Deposits, net terms and kill fees for creator work
Four written clauses that stop you financing a client's marketing budget: deposit before first render, net-14, a kill fee tied to work, a delivery pause.
An unpaid invoice on a video job is not a cash-flow inconvenience. It is an unsecured loan you made to a company with a bigger balance sheet than yours, at zero interest, on terms they set after the work was already done.
That framing changes what the clauses are for. You are not writing a contract to win a hypothetical lawsuit — nobody is suing over a $2,000 video batch and both sides know it. You are writing clauses that change the sequence of events, so the moment you are exposed is as short as possible and the leverage sits with whoever has not yet handed something over.
Four clauses do almost all of that. None of this is legal advice, and a solicitor in your jurisdiction should see the final wording — but the structure below is what the wording is trying to achieve.
Clause 1: deposit before the first render
The deposit is not a good-faith gesture. It is the boundary between "we are talking" and "I am spending."
Tie it to production starting, not to the contract being signed, and specifically not to delivery. Write it as a percentage of the project fee — 50% for project work, 100% for a first engagement with a client you have never billed — payable before the first generation runs.
Deposit. 50% of the project fee is invoiced on acceptance of this scope and is payable before production begins. Production is deemed to begin at the first render. The deposit is non-refundable and is credited against the final invoice.
Two details make it enforceable:
- Tie it to a technical event, not a date. "Before the first render" is unambiguous and observable. "Before work commences" invites an argument about whether a kickoff call was work.
- State that it is non-refundable and credited. Both halves matter. Non-refundable is the protection; credited against the final invoice is what stops it feeling like a surcharge.
For generation-based production this clause is concrete rather than symbolic. Every generation consumes credits from a balance you paid for — there is no free plan or free allowance underneath to absorb an abandoned project — so a project that dies after the first batch has already moved money out of your account. The deposit means it moved out of theirs first. Estimating credit cost before dispatching a batch covers the arithmetic, and the agent can check your balance before generating.
Clause 2: net-14, not net-30
Net-30 is inherited from businesses that ship physical inventory and invoice on despatch. It has no relationship to a creative deliverable a client can put into a paid ad account the same afternoon.
Payment terms. Invoices are payable within 14 days of the invoice date. Invoices are issued on delivery of the agreed files. Amounts outstanding beyond 14 days accrue interest at [rate] per month from the due date.
The negotiation you will actually have is with procurement at larger clients, whose systems genuinely default to net-30 or net-60 and whose contact cannot change it. When that is true, the trade is not to cave on the term — it is to shift the money forward:
| If they insist on | Ask for |
|---|---|
| Net-30 | The deposit at 100% rather than 50% |
| Net-60 | Milestone invoicing: deposit, midpoint, delivery |
| "We pay on the 15th of the following month" | An invoice date that lands just before their cut-off, agreed in writing |
The last row is the least obvious and the most useful. Many payment runs are calendar-driven, so an invoice issued two days late waits an extra month. Ask what the cut-off is at kickoff and set your delivery date around it.
Include the interest clause even if you never charge it. Its function is not revenue; it is to make the invoice a document with consequences attached, which affects how fast it moves through an approvals queue.
Clause 3: a kill fee tied to work generated
Projects die. A launch slips, a marketing lead leaves, a campaign gets pulled. The kill fee converts "sorry, this is cancelled" from a total loss into a partial one.
The version that fails is a flat percentage of the project fee — arbitrary in both directions, too high to accept when the project dies on day one and too low to be fair when it dies the day before delivery. Tie it to work generated instead.
Cancellation. If the client cancels after production begins, the deposit is retained and the client is invoiced for all deliverables generated to the date of cancellation at the per-deliverable rate in the scope, plus [X]% of the remaining fee. Generated deliverables are supplied to the client on payment.
Three things this does:
- It scales with reality. A cancellation after six of ten videos is billed as six videos plus a partial. Neither side argues about fairness.
- It gives the client something. A kill fee that produces nothing feels like a penalty, and clients resist penalties. One that ships six finished videos feels like a partial order.
- It makes "generated" the countable unit. The number of finished deliverables at any moment is an observable fact, not an estimate of hours worked — a real advantage over a timesheet-based kill fee.
Nail down what counts as generated. A deliverable is generated when it has been exported at final resolution; preview passes do not count. That distinction is clean on an editor that separates the two — 480p preview renders are free, with a short per-user cooldown between passes, and the final export is the single charged render — so preview versus export is the line the clause points at.
Clause 4: delivery pause on late payment
The first three clauses are about money. This one is about leverage, and it is the only clause that works after the fact.
Suspension. If any invoice is more than [7] days overdue, delivery of outstanding work and any licence granted under this agreement are suspended until the account is settled in full. Licences granted resume on payment and do not extend the licence period.
The important half is the second one: the licence suspends, not just the delivery. Withholding files from a client who already has last month's videos running in a paid account does nothing. Suspending their right to keep running them does.
That only works if your contract granted usage rights conditionally in the first place — a licence that transferred on delivery rather than on payment cannot be paused. Pair it with a rights clause reading "licence grants on receipt of payment in full," which is one sentence and completely changes the position. Usage rights in creator contracts covers the organic-versus-paid split and the perpetuity trap that removes this leverage forever.
Do not automate the suspension. Send a short human message first — "invoice 041 is at day 9, I'm holding batch 5 until it clears" — because most late payments are an approvals queue, not a refusal, and a named person can usually push a specific invoice if you give them the number.
When each clause fires
| Clause | Fires when | What it protects |
|---|---|---|
| Deposit | Before the first render | Your credit spend on a project that may not finish |
| Net-14 | On delivery, running 14 days | The gap between your outlay and their payment run |
| Kill fee | Client cancels after production began | The work already produced and the slot you held |
| Delivery pause | An invoice passes the agreed overdue threshold | Everything else — this is what makes the others real |
The sequence is the point. The deposit moves money before you spend. Net-14 shortens the exposure. The kill fee covers the abnormal ending. The pause is what makes a client's finance team treat the first three as terms rather than preferences.
Making them stick on the call
Clauses fail at the conversation, not in the document. Three things help:
Present them as standard, not as a request. "My terms are 50% up front, net-14 on the balance" is a statement. "Would it be possible to get a deposit?" invites a negotiation over something that should not be negotiable.
Explain the deposit in terms of their outcome, not your risk. "The deposit reserves the production window — it's what means batch one is with you Thursday rather than in a queue" lands better than "I've been burned before."
Never introduce a clause after the scope is agreed. All four belong in the same document as the deliverable list. A payment clause arriving separately, after the creative conversation, reads as distrust; the same clause inside the scope document reads as professionalism. The scope side is covered in the local business content retainer breakdown, and the ongoing proof that the money is buying something is client reporting.
FAQ
Is a 50% deposit realistic for small brand work?
For a first engagement, ask for 100% and expect to settle at 50%. For UGC ad batches at typical per-deliverable rates, the total is small enough that many brands pay it all up front rather than run two invoices through their system — a second approval is more friction for them than the cash timing.
What overdue threshold should trigger the delivery pause?
Seven days past the due date is the usual setting, which on net-14 means you are pausing at day 21 from invoice. Anything shorter reads as aggressive on a first engagement; anything longer means you are two deliverables deep into unpaid work before the clause does anything.
Does a kill fee actually get paid?
More often than creators expect, because the version tied to work generated is easy for a client to approve internally — it is an invoice for goods received rather than a penalty. The flat-percentage version gets disputed far more, which is the main argument for structuring it the way described above.
Should exclusivity change any of this?
Yes. If you have granted an exclusivity window — agreeing not to work with competing brands for a period — you have given up revenue you cannot recover, so the deposit and kill fee should both be larger, and the exclusivity itself should suspend alongside the licence when payment is late. An exclusivity clause that survives a delivery pause is the worst structure available to you.