed date.

Nothing else changes: you remain independent, you choose your missions, you keep your other clients, your methods and your tools. No commission is taken on what you receive, and the payments go from the company's account to yours.

Joining the network

Joining takes two steps: paying the network entry fee, then signing your partnership contract with the company that invited you. Until both are done, mission cards are not opened to you.

You also state your VAT profile, in both directions: on sales, when you invoice the amount received, and on purchases, when an invoice is addressed to you. When in doubt, leave the automatic setting and talk to your accountant.

The entry fee is € 345 excluding VAT, due once and for life, whatever the number of programs joined afterwards. A voucher offered by a company brings it down to € 1 and opens access to its program; that voucher costs the company nothing. After twenty-four months, the fee remains refundable under strict conditions.

Signing

A signature journey chains five steps: reading the document through to the last page, confirming the three statements one by one, signing by hand with the mouse or the finger, confirming with a code received by SMS, then paying one euro from an account in your company's name. Each step is timestamped and joined to your evidence file.

The three statements say the essential: payment is spread out with no guaranteed date, your balance is protected but not immediate, no return is promised. The journey expires after fifteen days and is followed by three reminders. Refusing to sign has no consequence on your membership of the network nor on your other programs.

Dashboard

The dashboard sums up your situation: pending balance, total received, missions under way and the distribution period being prepared.

An expected action stays displayed until it is dealt with: days to declare, invoice to file, document to sign or missing document.

My balance

This is your personal ledger: the pending balance, the total carried to your balance since the start at the increased rate, the total received, then every movement dated and qualified as a service, a payment received, reimbursed expenses or an adjustment.

This balance is never erased and is carried over to the last euro. The company cannot close its program without having cleared it, and it survives your departure: you keep read access until complete liquidation.

Where the money comes from

Each month, the company's revenue declaration sets the distributable sum: the program's redistribution rate applied to the declared revenue. Payments are prepared pro rata to the open balances, displayed anonymously, which makes the calculation replayable to the cent.

The rate is frozen at the start of the program's first contract. It can then be raised, the increase taking effect at the next revenue declaration, and never lowered; distributions already calculated do not move. Each share is rounded down to the cent and the remainder goes to the next distribution. A month with no revenue gives no distribution: balances are carried over.

Open missions and missions under way

A mission card describes an objective, a maximum volume in days and an indicative increased daily rate, never a detailed specification: the approach is yours. You take a card, or you leave it, without having to justify yourself.

The volume is a budget ceiling, not an instruction: you work when and from where you want, and the displayed deadline is a wish. If the volume is not enough, ask for an extension before going further; a refusal stops you at the authorised volume, and the days already declared stay acquired to your balance.

Declaring my days

You declare a worked period on a card: start, end, volume in days and one line on where you stand. Once carried to the balance, the declaration feeds your balance at the increased rate.

This journal is yours: the company consults it, it never modifies it. If it disputes a declaration, an exchange opens and the declaration stays recorded until the disagreement is settled. No start or end time is asked for.

Payments and invoices

The screen gathers the payments and the invoices facing them, each with its date, its amount and the action still to be taken. The document you file must carry exactly the amount concerned; while an expected invoice is missing, the next payment is frozen until it is regularised, neither lost nor redistributed.

Two orders exist and your program holds one: the company pays the calculated share and you then invoice the amount received, or you first issue the invoice for the amount due, which the company then settles. The amounts are identical in both cases, only the order changes. Expenses approved in writing before they are incurred are reimbursed separately and as a priority.

My documents and my profile

Your signed contracts, filed invoices, payment notices and deliverables stay gathered by program, with the record of who saw what. Nothing disappears, even after a departure: these documents can be downloaded at any time, they cannot be erased.

The profile gathers your identity, the interface language, your notification preferences and the history of your connections, the first place to look at when facing an unknown session. Your company's information is edited on the screen dedicated to it.