Payment schedules & milestones

Split a project into stages — your way

A payment plan breaks a project into stages: a deposit up front, payments tied to deliverables or milestones, and a final balance. You decide how many stages, what each one is for, and the order you'll bill them. Every stage has an invoice — send each one when you reach that stage of the work.

You stay in control. Each stage becomes an ordinary draft invoice that you review and send yourself. Drift Catch does not charge your client's card automatically and does not email your client on its own.

Building a payment plan

On a project's page, open the Payment plan panel and choose Set up payment schedule. Then:

1. Set the project total the plan is based on, plus a tax rate and the currency (USD or CAD).
2. Add a stage for each part of the job — a deposit, each milestone or deliverable, and a final balance.
3. Name each stage and pick its type: deposit, milestone, or final.
4. Choose how each stage is sized — a percentage of the total or a fixed amount. You can mix the two however you like.
5. Reorder stages so they're in the order you'll bill them.

The final stage squares the total

Mark one stage as the final balance and Drift Catch makes it the remainder — it computes the project total minus everything else, so the plan always adds up. That means you can adjust the other stages freely and never chase the math.

You don't have to use a remainder stage. If you'd rather set every stage by hand, you'll see a running check — "Stages sum to $X of $Y total" — that flags it when the numbers don't line up.

Your running balance

The panel shows four figures, always in the project's single currency:

• Total — the project total the plan is based on.
• Paid — the stages whose invoices have been paid.
• Remaining — what's still owed.
• Due at final — the balance that lands on the final stage.

We never mix currencies. A plan in USD stays in USD; a plan in CAD stays in CAD. If you bill the same client in both currencies, make two plans.

Turning a stage into an invoice

When a stage is due, choose Generate invoice for it. Drift Catch:

• Creates a brand-new draft invoice with a fresh, in-order invoice number (the same sequential numbering your hand-made invoices use).
• Carries over the client, currency, and tax rate from the plan.
• Sets the invoice amount to that stage's resolved figure.

From there it's an ordinary invoice — review it, then send it like any other. Generated a draft by mistake? You can remove it and re-open the stage for editing, as long as you haven't sent it yet.

Requiring payment before the next stage

On Pro, the invoice you send carries a Pay button, so you can require your client to pay each stage before you move on to the next one. This is the same pay-before-work gate Drift Catch already uses on invoices and change orders.

On Solo, your plan works end to end — you build it, generate each stage, and send it — and you collect payment the way you do today (your client sees a Review button rather than a Pay button). Requiring payment before the next stage unlocks on Pro.

What it does NOT do

We keep this deliberately simple and safe:

• No automatic charges. Drift Catch never pulls money from your client's card.
• No automatic emails to your client. Nothing goes out until you send it.
• Not an escrow. Drift Catch never holds your funds — payments land directly on your connected account. The plan is your contract tooling with your client; Drift Catch is not a party to that agreement.

Currency

Each plan is pinned to one currency (USD or CAD), chosen when you create it. Every stage and every figure uses that currency, so the balance is always a single, honest number.

If your plan changes

Building a payment plan and generating stage invoices is part of Solo and up. The enforced pay-before-advance gate is a Pro feature. If your plan changes, your existing plans and the invoices they generated stay in place.

Have a question?

Email support@driftcatch.app — a real person reads every message.