Contract Clause Library
Payment schedule clause
Sets when and how the client pays — a deposit, milestone payments, monthly retainer — and the amount due at each point.
This clause turns the total contract value into a concrete cash-flow schedule: a percentage deposit at signing, milestone payments tied to specific deliverables, or a recurring monthly retainer amount and billing date. It's the clause an agency checks first whenever an invoice question comes up, since it's the source of truth for what should have been billed and when.
Sample wording
Sample language (illustrative, not legal advice)
Client will pay: (1) a 30% deposit upon execution of this Agreement; (2) 40% upon delivery of the first draft; (3) the remaining 30% upon final delivery and acceptance. All invoices are due within 30 days of the invoice date.
Red flags
- Milestone payments tied to vague trigger events ("upon substantial completion") rather than a specific, checkable deliverable
- No deposit at all on a new client relationship, which shifts all the cash-flow risk onto the agency
- Payment percentages that don't sum to 100%, or milestones that overlap in a way that makes the schedule ambiguous
How MarginFlow reads it
MarginFlow extracts each milestone amount and its trigger condition so an invoice can be checked automatically against whether the triggering deliverable was actually marked complete — catching both early invoicing (billed before the trigger) and missed invoicing (trigger hit, nothing billed).