Glossary
Pending earnings
Pending earnings are payments a client has already been charged for that Upwork holds during its security period before they can be withdrawn, shown as Pending funds on the freelancer's transactions and financial overview pages.
Updated
Also written: Pending funds, Pending balance, Security period.
Upwork keeps "a security period for all transactions", payments and refunds alike, to process and clear payments and resolve disputes before releasing funds. During it, the amount shows in Pending funds on both the transactions page and the financial overview, and each payment lists the date Upwork expects it to be available.
On an hourly contract the timeline follows the billing week. The billing period runs from Monday at 00:00 UTC to the following Sunday at 23:59 UTC. At 12 noon UTC on the next Monday, Upwork invoices the client for the logged time and charges their primary billing method; the client has until Friday to review it. The earnings then typically become available the following Wednesday, 10 days after the period closed. Upwork's own summary: in week 1 you log time, in week 2 the client is invoiced and reviews it, in week 3 your earnings become available.
Manual payments such as a bonus payment become available five calendar days after the payment is successfully processed. Fixed-price payments wait in a similar hold after approval: see fixed-price contract. Contracts with Enterprise clients can run on a different billing cycle.
Pending money is not yet withdrawable, but it is not irrelevant. Upwork counts pending transactions when deciding how much a freelancer can refund, and the security period exists so that disputes can be settled before the money is released. Once the hold ends, the payment moves to the available balance.
Source
Upwork's definition: How to manage the weekly billing cycle, read on .