Contractor Deposits: How Much to Ask For — and How to Collect Before You Leave the Driveway

You nailed the walkthrough, the homeowner said yes, and the shingles for a 28-square tear-off cost real money. Now comes the part nobody teaches: how much deposit to ask for, and how to actually get it before you drive off. Here’s the honest answer on contractor deposit percentages — the ranges, the legal traps, and the collection habits that separate crews who get paid from crews who chase.

The short answer: 10–50%, depending on the job

There’s no magic number, and anyone selling you fake precision is guessing. But after enough jobs, most contractors land in ranges like these:

• Small repairs and service calls (a few hundred to a couple thousand dollars): 50% up front is common, and some crews just bill in full on completion.
• Mid-size jobs ($5K–$25K): a quarter to a third is typical — enough to cover the material order and prove the customer is serious.
• Big jobs (full replacements, $25K and up): 10–30%, often set to match the material buy, sometimes split into a deposit plus progress payments.

The logic behind the number is simple: cover your materials, confirm commitment, and don’t front the job on your own credit card. On a roof, that starts with knowing your material math cold — if you bid off squares, the roof squaring calculator keeps that number honest before you set a percentage of it.

Check your state’s rules before you pick a number

Some states cap what you’re allowed to collect up front on home-improvement work, and getting it wrong can land on your license. California is the famous one: on home-improvement contracts, the down payment is capped at 10% of the contract price or $1,000 — whichever is less. A $30,000 reroof in California means a $1,000 deposit for most crews (there are narrow exemptions, like posting a bond — check the CSLB).

A handful of other states cap deposits at roughly a third of the contract price — Massachusetts and Maryland, for example — and some have carve-outs for special-order materials. These rules change and vary by trade, so before you set a company-wide policy, check your state’s contractor licensing board for the current law. Five minutes of reading beats a complaint on your license.

Collect at signature, not at mobilization

The best moment to collect a deposit is the moment the pen leaves the paper. That’s when the homeowner’s commitment peaks — they just said yes, they’re excited, and paying feels like progress, not friction.

Waiting until you “mobilize” — order materials, schedule the crew — leaves a dead week where the deal exists only as a handshake. That’s the week the customer keeps shopping other bids, the spouse gets cold feet, and jobs quietly die. A signed contract with no deposit is a maybe. A signed contract with a deposit is a slot on your schedule.

Why “I’ll mail a check” is a no

Nothing against the homeowner — most of them mean it. But “I’ll mail a check” means you leave the driveway with nothing, and the job’s momentum starts leaking the second your truck pulls out. The check takes days to arrive, days to clear, sometimes bounces, and sometimes never gets written at all.

The polite fix is to make paying now easier than paying later: “We take card or bank payment right on the estimate — takes about a minute.” If they genuinely prefer a check, take it on the balance, not the deposit. The deposit is the commitment; it needs to happen while you’re both still standing there. There’s a full breakdown of this in how to get paid faster as a contractor.

Put the deposit link in the estimate — money straight to your Stripe

Here’s the collection setup that works: the customer gets the estimate by email, signs it electronically, and the deposit link is right there — one tap, pay by card or bank, done. No portal to log into, no account to create, no app to download. Every extra step between “yes” and “paid” loses somebody.

You can build this yourself with an e-signature tool and a Stripe payment link, and plenty of contractors do. Booxt automates the whole chain: text or voice-memo your walkthrough and it drafts a priced estimate in about 90 seconds, emails it branded with an e-signature and deposit link, and the money lands in your own Stripe account — Booxt holds 0% of it. The moment the customer accepts, the invoice generates itself. See how roofing crews run it on the roofing page.

Recording checks and cash so the books stay straight

Some customers will still hand you a check or cash — usually on the balance, sometimes on the deposit if state rules or plain preference push that way. Fine. Take the money. But record it the same day, against the right job, or your books start lying to you: the balance due is wrong, the next invoice is wrong, and tax season turns into archaeology.

The habit is simple: every payment gets logged with the job, the amount, the date and the method, before you sleep. If you run Booxt, that’s one text — “got a $2,500 check from the Hendersons” — and it’s recorded against the job with the balance updated. If you don’t, a notebook or a spreadsheet works; the tool matters less than doing it the day the money changes hands.

Set the deposit policy once, then stop thinking about it

Pick your percentage inside your state’s rules, put it in writing on every estimate, collect at signature by card or bank, and log everything else the day it lands. That’s the whole system — and it works with a clipboard and a Stripe account. If you’d rather have it run itself — estimate drafted from a voice memo, signature and deposit collected in one email, invoice fired the moment they accept — that’s what Booxt does for a flat $99 a month. See the full setup for crews on the contractor page.