Deposits & payment gates
Deposits let you ask a customer for money up front before you commit a technician and a slot to their job. You set a default for the whole control room, then override it for the customers who are different — the account customer of nine years who never pays upfront, and the cash customer who always does.
It is off by default. Nothing anywhere behaves differently until someone turns it on.
"Deposit" on this page means an upfront payment from a customer. The deposit account — the bank account money is paid into — is a different setting, under Billing → Config → Banking.
Turning it on
Go to Settings → Sales & CRM → Quotes, and find the Deposits & payment gates card.
How firm is it?
- Off — no deposit concept at all. This is the default.
- Advisory — the job card shows what is owed and warns, but nothing is ever blocked. A sensible first month while everyone gets used to it.
- Required — the booking is blocked until the deposit is settled.
Even on Required, any individual job can be released by a person with a reason on record. It is a gate, not a wall.
Who does it apply to?
- Only customers I opt in (default) — nothing changes for anyone until you mark a customer on their Billing tab. This is what most control rooms want: deposits for some customers, not all of them.
- Every customer — except the ones you mark as "on account".
What does an unpaid deposit block?
| Choice | What is blocked | When to pick it |
|---|---|---|
| The booking date (default) | No date until the deposit is paid. The job waits in Unscheduled. | You want the diary to mean "confirmed and paid". |
| The technician and the start | A date can be pencilled in so capacity planning still works, but no technician is assigned and the job cannot start. | You want to plan the week before the money lands. This is also the only option that keeps an unpaid job off the technician's phone. |
| Both | Neither a date nor a technician. | Strictest. |
How much
Either a percentage of the job or a fixed amount. The percentage is taken on the job's VAT-inclusive total — the same figure the customer sees on their quote and on the job. So a 50% deposit really is half of what they will be invoiced, not half of the amount before VAT.
If the entity issuing the job is not VAT-registered there is nothing to add, and the figure is simply the job total. Most control rooms have exactly one entity; where there are several it is the one that issued the job's quote — see Which entity issues it.
Set Only on jobs over so small callouts do not collect a deposit request nobody wants. Without a floor your coordinators waive the gate dozens of times a day and stop reading it. That floor reads the VAT-inclusive total too.
Different rules by job size
One percentage across every job is usually wrong in both directions — 50% of a R450 callout is a rounding error nobody chases, and a flat R500 on a R400 000 install is not protection. So you can set bands by job value instead, under Different rules by job size.
Band boundaries are read on the VAT-inclusive total, the same as the percentage and the floor. Set them against the figure you would quote a customer, not the figure before VAT.
You choose your own bands entirely. How many, where they start and stop, and what each one charges — every control room sets its own, and any customer can be put on a different set again. There is no built-in ladder.
Each band charges one of three things: no deposit, a percentage, or a fixed amount.
One control room might run:
| Job value | Deposit |
|---|---|
| under R1 000 | none |
| R1 000 – R20 000 | R500 flat |
| over R20 000 | 50% |
…while another runs five bands stepping 10% → 30% → 60% → 100%, and a third just charges a flat R1 500 under R50 000 and 80% above it. All of those are the same feature, configured differently.
A job uses the band its value falls into. Bands have to join up with no gaps — editing one band's upper limit moves the next band's lower limit with it, so you cannot accidentally leave a hole for a job to fall through. Start from an example drops in the three-band ladder above as something to edit, if you would rather not begin from a blank list.
If you add no bands at all, the flat percentage or fixed amount above applies to every job over the floor, exactly as before.
The remaining settings
- Does a proof of payment release the job? — three choices; see Proof of payment: the three release tiers below.
- Hold a slot for (hours) — how long a provisional booking is held before it is released. See Provisional slots.
- A part payment is enough to release the job — off by default.
- Raise the deposit automatically when a quote is accepted — on by default.
- Ask the customer for it the moment it's raised — on by default. The instant a deposit request exists (auto-raised from a quote, or the Request … deposit button on the job), the customer gets a branded email — and a WhatsApp or SMS for contacts opted into text messages — asking for the deposit, linking straight to the pro-forma with Pay now (where your online gateway is live) or your banking details and the proof-of-payment upload. The deposit reminders then chase on their own cadence.
- What document does the customer get? — see The document.
- Deposit terms — free text printed on the request.
Proof of payment: the three release tiers
The real day-to-day tension: a customer sends proof of payment at 16:00 wanting an 08:00 booking, but the bank only clears tomorrow. Does a proof of payment release the job? decides what happens in that gap:
| Choice | What releases the booking | When to pick it |
|---|---|---|
| Only once someone has checked it against the bank (default) | A staff member accepting the proof in the review queue. | You have been burned before, or bookings are never urgent. |
| After an AI pre-check of the document passes | The uploaded document is read the moment it arrives. If it is genuinely a payment confirmation — right amount, recent date, paid into your bank account, nothing that looks edited — the booking releases itself. Anything short of a clean pass waits for a person, exactly as the default does. | You want same-day work to keep moving without trusting blindly. The overwhelming majority of proofs are genuine — faking one is fraud, and customers know it — so most releases happen in seconds while the wrong-file uploads and the rare doctored one are held for review. |
| As soon as the customer uploads it | The upload alone. | Maximum trust; suits same-day work with known customers. |
Whichever tier you choose, your team still reviews every proof in Billing → Payments → Payment proofs. A release is not a payment: the deposit stays awaiting payment until real money is recorded, the job card says POP received rather than paid, and if the reviewer rejects the proof the gate re-arms — the job cannot be committed any further, though a booking already made stays made (unwinding a diary is a human call, and the reviewer is looking at exactly that screen).
The AI's reading — what document it is, the amount, date, payer, beneficiary, and anything that concerned it — is shown on the proof in the review queue, so the human check starts from a transcript instead of a blank stare at a screenshot. A Run AI check button on each proof lets you get that same reading on demand, whatever tier you are on; on the other tiers it is advice only and never releases anything by itself.
Per-customer overrides
Open a customer, go to the Billing tab, and find the Deposit card. (It is hidden entirely when deposits are off for the control room.)
Three choices:
- Use the control room default — the label tells you what that currently is, so you do not have to go and look.
- Always take a deposit — this customer pays up front on every job. You can give them their own percentage or a fixed amount here.
- Never take a deposit — on account. Their jobs book without one.
The card also carries a per-customer "Their proof of payment releases the booking…" override of the release tier: a trusted regular can release on upload while everyone else goes through the AI pre-check or a staff check — or the reverse, for the one customer who has burned you before.
A customer can also be put on their own size bands — the same editor as above, on their card. A customer's bands replace the control room's set entirely rather than merging with it, so "this customer is on a different scale" stays easy to reason about. For example, a large estate client might be nothing under R5 000, then 25% while everyone else is on the standard ladder.
There is also a Why (internal) note. It is not shown to the customer.
Day to day on a job
A Deposit panel appears on the job card, in the Scheduling & details section — directly above the date picker, because that is where you are standing when the gate stops you. It shows Required, Received and Outstanding, the pro-forma or invoice number, and the actions available:
- Request … deposit — raises the request and its document.
- Record a payment — opens the deposit's invoice, where you capture an EFT, card or cash payment exactly as you would any other.
- Waive… — asks for a reason, then releases the job. The reason is recorded against the job with your name.
If no deposit is due, the panel says why in one line — "This customer is on account", "This job is below the value at which a deposit is required" — rather than leaving you wondering whether something is broken.
Those three actions are available to anyone who manages the control room, its billing, or its service work. Service managers are included deliberately: a deposit is raised and waived in the flow of running the job, so the coordinator standing at the date picker can clear their own gate instead of going to find someone in accounts. Everyone else sees the panel read-only — the figures and the reason, without the buttons.
Finding every job with money outstanding
Each job card on the Jobs board carries a short deposit chip — "Deposit due", "Deposit awaiting payment", "Deposit part paid", "Deposit POP received", "Deposit waived". To see them all at once, use the Deposit outstanding tile above the board: it filters to every open job whose deposit is still owed.
The tile counts money owed, not jobs the gate is currently stopping. A job that was scheduled before the deposit policy applied to it — or one already in progress — still appears if its deposit was never settled, because the money is still outstanding even though the booking went through. Waived deposits never appear.
How the customer pays
The deposit is a real invoice, so every payment route you already have works on it unchanged: the Yoco card link, Netcash Pay Now, bank details with a proof-of-payment upload from the customer portal, or a payment you capture in the office. Whichever lands, the deposit updates itself.
The customer does not have to find it themselves: with Ask the customer for it the moment it's raised on (the default), the payment request lands in their inbox — and on WhatsApp or SMS for text-opted-in contacts — the moment the request exists, and the deposit reminders chase it after that. If they pay by EFT and upload a proof, the release tier decides whether the booking frees up immediately or waits for the review.
Provisional slots
Blocking a booking without offering an alternative would just empty your diary. So when a job is gated, you still pick the date and the technician — they are held as a provisional slot rather than a confirmed booking, and the job card shows how long the hold lasts.
Two things then happen on their own:
- The deposit is paid → the held slot becomes a real booking, and the technician and customer are notified. A customer who pays at 16:40 has their 08:00 booking confirmed without anyone touching it.
- The hold lapses → the slot is released and the job returns to Unscheduled, so unpaid jobs cannot quietly eat your capacity.
When the gate stops you
Wherever you try to commit a gated job — the job card, the schedule board, the pipeline board — you get a plain message saying how much is needed and what to do about it. The job card also warns you before you save, so you are not told only after picking a date.
Jobs generated by a maintenance plan are never gated. Those are a contract you are already servicing, not a sale.
The document, and VAT
The deposit request produces one of two documents, set per control room:
- Pro-forma invoice (default) — numbered from its own
PF-sequence, so it never uses up a tax-invoice number. It carries no due date, which keeps it out of your overdue and ageing lists. When the job is finally invoiced, the deposit payment moves onto that tax invoice and the pro-forma is voided — so VAT is declared once, on the full value, and the customer's statement never double-counts. - Tax invoice for the deposit — a real tax invoice, so VAT is declared in the period the deposit lands. The final invoice then bills only the balance, showing a Less: deposit invoiced line.
If you are VAT-registered, confirm which treatment your accountant wants before you switch this on. Both are defensible; they put the VAT in different periods.
Either way, a job with a paid deposit is never billed the full amount again — the deposit is credited on the final invoice automatically.
Which entity issues it
If your control room issues from more than one legal entity (Billing entities), a deposit is issued by the entity that issued the job's quote — that entity's VAT registration sets the rate, its numbering gives the document its number, and its letterhead prints on the PDF. A job raised without a quote uses your default entity.
The entity is decided when the deposit request is created, and it still follows the quote when the quote is linked to the job after the request already exists — which is the normal order when you convert a quote into a job. Once the request has been raised as an actual document it is fixed: the customer is holding a pro-forma or a tax invoice that names an issuer, so it stays with that issuer. Control rooms with a single entity see none of this.
Quotes
If Raise the deposit automatically when a quote is accepted is on, converting an accepted quote into a job raises the deposit request as soon as the job is priced. The amount follows the quote total while the request is still unsent; once the customer has been asked, the figure is frozen — re-pricing the job afterwards does not silently move the goalposts on someone who has already agreed to a number.
If the customer is later marked "never take a deposit", an unsent request retires itself.
A quote can also carry its own deposit — the Deposit % under the quote's document options. That one needs none of the settings on this page: the moment the quote is won, CleverOps raises a pro-forma for it and sends it to the customer with your banking details, and when the quote becomes a job the deposit moves onto the job (replacing any unsent one this policy had lined up). See Taking the deposit.
What is not gated
- Jobs from a maintenance plan.
- Anything at all while the mode is Off or Advisory.
- Any job with a waiver reason on it.
- Jobs below the minimum value, or of a job kind you have exempted.