Getting paid by clients — deposits, draws and financing

One thing to say before anything else, because it sets the tone for the rest: Clavoz never
charges your client and never holds your money. There is no Clavoz balance, no payout
account, no card processing. What Clavoz does is agree the schedule in a document the client
signs, and put your own payment details in front of them at the right moment. The money goes
from them to you, through the route you already use.

Where your payment details live

Open Settings → Getting paid and fill in what you can take. Each one you set
becomes its own button on the client's page, and nothing at all is shown for a
method you leave blank:

Field	What the client sees
Card payment link	A Pay by card button that opens your Stripe payment link (or any https:// checkout page)
PayPal link	A Pay with PayPal button that opens your PayPal.Me link with the amount already on it
Venmo handle	A Pay with Venmo row with your handle and a Copy button
Zelle (email or phone)	A Pay with Zelle row with the address and a Copy button
Bank wire details	Your wire instructions, printed in full

They appear on the proposal's deposit section, on the success screen straight
after the client signs, and again on each milestone draw page
(Insurance Payment Schedules and Milestone Draws).
The amount on the PayPal link is the deposit on a proposal and the stage amount
on a draw.

The PayPal link has to be a PayPal.Me link — https://paypal.me/yourname or
https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/yourname — because that is the form that takes
a preset amount on the end. A business account receives it as a goods-and-services
payment.

A single quote can override the card link, the Venmo handle and the
wire details from its own Deposit Payment & Instructions panel in the
quote builder; that per-job setting wins for that quote. Your PayPal and Zelle
settings always apply.

The deposit, collected at the best possible moment

The deposit itself is the first stage of the quote's Payment Schedule, and the way it
is collected comes from Settings → Getting paid — or, for one job, from the quote's own
Deposit Payment & Instructions panel.

It appears on the success screen immediately after the client signs — the moment their
attention is highest and the work has just been agreed. Where a link is set, the screen also
draws a QR code for it, which is what makes a deposit easy to collect from a phone in a
driveway.

Fill a payment method in even if you would rather take a cheque: with nothing set, the
success screen asks the client for nothing.

The payment schedule: your terms, priced automatically

The Payment Schedule panel turns your terms into stages, with each amount calculated
live from the grand total (so a $18,400 job on a 50% deposit shows $9,200 without you doing
the arithmetic). Pick a preset — Deposit upon signing at 50%, Deposit at 33%, and the
other stage patterns — then adjust it. The schedule the client signed is what the draw
requests are made against, and on an insurance job it sits on top of the carrier's own
payment stages rather than replacing them
(Insurance Payment Schedules and Milestone Draws).

Milestone draws: ask, photograph, get released

As each stage completes:

1. Open the signed quote and choose Request Milestone Draw on any stage that is not yet
   released. (Draws exist for quotes that are out with the client or accepted — an unsent
   draft has nothing to draw against.)
2. Attach up to three completion photos and a note describing what was done.
3. Clavoz gives you the request and a link. Copy it and send it to the homeowner —
   text, email, whichever you normally use; Clavoz does not email this one for you.
4. The homeowner opens the secure milestone page, sees the stage, the amount and the
   photos, and approves. That approval marks the stage Released on the proposal. The
   page also shows each Getting paid method with the stage amount, so they can pay you
   straight from it.

That is a defensible paper trail for a progress payment: what stage, what amount, what it
looked like when you asked. It is still your job to match an approved draw to money that
actually arrived.

Invoices: the bill itself

A draw asks for a stage of the agreed schedule. An invoice is the bill: open Invoices in
the sidebar, or Create invoice from a signed job, and Clavoz fills in the next unpaid
stage — or the whole balance if you would rather bill once. It numbers it for you
(INV-0001, INV-0002, …), you edit the lines, and you preview the PDF before anything
goes out.

The status is the record of what actually happened, not a setting: Draft until you send
it, Sent once the email really went, Paid when you mark the money received, and
Overdue on its own once a sent invoice passes its due date.

Every invoice is a client document. The payload takes a description, a quantity and a price,
the total is worked out from those lines, and costs and markup never reach the page or the
PDF — so the figure you send is the figure the client can check line by line. There is no
public invoice page yet: the invoice reaches the client as a PDF by email.

Financing, without becoming a lender

If you have connected your own portal (Hearth, Wisetack, Acorn, your bank), Clavoz shows the
homeowner a monthly figure on the proposal with the term it assumed, above $500, alongside
an Explore Financing link that goes to your lender. It is an estimate, not a credit
decision, and the application never happens inside Clavoz
(Customer Financing and Your Portal Link).

What you still do yourself

• Take the payment. Your card link, PayPal, Venmo, Zelle, bank transfer or cheque.
• Reconcile. Match each invoice you marked paid to the money that landed.
• Chase. There is no automatic dunning of a client who is late with a draw or an
  invoice: Overdue on the invoice is the flag, and the phone call is still yours.

What you do get, on the other side of the coin, is the job's costs. Log them under
Actuals & Expenses as they land and the quote's margin stops being an estimate — which
is the only way to know whether collecting on schedule actually paid.