Learn why clients or Upwork may pause contracts, what to do when it happens, and how to stay protected while your contract is on hold.
In this article
- Why do clients pause contracts?
- Why does Upwork pause a contract?
- My contract with a client is paused. What should I do?
Why do clients pause contracts?
Clients can pause contracts any time they want to put work on hold. They may need to do this for many reasons. This pause prevents you from logging time on the contract until the client is ready to start again. In most cases, they’ll message you to explain why they paused the contract and when they plan to restart it. If you don’t hear from the client, you can contact them to ask why they paused the contract and when they plan to restart.
Why does Upwork pause a contract?
To help protect both you and your clients, we pause contracts in certain situations.
For example, if there is a problem with your client’s Upwork account or billing method, we’ll pause your contract with them.
Good to know:
We can’t share the specifics regarding why the contract was paused, due to privacy concerns
- While the contract is paused, you won’t be able to bill that client and should stop any work on the project until the contract is resumed
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Email notifications are not sent for contracts paused or reactivated by us, but you can check a contract's status at anytime in your Upwork account under All contracts
My contract with a client is paused. What should I do?
- Stop working on the contract immediately — Any work completed during a contract pause is not covered by our payment protection. For hourly contracts, hours that you billed prior to the contract being paused are still eligible for payment protection.
- Contact your client — You can still message your client on Upwork when contracts are paused. We recommend that you get in touch with your client as soon as possible to find out when they expect the contract to resume.
Pro tip: Even though contacting your client is a good idea for your relationship and for your planning, don’t resume working on the contract until you receive a notification from us that the contract is reactivated.
Warning:
If your client asks you to continue working on a paused contract and then offers to pay you outside of Upwork, in most cases you should decline and report it to us by using the Contact Support option in the navigation bar. Getting paid outside of Upwork is called circumvention, which significantly increases the risk of fraud and is a violation of our Terms of Service.
Please note that this does not apply if you and your client have agreed to leave Upwork and your client has paid the appropriate conversion fee to do so, or if the circumvention rules don’t apply to you and your client. Learn more here.