What a deposit actually covers (and what it doesn't)
"You need a 20 percent deposit to hold a slot." You say it and the room goes quiet. The number rarely stops the job. The silence does — because you never once said what the money is for.
A deposit with a stated purpose — the unit, the slot, the permit — reads like a plan. A deposit with a purpose no one explained reads like a risk. Same number, two different conversations.
What the deposit is actually buying
Do the arithmetic out loud, because it's what the customer is doing in their head. An $8,000 furnace replacement at a 20 percent deposit is $1,600. That money is real, and it goes somewhere: the new unit is ordered before the old one comes off the wall, the refrigerant and the line set go to the yard, the permit gets pulled, and your slot in the schedule holds while the rest of the week's work happens.
That's what a deposit is: your shop's share of the risk of doing the job. Materials get paid for before the customer's check clears. The slot was pulled out from under someone else. The crew got committed to a date. If the deal dies at week three, that money has already left the building.
In most shops the deposit is not a fee. It's credited against the final bill — the same $1,600 inside the finished $8,000 job, not $1,600 on top of it. The moment a customer feels they were charged twice for the same thing, the trust is gone, and it doesn't come back.
What it's not buying
Some of that silence comes from what a deposit never covers, and the two are easy to confuse.
Not a fee on top of the price. The deposit is part of the job's price, not a charge for the privilege of working. If it reads like a second invoice, it's going to be treated like one.
Not a guarantee of a start date. Holding a slot and keeping a slot are two different things. The deposit protects your schedule from you; the calendar does the rest.
Not an answer to "what if I change my mind." That question is coming. Whether it arrives in the kitchen on Wednesday or by email in week six, the shop with a written answer keeps the customer. The shop that improvises loses the job and probably the reputation behind it.
Two shops, two deposits
This one costs real money. One shop asks 25 percent on the low total. Another asks 10 percent on a total almost two thousand higher. The customer looks at the two and decides one of you is lying — and the job is gone before anyone gets to explain.
The honest answer is that it usually isn't dishonesty. Shops carry different material exposure and different cash-flow risk, and the bigger deposit usually means that shop is betting more of its own money on the job. But the customer doesn't know that, and "different risk appetite" is not a sentence you say at the table. What the customer can see is what the deposit attaches to: the materials, the slot, the scope of the option they picked. When the deposit sits on the specific option they chose — the bigger unit, the cedar, the concrete base — the difference reads as a choice, not a trap.
When the argument actually happens
Almost none of it happens in week one. Asked about the deposit in week one, it's a conversation. In week six of an eight-week job, after the materials are paid for and the crew is on the driveway, it's a dispute.
The difference between those two moments is one thing: a line written down before the signature. The amount, what it applies to, and what happens if the job gets canceled. If those are on the quote the customer signed, the argument has nowhere to stand. If they lived in the shop's head the whole time, both sides will remember it differently.
What to write on the quote
Four lines, in that order:
- The rate and what it's on. "20 percent of the total, covering the unit and materials."
- What it buys. The unit, the slot, the permit — the things that actually happen before your work does.
- What it applies to. "Credited against the final bill," in those words.
- What happens if the job is canceled before the crew is on site.
That's the whole fix. One line each, set once, and the deposit stops being the awkward part of the sale and starts being part of the reason the customer trusts you.
The short version
The deposit is the one line on a big job quote where money moves before work starts — and the one line a customer will question first. Write down what it buys, what it applies to, and what happens if the job gets canceled, on the quote, before the signature, the same way on the small option as the big one. That's the difference between "why am I paying before?" and a signed job.
Thraev puts that deposit line on the quote from a rate you set once in your price book, computed the same way on every option, showing subtotal, tax, and deposit due on the page your customer reads and signs on their own phone. It's part of the 14-day free trial at thraev.com — set your rate one afternoon, and see what your next quote looks like before you send it.