Paused contract

Upwork's instruction is direct: "Stop working on the contract immediately". Work completed during a pause is not covered by payment protection; on an hourly contract, hours billed before the pause are still eligible. You can still message the client on Upwork, and Upwork recommends doing so quickly to find out when the contract will resume. But you should not restart work until Upwork notifies you that the contract is reactivated.

A contract can be paused for two quite different reasons:

• By the client. A client can pause an hourly contract to stop more hours being logged, and restart it from the same menu when ready.
• By Upwork. Upwork pauses contracts to protect both sides when an account has a problem, most often the client's billing method, such as an expired or declined card.

The second kind is the one to watch. It is a billing signal about the client, not a comment on the work.

While a contract is paused, the Time Tracker does not list it and manual time can't be added, so there is no way to log hours on it even by accident. Pausing is not the same as ending: the contract and its terms, including the weekly limit, stay in place, and no feedback is exchanged until someone actually ends the contract. Upwork's contract statuses also include On Hold, used when an account or billing issue has to be resolved first.

On a fixed-price contract, the safe reading of a pause is the same as for a milestone that is not funded: stop, ask, and wait for the notice.