How to bill design clients: deposits, balances, and invoicing.

Billing is where a design studio’s craft meets its cash flow. The pattern that keeps boutique studios solvent is old and simple — money in before work out — but executing it across design fees, product purchases, and reimbursable expenses takes a deliberate structure. This guide walks through that structure: how deposits are set, how balances get invoiced, and how the books stay truthful along the way.

Why deposits come first

A deposit does three jobs at once. It confirms the client is committed before you commit hours. It funds the early phase of the work, when the studio is producing concepts but nothing has been delivered. And on projects with procurement, it keeps the studio from fronting the cost of furnishings out of its own pocket. Studios that skip deposits aren’t being generous — they’re extending interest-free credit.

Common deposit structures

• Fifty-fifty. Half the design fee up front, half on delivery or installation. Simple to explain, common on smaller, fixed-fee engagements.
• Phase-based. A deposit opens each phase — concept, design development, procurement, install — and the balance for that phase is invoiced when it closes. This keeps payments proportional to progress on longer projects.
• Retainer plus hourly. An up-front retainer is drawn down against billed hours, replenished when it runs low. Suited to advisory or open-ended engagements.
• Product deposits. For furnishings, many studios collect the full product cost — or a large share of it — before placing vendor orders, since the studio is liable for the purchase the moment the order is placed.

Whichever structure you choose, write it into the contract and repeat it on every proposal, so the first invoice is never a surprise. (Our guide to design contracts covers how to anchor the payment schedule in the agreement itself.)

Invoicing the balance without the awkwardness

Balance invoices go out late for predictable reasons: the studio is busy, the amount needs assembling from scattered records, or nobody wants to send a bill mid-relationship. The fix is mechanical, not motivational. Tie each balance invoice to a trigger you can’t miss — a phase closing, a delivery date, the end of the month — and keep billable items captured as they happen, not reconstructed at invoice time. Hours, product costs, and reimbursables like site-visit mileage should accumulate on the project as the work happens, so the invoice is an export, not an archaeology dig.

Keep the books in one place

However you invoice, your accounting file is the source of truth at tax time. If invoices are created in one tool and books kept in another (for most US studios, QuickBooks Online), every manual re-entry is a chance for the two to drift. Whatever software you use, prefer a setup where the invoice lands with the client and in the accounting file in the same motion — it’s the difference between reconciling monthly and reconciling never.

How StudioHaus handles it

StudioHaus^™was built around exactly this loop, and on furnishing-heavy projects it bills straight from the specs. The items specified into a project become the invoice: select the specs that are ready, and StudioHaus drafts an invoice with one line per item, each line linked back to the spec it bills. The deposit-then-balance split is native, not a workaround — bill the deposit portion before placing orders, then bill the balance on the same specs at install. Deposits default to 50% and can be set per item, so the custom millwork that takes 100% up front and the stock piece that needs 25% live on honest terms side by side. Billing-status markers on each spec show what’s deposit-billed, balance-billed, or fully billed, so nothing ships unbilled — and if an item is priced below the trade cost on file, StudioHaus warns you before you invoice at a loss.

Collection runs through the branded client portal: the client sees the invoice and pays it by card through Stripe, and the invoice marks itself paid — nothing lost in spam, and the studio sees what’s outstanding. Invoices sync to QuickBooks Online, so the client-facing bill and the books agree without re-entry. Design fees, retainers, and hourly work are invoiced the normal way, and billable expenses accumulate where they belong: the built-in route planner logs site-visit drives at the IRS rate and puts the miles on the right project’s invoice — or books them as deductible overhead — so the balance invoice is already assembled when the trigger date arrives.

If you’re comparing tools for this workflow, see how StudioHaus stacks up against the broadest incumbent in our StudioHaus vs Houzz Pro comparison.