Guide
How to take a deposit before ordering parts
A deposit is not a share of the job. It is the money you cannot get back if the customer changes their mind after you have ordered.
The short answer
Size the deposit to the part, not to the invoice. Before you order, work out what you would actually be out of pocket if the customer stopped answering the phone tomorrow: what the supplier charges you, plus any restocking charge on a return, plus shipping you would not get back, plus anything that cannot be returned at all. That number is the deposit. A percentage of the job total is borrowed from businesses that keep stock on a shelf, and you are not keeping stock, you are buying one component for one car.
Ask for it before the order goes in, in writing, and put the terms in the same message as the number. Four things belong in that message: what the deposit is paying for, what happens to it if the customer cancels, what happens if the part turns out to be wrong, and when the rest is due.
Give the reason out loud. A sentence explaining that the part has to be bought before it can be fitted, and that special order components are difficult or impossible to send back, is a reason an ordinary person accepts without feeling accused of anything. A bare request for money in advance sounds like a comment about their character, which is the only version of this conversation that goes badly.
This page names no percentage and no dollar amount. There is no survey of deposit practice behind these guides, and a figure copied off a forum would be a guess wearing the clothes of a standard. The arithmetic that produces your number is on this page instead, and it uses a document you already have: the supplier quote.
The order to do it in
- 1
Price the part before you promise anything
Get the actual supplier price for the actual part number, including shipping, before the deposit conversation happens. A deposit worked out from a guess is either too small to protect you or big enough to lose the job, and both mistakes come from the same missing five minutes.
While you are there, find out the return terms. Whether the supplier takes it back at all, what they charge if they do, and how long the window is are the three facts that decide everything else on this page.
- 2
Work out what a cancellation would cost you
Take the supplier price, subtract whatever you would genuinely recover on a return, and add any shipping and handling that does not come back. Electrical components, anything programmed to a vehicle and most dealer only items usually recover nothing, so for those the answer is the whole part price.
That figure is your exposure. It is the honest basis for the deposit, and it is a number you can defend line by line if anybody asks how you arrived at it.
- 3
Put the number and the terms in one written message
Send the deposit amount together with what it covers and what happens if the job does not go ahead. The reason to send it rather than say it is not distrust, it is that a written figure is something the customer can look at twice and agree to properly, and that a yes attached to a specific number is worth far more later than a yes attached to a conversation.
Where you already send an estimate for approval, this belongs on the estimate rather than in a separate message. One document holding the price, the deposit and the terms is easier for both of you than three.
- 4
Take the money, then order the part
The order goes in after the money arrives, not while it is on its way. This is the single habit that makes the whole system work, and the one people abandon first when they are busy or when the customer seems nice.
If you break the rule for somebody, decide that deliberately and know you are carrying the risk yourself. There is nothing wrong with choosing to; there is a lot wrong with drifting into it every time.
- 5
Record what the deposit was for
Write the deposit against the job, not just into your bank account. Months later the question is always the same: what did this payment relate to, and was it applied to the final bill. A payment with no job attached to it is how a customer ends up being asked for the full amount twice.
The record also matters at the other end of the year, when the money that came in has to be reconciled against the work it belonged to.
The parts bill is the only part of a repair you pay for in advance
Labour costs you time, and time you do not spend on a cancelled job comes back to you. Parts do not work that way. The moment the order goes in, your money has left and it is sitting in a box addressed to somebody who may or may not still want it. That asymmetry is the entire reason deposits exist in repair work, and it is why the deposit tracks the part rather than the job.
It also explains why the answer is different for different jobs. A brake service on a common vehicle carries almost no exposure, because the parts sell to the next customer. A body control module for an unusual model carries all of it. Charging the same percentage on both is charging too much for the first and not nearly enough for the second.
For a mobile mechanic the exposure is worse than for a shop, for a boring reason: a shop has somewhere to put a part nobody collected, and a van does not. Every unreturnable component you are stuck with is occupying space you need for tools.
Refundable, non refundable, and the honest middle
The clean position is that the deposit is refundable until the order is placed and not refundable afterwards, because that is exactly when the money stops being recoverable. It is easy to explain and it matches what is actually happening, which is why it survives a disagreement better than anything cleverer.
The middle position is that the deposit is refundable less whatever the supplier keeps. It is fairer and it is more work, because you have to show the customer what the supplier charged, and you have to actually attempt the return. If you promise this version, do the return properly. A restocking charge invented to cover an order you never sent back is the kind of thing that turns a small dispute into a public one.
What does not survive is silence. A deposit taken with nothing said about refunds means the two of you will have that conversation for the first time on the day somebody is already unhappy, and whoever is more forceful will win it. Decide once, say it every time, and apply it the same way to everybody.
Asking for money before you have done any work
Most of the difficulty here is not commercial, it is social. Asking for money in advance feels like admitting you expect to be let down, and that feeling is why a lot of mechanics quietly absorb the risk instead. The way out of it is to stop presenting the deposit as a judgement about the person and start presenting it as a fact about the part.
The sentences that work are descriptive rather than defensive. The part has to be ordered specially. It cannot be sent back once it has been ordered. So the part is paid for up front and the labour is paid when the work is done. Nobody argues with a description of how buying things works.
The other half of it is consistency. A deposit asked for on some jobs and skipped on others invites the question of why this customer was asked, and there is no comfortable answer to that. A deposit that applies to every special order part is a policy, and policies are much easier to say out loud than opinions about individuals.
Work out the deposit from the supplier invoice, not from the job total
Here is the arithmetic, in words, using only documents you already have in front of you. It takes about two minutes per job once the habit is there, and it produces a figure specific to that job rather than a rule applied to all of them.
Start with what the supplier will charge you for the parts on this job. Not the retail price, not what the customer will pay, the number on your own quote from your own supplier, including any shipping.
Next, find out what comes back if you return it. Ask, rather than assuming, because return terms vary enormously between a factor, a dealer parts counter and an online seller. Some take it back in full, most keep a percentage, and a good number of items cannot be returned at all once they are ordered against a vehicle identification number.
Subtract the recoverable amount from the supplier price. Add back anything that does not come back regardless: outbound shipping, return shipping if you would pay it, any handling charge.
What you are left with is your genuine exposure on this job. That is the deposit. Round it up rather than down if you want a round number to say out loud, and never round it below the exposure, because the whole point of the exercise was to make the number mean something.
Two adjustments are worth making deliberately. If the part is a common item you would happily fit to another car within a month, your real exposure is lower than the arithmetic suggests and you can choose to carry it. If your own cash is tight, the deposit can reasonably cover the whole parts bill rather than just the unrecoverable share, because a component sitting in your van is your money whether or not you could theoretically return it.
Notice what this method does not need. It needs no average, no industry standard and no percentage anybody agreed on. It uses a supplier quote, which is a real document, dated, specific to the job, and available to you before you say a number out loud. That is the difference between a figure you can defend and a figure you repeat.
It also fails safely. If you cannot get a supplier price before quoting, you cannot calculate a deposit, and that is a signal to quote the job differently rather than to guess. Quoting a part you have not priced is the underlying mistake that deposits are being asked to cover.
What deposit terms usually cover, and why each line is there
A description of what these terms tend to contain, and the reason each one tends to exist. This is not a template, it is not a statement of what any rule requires anywhere, and what belongs in yours depends on where you work.
What the deposit is for. Terms usually name the parts rather than the job, because the entire logic of the arrangement is that the parts money leaves before the work starts. Naming the specific components also makes it obvious later what was and was not covered.
Whether it is refundable, and until when. The version that matches reality ties refundability to the moment the order is placed, since that is the moment the money becomes unrecoverable. Whatever you choose, the line has to say the moment, not just the answer.
What happens to a return charge. Where terms promise a refund minus what the supplier keeps, they usually also say that evidence of that charge will be provided, which protects both sides: it stops the customer suspecting an invented figure and it stops you being asked to absorb a real one.
How the deposit is applied to the final bill. It should be plain that the deposit comes off the total rather than sitting alongside it. This sounds obvious and is the single most common source of confusion at the end of a job, particularly when the deposit was paid weeks earlier.
What happens if the part is wrong or faulty. Terms commonly separate a part that was wrongly identified from a part that arrived defective, because the two lead to different outcomes, and because a customer who supplied the part number is in a different position from one who did not.
What happens if the customer cancels after the part arrives. Usually the position is that the part belongs to them and is theirs to collect, which is fairer than it sounds and avoids you holding an item somebody has already paid for.
How long you will hold a part before the arrangement lapses. A component sitting in a van for months is a real cost and a real risk, and terms that say nothing about it leave you with no way to close the matter.
Where the customer agreed. Terms shown on an estimate somebody approved are a much stronger record than terms on a website nobody opened, whatever the wording says. The place the agreement happened matters as much as the sentence.
Where the short answer stops being the answer
Every rule on this page has a situation it does not survive. Here are the ones worth knowing about before you meet them.
The part is a common item you would fit to another car anyway
Your exposure here is genuinely small, so a deposit is a choice rather than a necessity. Plenty of mechanics skip it on stock filters, pads and batteries and take one only on special orders, which is a defensible line and easy to explain because it is true.
The thing to watch is drift. Common items add up quietly, and a week where four customers all changed their minds is a week where your van is full of your own money. If it happens more than occasionally, the honest response is to look at why people are cancelling rather than to add a deposit.
The customer is a fleet, a dealer or a business with an account
Business customers usually will not pay a deposit and frequently cannot, because their payment process is not built for it. The substitute is agreed payment terms in writing before you order, and a purchase order or written instruction naming the parts and the amount.
Treat the payment terms as part of the price when you decide whether the work is worth taking. Parts money advanced for a month is a real cost to a one van business, and the guide in this cluster on getting paid faster covers the rest of that conversation.
It is a dealer only part with a long lead time
This is the case deposits exist for, and it is worth being firmer here than anywhere else. A part built or programmed to a specific vehicle typically cannot be returned at all, so your exposure is the whole price and the deposit reasonably matches it.
Set expectations on timing in the same message as the money. A long wait that was mentioned once at the start is a delay; a long wait nobody warned them about is a complaint, and the complaint frequently arrives as a request for the deposit back.
The customer offers to buy the part themselves instead
That removes your parts exposure entirely and replaces it with a different set of problems, which is a trade rather than a solution. If you accept, the terms that matter are about labour and warranty rather than deposits, and the guide in this cluster on customer supplied parts covers them.
It is also worth noticing when this offer is really a way of avoiding the deposit conversation. If somebody would rather order a part themselves than pay you for the same part in advance, the sticking point is usually trust or cash, and it is better to find out which before the work is booked.
When it has already gone wrong
Most people find a page like this after the fact rather than before it. This part is for them.
You already ordered the part and the customer has cancelled
Try the return first and do it quickly, because return windows are short and the clock started when the part shipped. Get the actual charge in writing from the supplier so that whatever you ask the customer for is a real figure rather than an estimate.
Then decide what the relationship is worth. Chasing a modest parts loss from somebody who might have sent you work for years is often a poor trade, and absorbing it once while changing the process this week is usually the better outcome. What you should not do is absorb it silently and keep operating the same way.
The customer is demanding the deposit back and nothing was written down
Argue the facts rather than the principle. What the part cost, whether it can go back, and what the supplier will keep are checkable things, and a customer looking at a supplier document behaves very differently from one being told about a policy they never saw.
If the amount is small and the position is weak, refund it, write the terms this week, and treat the loss as the cost of learning where the gap was. A term nobody agreed to is a poor thing to defend even when it is entirely reasonable.
The part arrived and it is the wrong one
Sort out the supply problem before you sort out the money. Identify the correct component precisely, find out whether the wrong one can go back, and tell the customer both things in the same message so it reads as progress rather than as a bill.
Where the wrong part came from your own identification, absorbing the return charge is usually the right call and is remembered well. Where it came from a part number the customer insisted on, the deposit terms you wrote are the reason that conversation is short.
Questions
Should a mechanic take a deposit before ordering parts?
For special order parts, most of the risk in the job sits in that one moment, so a deposit is a reasonable and normal thing to ask for. For common items you would fit to another vehicle anyway, the exposure is small and it becomes a preference rather than a necessity. The test is simple: work out what you would lose if the customer disappeared after you clicked order.
How much deposit should I take for parts?
This page gives no percentage, because nobody here has surveyed what anybody charges and a number copied from a forum is not evidence. Work it out instead: the supplier price for the parts on this job, minus whatever you would genuinely recover on a return, plus shipping and handling that would not come back. That is your exposure and it is the honest basis for the deposit.
Is a parts deposit refundable?
That depends on what the two of you agreed and on the rules where you work, which differ by state, so no web page can answer it for your situation. The version that matches what is actually happening ties the refund to whether the order has been placed, since that is the moment your money stops being recoverable. Whatever you decide, it belongs in writing before the money changes hands.
What do I do if a customer refuses to pay a deposit?
Find out which objection it is, because there are two and they need different answers. Somebody who cannot pay in advance may accept paying the supplier directly or ordering the part themselves. Somebody who will not pay in advance is telling you they are not sure about you yet, and the answer there is usually a smaller first job rather than a longer explanation.
Can I take a parts deposit by card?
Yes, and taking it electronically has a practical advantage beyond convenience: the payment carries a date and an amount without anybody having to remember them. Card processing costs something on every transaction, so a deposit and a final payment cost slightly more to collect than a single payment, which is worth knowing rather than worrying about.