A deposit is money a client pays up front to reserve your time and commit to the work, and it’s usually credited toward the final bill. A down payment is an initial chunk of a known total price, paid to get a project started. In day-to-day freelance work the two overlap so much that most people use the words interchangeably.
The plain-English difference
The distinction is mostly about intent and certainty of the total.
- Deposit — secures the booking. It says “this slot is yours.” It’s often a percentage (say 30 to 50 percent) of an estimate, and it’s typically applied against whatever you finally invoice. Some deposits are refundable, some aren’t — that’s your call to spell out.
- Down payment — pays toward a fixed, agreed-upon price. You both already know the total, and the client is simply paying the first installment of it.
Where they overlap: both are money collected before the work is finished, and both reduce what the client owes at the end. For a freelancer or small studio, the practical question is the same either way — how much do I collect up front, and how do I credit it later?
A real-world example
Say you’re a designer quoting a brand refresh at $4,000. You ask for 40 percent up front. That $1,600 is your deposit: it holds the start date and confirms the client is serious. You do the work, and at the end you invoice the full $4,000, subtract the $1,600 already paid, and the client owes a $2,400 balance.
If instead the client had said “the total is exactly $4,000, here’s the first payment of $1,600,” you’d call it a down payment. Same money, same math — just a different story about how the number was set. In Fee-Lion you handle both the same way.
Tip: Whatever you call it, name it clearly in your written terms — refundable or not, and what it’s credited against. A one-line note on the estimate prevents almost every awkward “wait, I already paid you” conversation.
How Fee-Lion handles it
Fee-Lion treats a deposit as a percentage you set on the estimate, then carries that amount forward automatically when the estimate converts. You don’t track it by hand.
- Open Estimates in the left sidebar and build your estimate with tasks, fees, and units.
- Set a deposit % on the estimate. To avoid retyping it every time, set a house default under Settings → Preferences (deposit defaults), and it’ll pre-fill on new estimates.
- Send it. Your client opens the no-login portal link, reviews the total and the deposit amount, and approves.
- One click converts the approved estimate to an invoice. The collected deposit is applied against the balance, so the invoice shows what’s still owed.
- Your client hits Pay and pays the remaining balance by card straight into your own Stripe account.
Because the deposit lives on the estimate and flows into the invoice, there’s no separate ledger to reconcile — the math is done for you. If you bill in stages instead, you can also take partial payments against a single invoice. Either way, the up-front money is tracked from approval through final payment.
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