Disputing a score.

Anyone at the company that a score belongs to. Usually that means someone in finance, accounts payable, or a director. You don’t need a Kalnov account to dispute — the form is public, linked from every company page.

The form asks for a work email. If your email domain matches a domain we’ve seen on invoices to this company, we treat the dispute as verified and it goes straight into the review queue. If it doesn’t match, or if you use a personal email address (Gmail, Outlook, etc.), we still accept the dispute, but we’ll manually check whether you’re authorised to speak for the company before proceeding. That takes a bit longer.

If your accounts function is outsourced to an external firm, submit under your own name and put the arrangement in the claim — we’ll ask for verification if we need it.

The most useful evidence is anything that shows when a specific invoice was actually paid. In order of how much weight we give it:

1. Bank statement line showing the payment leaving your account, with the freelancer’s name in the reference or the invoice number visible.
2. Payment platform confirmation — a screenshot or export from Stripe, GoCardless, Wise, Modulr, Revolut Business, or your bank’s business portal, with a matching amount and reference.
3. Remittance advice from your ERP or accounts payable system.
4. Cleared cheque image (if applicable).

We do not accept: internal emails saying a payment was made, promises of when it will be made, or screenshots of your own accounts software without the underlying transaction reference. These aren’t evidence of when funds actually moved.

After you submit the form we’ll email you asking for the evidence attached, since the form itself doesn’t handle attachments securely.

Nothing. The score stays visible and unchanged while we review the evidence. We add a badge saying “Score disputed — under review” next to it, so viewers know a challenge is in progress.

We do not hide a score because a company disagrees with it. Hiding scores on request would defeat the point of the record. But we make the disagreement visible.

We aim to review disputes within 10 working days of receiving your evidence. Complex cases can take longer, and if yours is one, we’ll tell you.

There are two outcomes:

• Upheld. The evidence contradicts the record. We void the disputed payment event with a reason attached, recompute the score, and the badge is removed.
• Rejected. The evidence doesn’t contradict the record — for example, the payment shown was for a different invoice, or the date on the payment matches what we already have. The score stays as it is and the badge is removed.

You can also withdraw a dispute at any time before it’s reviewed. Withdrawal is not a verdict — the badge is removed, the score stays as it was before the dispute, and the record shows the dispute was raised and withdrawn.

Whoever raised the dispute is emailed the outcome and the reasoning. Every action is logged with a timestamp and the reviewer.

Sometimes a freelancer’s records and a company’s records genuinely disagree — perhaps the freelancer marked an invoice paid on the day they issued the receipt while the funds arrived a week later, or the payment cleared into a different bank account.

In these cases we side with the record that has a verifiable transaction date attached: bank statement, payment platform export, remittance. If both parties can produce one and they conflict, we ask the freelancer for their bank record and reconcile the two.

We can’t compel a freelancer to share a bank statement, and a freelancer may reasonably decline. If they do, the record stands as originally submitted and we note that the dispute was raised and left unresolved. If neither side can produce a bank-verifiable date, we do the same — the record stays as it is with the dispute noted.

We resolve factual disagreements about when a specific invoice was paid. We do not adjudicate:

• Whether the invoice was legitimate or the work was done.
• Whether the amount was correct.
• Payment terms disagreements between a freelancer and a client.
• Reputational grievances that aren’t tied to a specific payment event.

Those aren’t score inputs, so we can’t help with them. Sort those directly with the freelancer.

When you submit a dispute we store your name and work email, the text of your claim, and the technical fingerprint of the submission (a salted hash of the IP address and the browser user agent). The fingerprint lets us spot patterns of abuse — for example, one submitter filing many disputes against unrelated companies — without holding your IP address directly.

We retain the fingerprint and user agent for 12 months, then clear those fields from the record. The abuse-prevention rate-limit counters are cleared after 30 days.

The dispute record and its resolution are retained as auditable history. You can request erasure of your personal details from a dispute record, which we’ll action while retaining the anonymised resolution record.

Find the company on Kalnov and use the “Dispute this score” link next to the score. It opens a form asking for your name, work email, and a short description of the claim. Once submitted, we’ll email you asking for the evidence attached and confirm receipt.

Search for a company →