Pay-to-Download — Gating Media on Payment

The worst part of the job isn’t the shoot — it’s chasing an invoice after the agent already has the files. Pay-to-download flips that around. You require payment before media is released, so the files stay gated until you’re actually paid. No more delivering first and hoping the balance clears.

How the gate works

The client still gets the full delivery gallery — they can open the link and look through everything. What’s gated is taking the work away and using it.

They see exactly what they’re buying, so there’s nothing to argue about. They just can’t download it yet. Once payment clears, it all opens at once.

What the lock covers

The gate isn’t only about photos. While an order is locked for payment, the client can’t:

• Download photos or floor plans — they’re visible in the gallery, but the download and selection controls are off.
• Download video — same treatment as the stills.
• Download file deliverables — anything you attached as a file, like a PDF brochure, a floor plan document, or a CAD file, shows in the gallery with a Locked badge where the Download button would be.
• Use the marketing kit — the branded social graphics built from the shoot don’t appear on a locked order at all.
• Request changes — the client can’t select photos and send you a revision request until the order is paid, so you’re not running edit rounds on work that hasn’t been settled.

Everything on that list releases together the moment the order is marked paid. There’s nothing to unlock item by item.

Turning it on

The gate is tied to the order’s payment timing, which you set on the order form. Choose Pay on delivery: the booking is confirmed and the shoot goes ahead, but downloads stay locked until payment lands.

On any individual order you can also flip the gate directly — the Payment to unlock switch in the order’s sidebar turns “require payment before download” on or off for that order alone, whatever its form said.

For more on the timing options — upfront, on delivery, or invoiced after — see when clients pay.

The gate holds without online payments

You don’t need a card processor connected — Stripe or Square — for the gate to work. For paid modes, the media stays locked until the payment is settled — meaning recorded on the order.

So if a client pays you another way — bank transfer, cash, a check — they still can’t download until you record the payment on the order. The gate follows the payment status, not the payment method.

When downloads unlock

An order’s payment status can be unpaid, awaiting payment, partial, paid, overdue, refunded, or partially refunded. The gate releases on one condition: the order is paid. Full payment settled, downloads open — a partial payment, deposit included, leaves it locked.

The gate reads the order’s payment state, not any single invoice. On an order billed to more than one payer, downloads stay locked for everyone — including a payer who has already settled their own invoice — until the whole order is paid. That payer’s link will show their own invoice as Paid while the downloads stay locked; that’s the gate working as designed. If you want a co-agent’s files released independently of the other payer, don’t gate the order.

A recipient with no invoice on the order — a seller, say — sees the locked downloads too, but has nothing to pay and no pay button: they can’t unlock the order, only a payer can.

Until then, browsing is all the client can do — which is exactly the point. From the agent’s side, settling the balance happens right in the portal — see paying a booking from the client portal.

For the bigger picture on billing, payment timing, and invoices, see getting paid.

Go deeper

• Delivery galleries — how the gallery a client browses behind the gate is put together.
• How clients view and download their media — the agent’s side of picking up files once the gate opens.
• Sending a delivery — publish the gallery and let the client know it’s ready.
• How invoices work — statuses and lifecycle — the payment statuses the gate is watching.
• Marketing kits for social posts — one of the things that only appears once the order is paid.