This can be tricky because payments have to Clear before you are told to ship but Paypal then Holds that payment for 21 days, against your performance.
When a customer pays from his bank balance, he is in effect writing an 'e-cheque' which immediately comes out of his bank account but has to clear the Canadian and the US banking systems. (Even if your customer is also in Canada, because PP is an American company.)
This can take up to 10 days.
While this is going on, the payment is marked as 'pending'.
Because it might bounce.
Which is why aubreyclay is asking if you shipped before PP showed the money in your account.
One way of confirming this is to print a PP shipping label. If the payment hasn't cleared, PP will tell you not to print the label and not to ship.
It won't prevent you from printing that label btw. It just warns you.
Once it clears you can easily print the label,even though, as a Buyer Protection measure, PP will Hold the payment for 21 Days against your customer's satisfaction.
This means you can't take the money out of PP (except for that shipping label) and run off with it to Belize. ($200 goes a long way in Belize 
)
You still have to ship within 7 days of the e-cheque clearing since the customer has paid.
Okay so far?
bay decides to delete my original listing and all records of any sales.
How long have you set for the record of your Sold Items List?
It can be as short as 7 days, or as long as 90 days.
It's a drop down menu.
Fingers crossed.
I go to paypal on the pending funds and the fund availability and shipping info and it all shows error on my pending balance.
I think this might be due to the 21 Day Hold. The payment has cleared but is not yet available.
Can you make a screenshot of the error message?
Is that word used?
