When Clients Pay — Payment Timing Options

When a client pays isn’t a global setting you flip once — it’s a choice you make on each order form. One form can require full payment before the slot is held; another can bill a brokerage after the shoot. You set the timing per form, or let it inherit your business default.

For the bigger picture of how money moves through a shoot, start with the invoicing and payments overview.

The three payment timings

Every form uses one of three modes.

Pay upfront

Full payment is collected to confirm the booking. This is your no-show protection: pair it with a cancellation policy and the slot only holds once the client has committed. Use it on public forms where you don’t know the client yet.

Pay on delivery

The booking is confirmed right away, but media downloads stay locked until the client pays — the pay-to-download gate. The client can preview their gallery; the full-resolution files release the moment payment clears. No more delivering first and chasing the invoice after.

Invoice

You send an invoice after the shoot, due within your net terms. This suits repeat accounts and brokerages you already trust to pay on time. The invoice itself is a numbered document you create and send from the order, and once it’s out, automatic reminders chase it past the due date so you don’t have to.

Deposits work alongside the timings

There’s no fourth timing for deposits — a deposit is an invoicing action on an existing order, not a booking mode. Once an order exists, you can request a deposit and bill the remaining balance later whatever timing its form used: it’s the natural upgrade for invoice-terms work you’d rather not carry entirely on trust, and under pay-on-delivery it collects part of the money early while the download gate protects the rest.

What makes up the total

Whichever timing you use, the client sees the same breakdown on the booking form’s review step before they commit: the services or package they picked, the travel fee if the property is far enough out, any promo code discount, then sales tax, then the total.

If you’ve configured sales tax, each enabled rate is listed on its own line with its name and percentage — so a client owed two taxes sees both, not one blended number.

Account credit at checkout

Credit on a client’s account isn’t just something that sits there until you refund it — it’s spent at booking. When a returning client books from their client portal and has credit on file, the review step offers to apply it, showing how much is available. Tick it and the summary adds an Account credit line and a Pay today figure: the total, less the credit, is what they actually pay now.

What happens next depends on the form’s timing:

• Pay upfront — the card is charged only the remainder. If the credit covers the whole booking, there’s no card charge at all.
• Pay on delivery — the credit comes straight off the balance, so there’s less left to clear before the download gate opens.
• Invoice — the credit comes off the balance, so the invoice you raise covers only what’s left.

On your side, the order shows this as Account credit applied rather than as a card payment — it’s balance the client already had with you, not new money arriving. The rest of the order behaves normally: payment status, invoice, and gate all follow the remaining balance. If you later cancel the order and refund it, the credit portion goes back to the client’s account first and the card refund covers the rest.

The option only appears for a client Spatiko recognizes — someone booking through their own portal link with credit on their account. An anonymous booking that happens to use the same email address won’t see it.

If online payments aren’t connected

Bookings still go through. If you haven’t connected a card processor — Stripe or Square — the client is simply asked to arrange payment with you directly — and for the paid modes, the media stays locked until it’s settled. When the money arrives by cash, check, or transfer, record it on the order and the status and download gate update. You never have to leave the gate open just because you couldn’t charge a card.

What the client sees

On booking, the client gets a confirmation email with a payment-status line and an attached billing summary — a receipt if they’ve paid, or a quote-style breakdown of the job if a balance is due. The numbered invoice, when there is one, is a separate document you send with its own payment link. From there, the order carries a payment status you can track: unpaid, awaiting payment, partial, paid, overdue, refunded, or partially refunded.

Per form or one default

Set a business default so new forms start with your usual timing, then override it only where a specific client needs different terms. Running different timing for different clients is one of the main reasons photographers run more than one order form — a brokerage form on invoice terms alongside a public form paid upfront, each with its own link.

Go deeper

• How clients pay and cancel a booking — what settling a balance looks like from the agent’s side.
• Deposits and balance invoices — part now, part later, on any of the three timings.
• Refunding a client — give money back in full or in part when a shoot falls through.
• How orders work — how payment timing fits the stages a shoot moves through.
• Delivering your media — what the client picks up once the balance clears.
• Order forms — where payment timing is set, alongside services, intake questions, and scheduling.