Guides / Running the work
Deposits and progress payments
A deposit has one job: make sure you are not buying the customer's materials with your own money. Everything else people say about deposits — commitment, good faith, standard practice — is secondary to that arithmetic.
Size it against materials, not against habit
Thirty percent is common, and common is not the same as correct. The test is whether the deposit covers what you have to spend before you see any other money.
On a $9,000 job with $1,200 of materials, a 30 percent deposit is comfortable. On a $4,000 job with $1,500 of specialist product, 30 percent leaves you $300 short before anyone has picked up a brush — and you are lending the customer money at zero percent while carrying all the risk.
The deposit calculator splits a total and shows the draws.
Know your local rules
Some jurisdictions cap what a contractor may take before work begins, and some require specific contract language alongside it. This varies by state and sometimes by license type.
Check yours rather than copying what another company does. It is a short conversation with your licensing body or your lawyer and it is cheaper than finding out from a complaint.
Structure draws around milestones, not dates
A draw tied to a date can come due on a week of rain. A draw tied to a milestone — exterior prep complete, first coat complete, interior finished — is defensible, visible to the customer, and arrives when you have actually incurred the cost.
On longer jobs this keeps you from financing weeks of labor. On a two-week residential repaint, a deposit and a completion payment is usually enough structure.
Make paying easy, and make it immediate
The gap between "approved" and "paid" is where cash flow problems live, and most of it is friction: an invoice that has to be created, emailed, opened, and then acted on in a different place entirely.
The shortest version is an estimate that carries its own approval: the customer accepts it, acceptance hands them straight to the payment page, and nobody has to write an invoice at all. That is the model Aerys is built around.
Final payment and the punch list
Hold a final payment against completion, and define completion before you start — a walkthrough and an agreed punch list, rather than an open-ended standard of satisfaction.
Do the walkthrough with the customer while the crew is still there. A punch list closed on the last day is a day's work; the same list a week later is a return trip, a scheduling hole and a reluctant payment.
Questions
How much deposit should I take on a painting job?
Enough to cover your material outlay before any other money arrives. 30% is common, but the test is your actual spend — some jurisdictions also cap pre-work deposits, so check your local rules.
Should progress payments be tied to dates or milestones?
Milestones. A date-based draw can fall due in a week of rain; a milestone draw arrives when you have actually incurred the cost and is visible to the customer.
How do I get paid faster?
Remove the steps between approval and payment. An estimate that carries the accept link and the invoice together gets paid in one action instead of three.
Where this stops being arithmetic
Aerys prices a job from your own catalog and production rates, sends it with an accept link and the invoice already attached, and then compares what the job actually cost against what you quoted — by task, while the job is still running.