How to take a freelance deposit (get paid before you start)

Why a deposit exists

Two jobs start at the same moment: they buy a deliverable, you spend hours. Those hours are already priced into the hourly floor. If they stall, disappear, or “circle back next quarter” after kickoff, unpaid time does not show up as a line item on their side. It just never hits your account.

A deposit does two quiet things. Cashflow: you can pay rent in the week you actually work, not six weeks after delivery. Commitment: they have skin in the same calendar you just blocked. It is not a distrust tax and it is not a punishment for new clients. It is the first invoice of a two-invoice job.

The floor has to land, not just sit on the quote

Build the number with the project quote guide: production hours + meetings + revisions, times your floor, times a buffer you choose. That total is what you need to keep for the whole job. A 50% deposit on a $2,000 quote is $1,000 of that floor arriving before you start. The other $1,000 waits on the remainder invoice. Skip the deposit and a cancelled week is a floor that never happened.

Marketplace cuts are a different problem — gross those on the Upwork / Fiverr take-home page before you even quote. This page is for direct work: quote first, then split what they pay you now vs later.

50%, 100%, or milestones — you pick

A 40–50% deposit is a common freelance practice for a scoped project (the quote guide already uses that range). This card defaults to 50%. That is a planning default you can change, not a law and not an official industry rate.

• ~50% to start on a defined project of a couple of weeks: enough cashflow that a no-show does not eat the whole floor; remainder on delivery or on a written milestone.
• 100% up front when the job is small, fast, or impossible to unwind — a one-day workshop, a same-week audit, a tight illustration pass. Collecting the second half later costs more than it is worth.
• Milestones when the work is long: paid discovery, then paid draft, then paid final. Each phase starts after that slice clears. Same formula, several invoices.

If they push the deposit down, shrink scope or the start date. Do not quietly start at 0% and hope the remainder behaves.

Worked example: $2,000 project

Quote $2,000. Planning default 50% → deposit $1,000, remainder $1,000. Formula: deposit = quote × percent.

Optional: gross the deposit so a processor fee does not nibble the floor. invoiceDeposit = (deposit + fixed) ÷ (1 − fee%). Leave the fee boxes blank if they pay bank transfer or you will handle fees on the PayPal invoice fee guide / Stripe vs Wise pages instead.

Using a US domestic PayPal invoice paid with Checkout, Venmo, or Guest Checkout as a planning default — 3.49% + $0.49 USD, last updated 15 July 2026, fetched 2026-08-27 from PayPal Merchant Fees (US):

• Invoice the deposit at (1,000 + 0.49) ÷ 0.9651 = $1,036.67 so take-home is still $1,000.
• If you invoice $1,000 instead, take-home is $1,000 × 0.9651 − $0.49 = $964.61 — $35.39 short of the deposit floor.
• Remainder is a second invoice. Gross it the same way when you send it, or skip the fee boxes if that rail has no cut.

Paste the percent you actually see in PayPal’s fee preview or Stripe’s dashboard. Card vs bank payouts live on Stripe vs Wise. Tax / VAT / self-employment stays in the buffer you already set on the hub — do not stack a guessed tax percent on this division.

What to write in the email (do not be sleazy)

Lead with the work, then the money, in that order. You are booking a start date, not giving a lecture about “serious clients.”

• One sentence on the deliverable, the total, and the date you can start.
• The deposit as a number and a percent: “To lock that week I invoice a 50% deposit of $1,000. Work starts after it clears.”
• What the remainder is tied to: delivery of X, or the next named milestone — not “whenever.”
• The invoice or payment link in the same note. Offer to walk through scope if they have questions.

Skip the guilt, the fake urgency, and “I don’t work for free.” Those lines do not collect faster and they make a normal request feel like a fight. If they ask to skip the deposit, answer the request: smaller first phase, later start, or a polite no — not a speech.

Start after it is in the account

A screenshot of a send, an ACH “initiated,” or “I’ll pay Friday” is not cashflow. Open the calendar after the deposit is available to you. Chargebacks and disputes still exist on card rails; a deposit is not a court order. It is only the first invoice landing.

This page is not a contract

Planning only — not legal or tax advice, and not affiliated with PayPal or Stripe. We do not invent US retainer statutes or “industry-standard” percents as official rules. If you need an agreement that is actually enforceable, confirm the wording with a lawyer in your jurisdiction. The math here is: quote, split, optional gross-up.

Open project quote tool Quote a project PayPal invoice fees Stripe vs Wise

Set the hourly floor on the rate calculator first. Marketplace bids use the Upwork / Fiverr take-home guide. Product shops use the seller-fee calculator.

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