Free deposit & milestone schedule calculator
This free deposit calculator turns a project price into the payment schedule itself. Pick a structure — half and half, thirds, milestone stages, everything upfront, or your own split — and get every stage’s amount with running totals that always add up to the price exactly, plus the one number worth checking before you agree to anything: your unpaid exposure, the most finished work that can sit unpaid at any one moment.
Build the schedule
No price yet? Build one first with the project price calculator — this tool only decides how a settled price arrives. The structures themselves, and when each one earns its keep, are in our guides to freelance deposits and upfront payments and milestone payments.
Your payment schedule
The deposit — due on signing, before work starts.
Pick a structure, and this line explains the shape.
| Stage | Share | Amount | Paid so far | Share paid |
|---|
Build a schedule, and this line shows the most finished work that can sit unpaid at any one moment.
Worked example
The worked example from our guide to milestone payments, run through this calculator: a website build fixed at $6,000 over eight weeks, staged by deliverable — a deposit on signing, then payments as the designs are approved, the staging build lands, and the site launches. The calculator at the top of this page opens on exactly this price and structure, and returns exactly this:
| Stage | Share | Amount | Paid so far | Share paid |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Deposit — on signing | 30% | $1,800.00 | $1,800.00 | 30% |
| Designs — on approval | 25% | $1,500.00 | $3,300.00 | 55% |
| Staging build — delivered for review | 25% | $1,500.00 | $4,800.00 | 80% |
| Launch — final delivery | 20% | $1,200.00 | $6,000.00 | 100% |
| Total | 100% | $6,000.00 |
Read the paid-so-far column against the work, the way the guide does. After the designs are approved you hold 55% of the fee for roughly the first third of the effort — ahead, as intended. After staging, 80% is paid for a site the client can click through. And the exposure line gives the schedule’s worst case in one number: $1,500, the biggest single slice. Split the same $6,000 half and half instead, and the exposure becomes the whole $3,000 balance — every hour of the build finished before half the price arrives. Neither shape is wrong; they are different amounts of risk, priced in admin. The calculator makes the trade visible before you sign, not at the end.
How the schedule works
- The deposit starts the work. It does two jobs: it books the project into your calendar — days turned away from everyone else — and it pays for the first block of work, so you never finance the project yourself. Invoice it on signing and start when it lands. The sizes and the wording are in our guide to freelance deposits and upfront payments.
- Every stage ties to a deliverable. A milestone is something the client can see and check — approved designs, a working staging build, the launch — never a calendar date, and never a percentage of effort nobody can inspect. Money and work arriving together is the whole structure; our guide to milestone payments covers what counts, and what never to do.
- Front-weight slightly; keep the final slice meaningful. Early stages run a little ahead of the work completed, so payments never trail the effort. The last slice stays around a fifth of the price in the milestone shape: large enough that finishing, polishing and handing over promptly is worth real money to you, small enough that the client never feels the project is held hostage at the end.
- Rounding never breaks the total. Each stage is rounded to the cent, and the final stage absorbs whatever the rounding leaves, so the stages always sum to exactly the price. Split $1,000 in thirds and the stages come out $333.33, $333.33 and $333.34 — the extra cent lives in the final stage, where it can never strand a one-cent balance for someone to chase.
- Custom splits work the same way. The deposit percentage comes off the price first; whatever remains is divided into equal stages — your chosen milestones plus the final delivery payment — and the final stage absorbs the rounding exactly as above. The final percentage is always computed, never typed, which is why the total cannot drift.
- Read the exposure line before you agree. Unpaid exposure is the largest single stage after the deposit: the most finished work that can sit unpaid at any one moment, provided you hold the milestone rule — never start the next stage until the current stage is paid. On a 50/50 split that is the whole balance, price minus deposit. On a milestone schedule it is the biggest middle or final slice. If the number is more than losing one stage would cost you in sleep, slice thinner.
The calculator finds the numbers; the documents carry them. Paste the schedule into the payment section of your proposal, invoice each stage as its trigger lands with the invoice generator, and keep the numbering consistent across the set, so the client’s accounts team can match every invoice to this table unaided.