CXOwork is a transparent matchmaking layer — we don't mark up the advisor's rate, and we don't take a recurring cut. The number you agree on with your matched advisor is the number that lands on the invoice. The one piece of platform billing is a flat $29 Contract Initiation Fee charged when both parties confirm the offer.
The $29 Contract Initiation Fee
When you send an offer and the advisor accepts, a one-time $29 Contract Initiation Fee is charged to the client. It is the only fee CXOwork collects from you. The fee covers:
- Advisor vetting — the work our team has already done verifying credentials, references, and recent operating experience before you ever saw the match.
- NDA + paperwork admin — generating and tracking the engagement's NDA, conflict-of-interest disclosure, and contract record so both sides have a clean audit trail.
- Onboarding support — a CXOwork operator stays available for the first two weeks to help calibrate scope, mediate any early misalignment, and keep the engagement moving.
The fee is charged once per contract — not per month, not per invoice. It is not a recurring placement fee, and we don't take a percentage of the advisor's pay.
Rate types
The offer you send picks one of three rate structures, and the contract bills accordingly:
- Hourly — billed at month-end against the hours the advisor logged in their timesheet that month. Hours per week on the offer is a target, not a hard cap.
- Monthly retainer — a fixed monthly fee, billed on the contract's monthly anniversary. The advisor commits to a defined scope; if they finish early, the retainer still runs.
- Project — a fixed total fee, typically billed in two or three milestones agreed up-front in the scope. The platform tracks milestones in the next release; until then, milestones are tracked manually inside your messaging thread.
Invoicing rhythm
Monthly cadence by default — your advisor's Stripe-connected account issues a single invoice on the contract's anniversary day each month. Hourly contracts include a line-item breakdown of logged hours; monthly retainers show a single line; project contracts show the milestone the invoice covers.
Invoices include net-15 payment terms unless you and your advisor agree otherwise in the scope.
Who pays whom
You pay your advisor directly through CXOwork's Stripe Connect integration. The only money that flows to CXOwork is the one-time $29 Contract Initiation Fee when the offer is confirmed. We don't hold the advisor's funds and we don't take a percentage cut. That keeps the relationship clean — your advisor sees the same dollar number you do, and there's no platform-margin conversation in the middle.
Advisors set up their Stripe Connect account during onboarding. They can't accept offers until that account is live, so by the time you send an offer the payout rails are already in place.
Currency and taxes
US dollars by default. Cross-border engagements are supported through Stripe's standard FX, billed in the advisor's preferred currency. Tax handling depends on the advisor's entity — most invoice as their own LLC or sole proprietorship; a few opt for direct W-9 / 1099 paperwork. The first invoice will spell out the structure.
Refunds and disputes
Because there's no platform escrow, refunds are negotiated directly between you and the advisor. The CXOwork team will mediate if you can't reach an agreement — open the CXOAdmin conversation in your messages and we'll step in. In practice this is rare; most disputes resolve when the scope was specific enough up-front (see the engagements article).
Cancelling an engagement mid-cycle
Marking a contract complete on the dashboard stops future invoices from being raised. Anything already invoiced for the current period stays due, since the advisor already did that work. If you need to walk back recent invoices, message the advisor directly — most are willing to prorate when the engagement ends mid-month.
Receipts and bookkeeping
Every paid invoice generates a receipt PDF on Stripe — your advisor can pull these for you any time. We're building a built-in invoice history page on the dashboard so you don't have to ask; until then, the Stripe receipts are the system of record.