A fair deposit filters out time-wasters, funds your materials and marks the job as real. Most trades under-use them.
18 May 2026 · 4 min read
A job with no deposit is a job the customer can cancel for free — after you have turned other work away and maybe bought materials. Deposits are normal, professional and expected; the only mistake is being embarrassed to ask.
Convention by job shape: materials-heavy jobs — enough to cover the materials, often 30–50%; labour-only jobs — 10–25% to secure the booking; long jobs — a deposit plus staged payments at agreed milestones. Anything much above 50% up front starts to worry reasonable customers, and rightly so.
Put it in the quote, not in a conversation: "25% deposit to secure the start date, balance on completion." Stated up front it reads as policy; raised later it reads as improvisation. Customers who bristle at a routine deposit are giving you useful information about how the final invoice will go.
A deposit should be a real numbered invoice, not a bank transfer against a text message — for your records, their records and MTD. In GraftG, when a customer accepts a quote you can raise a deposit invoice for a slice of the total and the balance invoice later, all from WhatsApp; the mechanics are in the invoices guide.
Yes, completely standard. Consumer law expects deposits to be reasonable and refundable in fair circumstances — which is another argument for a sensible percentage rather than the whole job up front.
For small quick jobs, use judgement. For anything with materials or a held date, a refusal is a red flag worth heeding — the deposit conversation is cheaper than the unpaid-final-invoice conversation.
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