Guide

How Much Deposit Should You Ask For on a Job?

A deposit protects your cash flow and screens out tire-kickers — but ask for too much, or ask the wrong way, and you'll scare off a customer who was ready to say yes.

The short answer

For most small service jobs, a deposit of 10–25% of the total is typical. Smaller jobs and first-time customers push toward the higher end of that range; larger projects and repeat customers can sit at the lower end or skip a deposit entirely.

Rough bands most shops land in: jobs under $1,000, 25–50% or a flat minimum; jobs $1,000–$10,000, 20–30%; jobs over $10,000, 10–20% plus progress payments as the work moves along.

Why the percentage shifts with job size

On a small job, your material and travel costs are a bigger share of the total, so you need more of the cash up front just to cover them. On a large remodel, 10% of $30,000 is already $3,000 — plenty to cover initial materials without asking the customer to hand over a third of the project before you've shown up.

Say a kitchen faucet swap runs $220 total, mostly labor. A 30% deposit is $66 — barely worth invoicing separately, and most plumbers just collect payment on completion instead. Compare that to a $6,000 fence installation: a 30% deposit ($1,800) covers lumber and hardware before you cut a single post, which is the whole point.

When to skip the deposit

• Repeat customers with a payment history. If someone has paid you on time for three jobs running, asking for a deposit on the fourth signals distrust you don't need to signal.
• Same-day or emergency work. You're already on site; collecting on completion is simpler than chasing a deposit first.
• Jobs under a few hundred dollars. The admin cost of invoicing a deposit can eat the benefit.

Deposits earn their keep on new customers, bigger tickets, and anything with real material cost before you can start — cabinets, appliances, specialty parts you have to order.

Check your state before you set a policy

A handful of states cap deposits by law for home improvement contracts — California limits it to 10% or $1,000, whichever is less, for example. Rules vary by state and sometimes by license type, and this isn't legal advice, so check locally before you lock in a percentage above 10–15% for residential work.

How to ask without sounding like you don't trust them

The deposit request itself matters as much as the amount. A few things that keep it from feeling like a red flag:

• Put it in the estimate, not a separate ask. "50% deposit to schedule, balance due on completion" reads as normal business practice when it's a line on the quote. The same number, requested by text after they've already said yes, reads as a shakedown.
• Tie it to something concrete. "Deposit covers materials, which we order once the job is scheduled" gives the customer a reason, not just a rule.
• Keep it consistent. Charge the same percentage to everyone in the same job-size band. Customers compare notes, and an inconsistent policy is what actually erodes trust — not the deposit itself.
• Offer a card-on-file alternative for smaller jobs. Instead of collecting cash up front, holding a card on file (charged only if they no-show) gets you most of the protection with less friction.

What a deposit actually protects

Two different risks get lumped into "deposit," and it helps to separate them:

1. No-shows and cancellations. You blocked a day, maybe turned away other work, and the customer backs out. A modest deposit (or a card-on-file cancellation fee) covers this without needing to be large.
2. Material and cash-flow risk. You're floating money for supplies before you're paid. This is the one that scales with job size — the bigger the material spend, the bigger the deposit needs to be to keep you from financing the job out of pocket.

If you're mostly worried about no-shows, a flat $50–$100 booking fee often does the job better than a percentage — it's small enough not to feel like a real financial commitment, but it's enough that a customer who isn't serious won't bother.

Worked example: sizing a deposit policy

A handyman business runs three job bands: under $500 (no deposit, card on file), $500–$3,000 (30% deposit), and over $3,000 (20% deposit plus a progress payment at the halfway point). On a $2,400 deck repair, that's a $720 deposit — enough to buy lumber and fasteners before the crew shows up, without asking the customer to fund the whole job in advance. Run your own numbers through the job profitability calculator first, so you know your material cost as a share of the total before you set the percentage.

Put it in writing

Whatever policy you land on, write it into your standard estimate template so it's consistent and nobody has to improvise the ask on the phone. If your pricing itself is inconsistent job to job, fix that first — the markup and margin calculator will show you whether your quoted prices are actually covering costs before you worry about how much of that price to collect up front.

If you're setting this up from scratch, the Operations Kit ($19) includes a deposit-and-payment-terms template you can drop straight into your estimates.