Blog
Part of the Client billing guides
Should you ask for a deposit? How to invoice for one
Every freelancer has a story about the project that evaporated after the kickoff call, or the client who went quiet the week the final invoice landed. A deposit does not just protect your cash flow. It tests whether the client is serious before you rearrange your calendar around them. Here is how much to ask, how to ask without awkwardness, and how to invoice it so the paper trail stays clean.
Why deposits work
A deposit changes the client's relationship to the project. Work they have paid for is work they pay attention to: feedback arrives faster, scope stays tighter, and the final payment stops feeling optional. For you, it covers the early hours and filters out the clients who were never going to pay. The freelancers who skip deposits are usually the ones who can least afford a non-paying client.
How much to ask
The standard range is 25 to 50 percent upfront, and where you land depends on the shape of the work:
- 50 percent for short projects under a month. Half now, half on delivery. Simple, hard to argue with.
- 30 percent for projects of one to three months, with the rest tied to milestones you both agree on.
- 25 percent or a fixed kickoff fee for longer engagements, where monthly billing takes over after the deposit.
- 100 percent for anything under a few hundred dollars. Invoicing twice for a $150 job costs more in admin than it protects.
Never go below 25 percent. A 10 percent deposit is not protection, it is a rounding error the client will forget they paid.
The one-sentence script
The awkwardness is the whole reason people skip deposits, so make it boring and procedural:
"I take a 50% deposit to reserve the start date, with the balance due on delivery. I'll send the deposit invoice today."
That is it. Framed as policy, not a negotiation. Serious clients have heard it before. The ones who push back hard on a standard deposit are telling you something useful before you have done any work.
How to invoice it: the two-invoice paper trail
This is where freelancers mess up. They take a deposit, then weeks later try to remember the amount and subtract it from the final invoice in their head. Do not do that. Issue two invoices:
- Invoice 1, the deposit. Line item: "50% deposit, Website redesign for Acme Corp." Amount: half the project total. Due: before work starts.
- Invoice 2, the balance. Line item: "Balance after 50% deposit (INV-2026-005), Website redesign for Acme Corp." Amount: the remainder. Reference the deposit invoice number right in the line item so the client's accounts department can match them in seconds.
Two invoices, two numbers, one clean trail. If the project scope changes mid-stream, you adjust the balance invoice and the deposit record stays untouched, which is exactly what you want at tax time.
Let the duplicate button do the boring part
The balance invoice is 90 percent identical to the deposit invoice: same client, same project, half the paperwork. In MonkeeTools, open the deposit invoice from your history, hit duplicate, and the new draft arrives with the number already incremented and the client details filled in. Change the line item to reference the deposit, adjust the amount, set a fresh due date. Thirty seconds, clean trail.
See it done: a working example
This link loads a complete deposit invoice into the generator, 50 percent of a $2,400 project. Free, no signup, editable the moment it opens:
Open the deposit invoice example
Duplicate it, change the line item to "Balance after 50% deposit (2026-005)," and you have invoice two of the paper trail.
A deposit is not about distrust. It is the client buying a start date, and you selling one.
Ready to send yours? Make a free invoice, no signup, nothing uploaded, PDF in minutes.
Get new posts by email.
One post a week: honest build logs and leverage-through-technology pieces for freelancers and bootstrapped founders. No spam, unsubscribe anytime. Subscribe on Substack.