Never do a month of work on a promise.
A payment schedule spreads risk: the client isn't paying everything upfront, and you're never owed more than you can afford to lose. Build yours here.
Tax data last updated: July 2026. Sources & methodology
The project
Before any work starts. 30–50% filters out clients who were never going to pay.
Tied to deliverables the client can see, not to dates.
Keep this small — it's the payment clients sit on longest.
collected before you write a single line or push a single pixel.
- Deposit before work starts (40%)
- $4,800
- Milestone 1
- $2,400
- Milestone 2
- $2,400
- Final on delivery (20%)
- $2,400
Put the schedule in the contract with one more clause: work pauses when a payment is overdue. Deliverables stay yours until paid in full. Neither is aggressive — it's just how businesses bill each other.
How this is calculated
Three pieces. The deposit comes first and does two jobs: funds your early work and proves the client pays at all — a client who balks at 40% upfront is telling you something important at the cheapest possible moment. The final payment is intentionally the smallest piece, because it's the one clients sit on longest.
Whatever remains between deposit and final gets divided across your milestones — each tied to a deliverable the client can see and approve, never to a calendar date. Date-based milestones invite the awkward question of whether payment is due when the client is the one holding things up. (It is, but you'd rather not have the conversation.)