Payment terms and milestones

Many jobs are paid in stages: a deposit, a payment midway, the balance on completion. A quote's Payment block holds your payment terms and a schedule of milestones, which the customer sees with live amounts.

Add a payment schedule

1. Below the items, click + Add payment terms & milestones.
2. Optionally rename the heading (it defaults to "Payment terms") and write your terms, for example "Invoices are payable within 14 days."
3. Under Milestones · % of the one-off total, pick a preset (50 / 50, 30 / 40 / 30 or 100% on acceptance) or click + Add milestone.
4. For each milestone, set a title, an optional description ("What has to happen"), the percentage and when it is due.

When a milestone is due

• On acceptance.
• Days after acceptance: enter the number of days. Once the quote is accepted, the actual date is shown.
• On completion.
• On a date: pick the date.
• Custom wording: for example "On delivery of designs".

How the amounts work

• Each milestone is a percentage of the quote's one-off total, after discounts and including tax. Subscriptions are never part of a milestone.
• Amounts update as you edit the quote. Below the list, Quoterium shows how much is scheduled and warns when the percentages are short of, or over, 100%.
• When the percentages add up to exactly 100%, the last milestone absorbs any rounding so the schedule matches the total to the penny.
• Reorder milestones with the up and down arrows; remove one with ✕.

What the customer sees

The payment terms and a table of milestones (Milestone, Due, Share, Amount) appear after the terms and notes on the customer page and in the PDF. When the customer changes options, the amounts update straight away. If the quote hides prices, the amounts are hidden; with Hide all pricing the milestones are not shown at all. See Tax and how customers see prices.

Removing the schedule

Click Remove next to the Payment heading to clear the terms and milestones from this quote.

Templates and defaults

Templates carry their own payment schedule, and copied quotes keep theirs. Quotes started from scratch use your organisation's default. See Default payment terms and milestones.

After acceptance

Forgot the schedule, or need to split the invoices differently? On an accepted quote the Payment block stays editable: set or change the payment terms text and the milestones, and the quote saves as usual. The amount the customer agreed to doesn't change, only how it is invoiced; the customer page and the PDF show the new schedule, and the History records Payment schedule changed after acceptance. The document exactly as it was accepted is kept as the version As accepted under Versions. Items, prices and terms stay locked: to change those, undo the acceptance first.

Invoicing milestones

If you use Xero, admins can raise one invoice per milestone once the quote is accepted. See Create invoices in Xero.