Elance, Inc.

Upwork Global Inc.

Rajasekhar L Kovuru

Ayyappan Arasu

Yuet Ping Poon

Ved Ranjan Sinha

Anthony M Hahn

Fabio Rosati

Maurizio A Gianola

Jonathan Paul Diller

James Kang-Koog Lee

A method of using an escrow service within a services exchange medium allows a buyer to deposit asset for a project into escrow. The asset is released to a service provider once the project is completed and approved by the buyer. The buyer and the service provider are able to ascribe escrow status to the project before starting the project. The buyer is able to upon posting the project. The service provider is able to while bidding on the project even if the buyer had not ascribe the escrow status to the project upon posting. The escrow service includes a tax filing feature and a dispute assistance feature. The tax filing feature issues 1099 U.S. federal tax forms on behalf of U.S. buyers to the I.R.S. after each tax year. The dispute assistance feature facilitates discussion between the service provider and the buyer to foster a resolution of a dispute.

Online escrow service

A workroom is automatically established for each job created and is associated with a unique email address. The workroom allows members to hold live meetings, communicate in real-time, including via email, upload/manage/share files, and automatically provide transcripts of communication. The workroom also allows team members to launch work trackers directly from the workroom. A work tracker collects work information and directly generates one or more status reports based on the work information collected. A status report includes a back-end version viewable and modifiable by a service provider and a front-end version viewable by a buyer. The status report directly generates an invoice based on the information from the status report. The invoice is submitted to the buyer and allows the buyer to directly pay the service provider.

System for status reporting and invoicing of work tracked from a work tracker

Authenticated session work tracking and job status reporting apparatus

Digital workroom

Growing community of inventors

Sunnyvale, CA, United States of America

Rajasekhar L Kovuru