Deposits and progress billing

If you invoice once, at the end, you are financing the entire job yourself and carrying the whole risk of not being paid until the moment you have least leverage. Splitting that into two or three payments changes both. It is a structural fix, and it works far better than any amount of chasing after the fact.

What a deposit is actually for

People explain deposits as protection against not being paid. That is part of it, and it is the least interesting part.

The bigger effect is on commitment. A client who has paid something has started the project in their own mind. They answer questions faster, they schedule the review, they stop treating the work as provisional. A job that has taken no money is a job that can quietly go quiet, and the cost of that is usually not the unpaid work — it is the weeks you held in your calendar for something that never began.

The third effect is a filter, and it is the one worth most. A client who objects to a standard deposit on a first project is telling you something early and cheaply. It is not always a bad sign — some organisations genuinely cannot pay in advance, which is a procurement fact rather than a judgement on you — but it is always worth knowing before you have built a month around them.

How much, and how to split it

There is no universal figure, and anyone quoting one is describing their own trade. What is fairly general:

• Two payments — something up front, the rest on completion — suits short jobs, and is the simplest thing to propose to a new client.
• Three or more — tied to stages rather than to dates — suits anything long enough that a month could pass without an invoice. Tie each payment to a deliverable the client can see has happened, not to a calendar date, so there is nothing to argue about.
• Enough up front to cover what you spend before the next payment lands. If a job needs you to buy something, licence something or subcontract something, that money should not come out of your pocket to sit in somebody else's project.

Whatever the split, each stage is a separate invoice with its own number and its own due date. The final invoice shows the full amount and the deposit already paid, so the balance owing is on the document rather than in the client's head — the invoice calculator takes an amount already paid and works the balance down to what is still owed.

How to ask

The request lands badly when it sounds like a response to a suspicion. It lands normally when it sounds like how you work. The difference is almost entirely in when you say it and how much you explain.

Put it in the quote, not in a separate conversation afterwards. One line, stated as process:"Payment: 40% on acceptance, 60% on delivery." That is it. No justification, no apology, no paragraph about how you have been let down before. Terms that arrive with reasons attached invite negotiation about the reasons.

If it is questioned, the useful answer is about scheduling rather than trust: the deposit is what books the time, and the time is booked when it clears. That is true, it is checkable, and it moves the conversation from "do you trust me" to "when do you want this done".

When it will not work

Some clients genuinely cannot pay in advance — public bodies, large organisations with purchase-order systems, anyone whose procurement runs on receipt of goods. Pushing there wastes goodwill on a rule the person you are talking to did not write and cannot change.

The fallback is to shorten the exposure rather than remove it. Bill monthly rather than at the end. Bill at each stage. Keep the first stage small, so if something is wrong with the arrangement you find out while the amount at risk is still one week rather than three months.

Deposits and tax

A payment taken in advance may create a tax point when it is received rather than when the work is done, and whether it does depends on where you are and what you sell. This is a one-question conversation with an accountant and it is worth having before you take the first one, not at the end of the year.