← Invoice payment terms calculator
Freelancers search this after a project goes wrong — the work shipped, the invoice went out, and the money did not arrive. The usual answer is a percentage: ask for 50%, ask for a third. The percentage is the wrong thing to argue about.
What matters is whether the deposit clears before you finish. A deposit that lands after handover is not protection. It is a slightly cheaper way to finance the same risk.
Net 30, paid 12 days late (so 42 days from invoice to cash), a deposit that clears in 5 days because nobody starts before it does, and money worth 24% a year. “Unpaid at handover” is the finished work still outstanding on delivery day — what a client who disappears keeps.
| Schedule | Unpaid at handover | Financing cost |
|---|---|---|
| 50% deposit, 50% on completion | $3,000.00 | $99.29 |
| Thirds: deposit, midpoint, completion | $3,960.00 | $117.25 |
| Bill once at the end | $6,000.00 | $224.88 |
Billing once at the end means the entire $6,000 of delivered work is in someone else's hands on the day you let go of it, and stays there until day 72. The half deposit cuts that to $3,000 and the financing cost to $99.29.
This is the result that surprises people, and it is why the schedule is worth checking rather than copying. Thirds leaves $3,960 unpaid at handover against the half deposit's $3,000 — more invoices, more exposure.
The midpoint bill is issued on day 15 and collected on the same 42-day cycle as everything else, so it lands on day 57: nearly a month after the work was delivered. It splits the money into smaller pieces without moving any of it in front of the handover, and the smaller deposit (34% instead of 50%) is all that actually arrives in time. A progress bill only helps if it clears while the project is still running.
Change one number — the deposit takes 42 days to collect, like every other invoice — and the whole table collapses: every schedule leaves the full $6,000 unpaid at handover. Nothing clears inside a 30-day project.
The 50% on the contract did not disappear; it never mattered. What protected the freelancer in the first table was five days, not fifty percent. On this version the 50% deposit is worth $59.18 of financing and exactly zero risk, and the fix is a shorter collection cycle — payable on acceptance, before work starts — not a bigger number on the same terms.
If you know the most you are willing to have unpaid, the calculator solves for the deposit instead. On the defaults, holding peak unpaid work at or below $2,000 takes a 66.67% deposit.
There is a floor it cannot get under. Until the deposit clears you have delivered five days of a thirty-day project and been paid nothing, so no percentage — not even 100% — pushes the peak below $1,000. Ask for a ceiling under that and the answer is that no deposit reaches it, which is more useful than a number above 100% that reads like a target.
It does not say to ask for a deposit, and it is not a prediction that any particular client will pay late or not at all. Delivered value is assumed to spread evenly across the project's days; if your work is front-loaded, your real exposure is worse than these figures. A client who has prepaid is not treated as lending you money, so a large deposit never manufactures a gain — it only removes a cost.
Should I offer 2/10 Net 30? answers the other half: once the invoice is out, what is speed worth?
On the calculator defaults — a $6,000 project delivered over 30 days, Net 30 paid 12 days late, and a deposit that clears in 5 days — billing once at the end leaves $6,000 of finished work unpaid on the day you hand it over, and costs $224.88 to finance at a 24% carrying-cost assumption. A 50% deposit leaves $3,000 unpaid and costs $99.29. This is arithmetic from the numbers you enter, not a recommendation to ask for a deposit and not a prediction about any client.
No. Set the deposit to collect in 42 days instead of 5 and every schedule leaves the full $6,000 unpaid at handover, because no invoice clears inside a 30-day project. The 50% on the contract is not what protects you; the deposit arriving before you finish the work is. On a short project a slow deposit is a discount on your financing cost and nothing more — the 50% split cuts financing from $224.88 to $165.70 and moves the exposure by zero.
Not necessarily, and on these defaults it is worse. Thirds leaves $3,960 unpaid at handover against $3,000 for a straight half deposit, because the midpoint bill is issued on day 15 and collected on the 42-day cycle — it lands on day 57, nearly a month after the work was delivered. More invoices only help when the extra invoices clear before handover.
It depends on the most you are willing to have unpaid. On the defaults, holding peak unpaid work at or below $2,000 needs a 66.67% deposit. Below the work you deliver before the deposit itself clears, no percentage reaches the target — the calculator says so rather than printing a figure above 100%.