Hi Creative!

For those of you who offer services, custom artwork, personalized pieces, or bridal jewelry, you should be asking for a portion of the payment upfront.

You should be doing this because your time is valuable. And you are setting aside time for this client/customer, and they should compensate you for blocking off your schedule and starting the engine of your brain towards their project.

I would also argue that this payment shouldn’t be refundable if the project is cancelled. Because again, you’ve blocked off time and energy for it, and you can’t guarantee that another project will be available to take its place.

Where this gets tricky is that many contract templates and other documents I see call this payment a deposit.

But if you’ve used my contract templates or been around for a while, you might notice that I always call this payment an installment.

Why? Because what you call this payment is critical from a legal standpoint.

In many states (including where I practice in California), legally, there is no such thing as a non-refundable deposit.

Which means if you call something a deposit, you must refund it to the customer/client if they cancel the project.

What can you do to make it non-refundable?

1. Call it an installment, not a deposit
2. Make sure you have a liquidated damages clause in your contract.

👉 Your action item: Check your contract has the word “installment”, not “deposit”, if you want it to be non-refundable. And you have a liquidated damages clause.

Has this happened to you? Did you complete this task? Come share your thoughts on LinkedIn or Facebook.

Chat soon,

P.S. Are you joining us to discover that you + permits = BFFs (sort of)? It’s looking like a small group, so you’ll get lots of attention from me to make sure you confidently have all your permit ducks in a row.

Want to join us? You can join by purchasing a monthly membership to the artist’s Courtyard ($45/month) or by getting the standalone challenge for $67. Join us here.

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What you do after creating your LLC is just as important as what you do to create your LLC. Otherwise, you could end up with an expensive piece of paper. Learn the seven ongoing LLC tasks that will keep your LLC on the legal up and up.

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