A deposit on a quote: how much, and how to track it

A heating engineer signs a €7,400 quote with a private homeowner and asks for 30% down, as he always has. The client cancels a week later, invokes a right of withdrawal, and wants every euro back: the word "deposit" never appears on the quote. The short answer: for a quote signed away from the workshop, the client has 14 days to withdraw, and no payment is due during that window; outside that case, a deposit is only binding if it is written down as one. The rest explains what French law actually requires, and how to track it without rethinking it on every quote.

What the law caps, and what it leaves open#

The most common belief is wrong: there is no general legal ceiling on a deposit for ordinary work between a business and a private client. In practice, deposits run between 10% and 50% of the quote, with 20% to 30% the most common range.

One exception is precise, and it matters:

• Quotes of €12,000 TTC or less, for a private client: the deposit cannot exceed 15% of the total price.
• Above €12,000 TTC: that ceiling disappears, and the deposit is set freely between the parties.
• Building a new house, or buying off-plan: a separate set of staged payments applies, outside the scope of this article.

For an €8,000 TTC quote to a private homeowner, the maximum deposit allowed is therefore €1,200, even if trade practice would otherwise push it higher.

Deposit or cancellation fee: the difference that matters if it goes wrong#

Between a business and a consumer, French consumer law presumes that any sum paid in advance is a cancellation fee (arrhes), unless the quote expressly calls it a deposit (acompte). The two have almost nothing in common.

A heating engineer who has already ordered the boiler for a cancelled job only recovers that loss if the quote called the payment a deposit. If nothing was written, the law treats it as a cancellation fee: he keeps what was paid, nothing more, even with the equipment sitting in his van. One line on the quote settles the question before it comes up.

The deposit invoice: an obligation of its own#

As soon as a sum is collected before a service is finished, article 289 of the French General Tax Code requires a separate invoice, distinct from the final one. It needs its own number, a reference to the original quote, the amounts before and after VAT, and the words "deposit invoice". Missing any of these exposes the business to a fine, which can reach a minimum of €75,000 for repeated, systematic failures.

For a service, VAT becomes due the moment the deposit is collected, not at the final invoice: it is declared for the period the money lands in the account, even if the job has not started yet.

Setting the percentage, and tracking it without rethinking every quote#

The method holds in four steps, repeated on every quote rather than reinvented:

1. Check the total TTC amount and the client's status. Under €12,000 TTC for a private client, the deposit stays at 15% or below. Above that, 20% to 30% remains standard practice.
2. Write the word "deposit" and its percentage on the quote itself, not only in terms and conditions nobody rereads: that one line decides whether the sum is firm or just a right to walk away.
3. Issue the deposit invoice the day the money is collected, with its own numbering and a reference to the quote.
4. Track the balance due, who paid the deposit, when, and what remains once the job is done, with the same discipline used to chase a quote left without an answer.

At a heating business of under ten people signing 180 quotes a year, averaging €6,200 TTC, a 20% deposit comes to €1,240 per quote. If the equipment already ordered for the job cost €2,000, a poorly worded deposit leaves €760 uncovered on that one quote. On the prudent hypothesis of one cancellation in twenty, that adds up to more than €6,000 a year that a single word on the quote would have avoided.

What changes with an application built for the business#

An application built for the business carries this rule without a salesperson recalculating it on every quote.

• The 15% cap computes itself the moment a quote falls under €12,000 TTC for a private client, and the suggested percentage adjusts above that threshold.
• The word "deposit" and the quote reference are filled in by default, instead of a mention nobody remembers to check.
• The deposit invoice goes out the day the payment is logged, with its own numbering, the same way other reminders and documents go out without anyone chasing them.
• The balance due shows up for every job, so nobody discovers months later that a deposit was never asked for, or that a remainder has been sitting unpaid, which ties back to what unchased quotes actually cost.

Deposit on a quote: the key takeaways#

There is no single rule worth memorising, but two habits are enough: check the 15% cap under €12,000 TTC for a private client, and write the word "deposit" on every quote that asks for one. Those two lines, not the percentage chosen, decide what happens the day a client changes their mind.

Everything else is tracking: a deposit invoice issued at the right time, and a balance you know how to chase before the job becomes a distant memory.