Require a deposit before production

Use a Deposit Required payment term. It asks your customer for a percentage of the order when they submit it, an optional second payment at a middle status, and the rest at the final status you choose. Set it up once at Settings > Operations > Payment Terms and every order from those customers follows it.

Applies to: catalog and project orders. Creating terms needs the Manage Payment Terms permission, which only the account owner has by default.

In this article

• Set up a Deposit Required term
• What your customer sees
• When your team moves the order
• Things to know

Set up a Deposit Required term

1. Go to Settings > Operations > Payment Terms and click Add New.
2. Give the term a name your team will recognize, such as "50% deposit, balance at shipping."
3. Set the Type to Deposit Required.
4. Enter the deposit percentage. This is due when the customer submits the order.
5. If you want a second payment partway through, enter its percentage and the status where it comes due.
6. Choose the final status. The rest of the balance comes due there. Its percentage is always what's left after the other two.
7. Enter the grace period in days, if you give one.
8. Under Apply To Customers, choose All companies, customers with certain Tags, or Specific companies.
9. Click Save.

Catalog orders can use Verified, In Progress, Completed and Shipped. Project orders use Confirmed, In Production, Ready To Install, Shipped and Installed. The middle status must come before the final one.

What your customer sees

1. Your customer builds the order and submits it. The order is saved, and they go to the payment screen with the deposit shown as the minimum.
2. They pay the deposit by card or bank account. The order is placed.
3. When the order reaches the middle status, the second payment comes due. The Second Payment Due trigger runs, so you can email them a reminder. They pay from the order's page or their company page.
4. When it reaches the final status, the balance comes due the same way.

The order's page lists the upcoming payments after the current status, each capped at what's still owed. If the order total changed after the deposit, the amounts listed can add up to less than the balance; once nothing is left to schedule, it shows the real balance.

When your team moves the order

The deposit step only runs when the customer moves the order. If an employee changes the status, there's no payment prompt and nothing is charged. The payment still comes due; your customer pays it, or your team takes it. See Take a payment for a customer.

Things to know

• The deposit is a percentage of the full invoice total, including tax and shipping. On an order with a $10,000 subtotal, $700 tax and $300 shipping, a 50% deposit is $5,500.
• Reaching a status makes a payment due. It doesn't charge the card on its own.
• A payment smaller than the deposit still places the order. Check the order's balance before you start production if that matters to you.
• If a customer moves an order past more than one payment status at once, they're asked for those payments added together.
• Assigning a term replaces the term those customers had. Check which customers you've selected before you save.
• A term can't be deleted while customers are on it, and the default term can't be deleted at all. Untick Active to retire it.

Related articles

• Create and assign payment terms
• How payment terms work
• Email invoices and payment reminders automatically