How much to pay a contractor up front, and when to pay the rest

Cap the up-front payment at 30% of the job price, tied to materials. Pay the middle in tranches, each released after the work it covers is standing. Hold at least 10% back until the job is approved, snag-free, and the site cleared. The baseline is 30/30/30/10. Every number in it can move; the direction cannot: payments follow the work, never lead it.

Why the money trails the work

The unpaid balance is the only lever you hold once work has started. The contract gives you remedies on paper, but they are slow, and switching contractors mid-project means paying twice for the handover: half-finished work is hard to price, and the warranty lands on whoever finishes it. What keeps a job moving to the last day is that finishing it pays. A schedule that runs ahead of the work reverses that: once your payment sits ahead of the value delivered, your job competes for crew-hours with the next client’s job, and the next client’s comes with fresh money attached. That is not a character flaw in contractors; it is what any business does with scarce crew time.

The cap on the advance guards the harder case: budget spent, work stalled, contractor gone. The cost when that lands is everything paid ahead of the work, which is why the advance stays tied to materials that exist rather than to a signature on the assignment.

The same schedule protects a contractor who runs the job well. Named triggers mean no end-of-job argument about what was owed when, and a client who agreed a schedule up front has budgeted the whole job. This guide covers planned, medium-to-large work: the jobs where you compared several quotes before choosing. A small corrective repair is one invoice on completion, and the tool that protects you there is the mandate, not a schedule.

The advance: a ceiling, not a target

Thirty percent up front is the maximum, and every euro of it should be traceable to materials. The default arrangement is that the contractor buys them; their handling markup is in the quote, and across the managed-property jobs this methodology comes from, that markup runs around 10% on planned purchases. Release the advance to match when the contractor has to pay their supplier, which the purchase terms on that order set, not blind at signature. A contractor can carry a supplier for a week or two, until those terms come due, but will not want to be in credit for long, so the advance tracks the supplier’s payment date rather than the day the order is placed or the day it arrives.

A large advance is justified in one situation: material cost is high relative to labour and on-time arrival decides the schedule. A new floor, custom-made or ordered from abroad, qualifies. Where labour dominates and the start of the job needs only small outlays, such as erecting scaffolding, digging a trench for pipework, or a waste run, the advance drops to around 10% and the freed-up share moves into the progress tranches.

A sensible advance is not a concession. It lets the contractor plan and buy ahead instead of ordering only once the job starts, and it protects them against the client who cancels after the materials are bought. Match delivery to the build sequence, though: materials that arrive before a lengthy demolition stage sit as clutter and collect damage, and paying the advance on the supplier’s terms does not require the materials to land on day one.

Buying materials yourself strips out the markup, and on most jobs that is the whole case for it. Two conditions before you try: agree it with the contractor first, and accept that a delivery delay on an order you placed is now your delay, which entitles them to reprice the labour their crew spent waiting. Weigh roughly a tenth of the materials line against schedule risk you now own. Worth it when the materials sum is large; not otherwise. Extras found mid-job are a separate line with its own markup, and the quote guide covers getting that committed in writing before you accept.

The middle: tranches behind the work

Release each middle tranche when a named piece of the work is standing, not when a date arrives. In the baseline, the first progress tranche of about 30% is due when roughly a third of the work is done, and the second at the 66-75% mark. The test for any schedule a contractor proposes is whether the money stays behind the value: at each tranche, what you have paid sits behind the value delivered and the costs the contractor has already carried. Read the job as work to be done rather than a flat pot of expenses. A front-loaded profile, a large material order placed early or labour concentrated in the first half, can pass 80% paid at the midpoint and still trail its value; where the spend is spread evenly across the job, 80% paid halfway means your money is ahead of the work.

Long, labour-heavy jobs stretch the same logic into more, smaller steps: 10/20/20/20/20/10. Nothing changes except the resolution. On calendar terms this lands near weekly invoicing on a two-week job and monthly on a two-month one, but the calendar is the fallback, not the trigger.

A trigger is a named, checkable state: old covering stripped and underlay complete; first-fix plumbing done and pressure-tested. States you can verify by looking, or that your inspector can. A date tells you time passed; a state tells you work exists.

Check each stage before it disappears

A stage that is about to be covered is checkable for exactly as long as it stays open. Wiring, insulation, and membranes can be judged until the cladding goes on. On staged work, attach the check to the open state: the tranche for the wall releases when what sits inside it has been looked at, not when the boards are up. The moment before covering is when a shortfall is a correction; one stage later it is a negotiation about demolition.

Technical quality is the inspector’s question. Structural stages usually come with their own examiner, the engineer whose guidelines the crew builds to, but that check serves the design. The check that serves your payment is an expert of your own walking the stage and confirming it is delivered before the tranche moves. These mid-stage checks, taken while the work is still open, are where an inspection earns the most; the end-of-job visit closes the snag list but cannot reopen a covered wall. Scale this to the job. A renovation with several stages that get covered justifies a visit at each, and since every visit costs about the same, the inspection budget follows the number of those stages rather than the size of the job. On a smaller job, the stage check is you, with the plan in hand, before the next crew day starts.

The other check cannot be hired, because it is not about quality. Whether the wiring is correct is the inspector’s question; whether the pillar stays is yours. The position of a wall, a socket moved before the plaster closes, a doorway widened while the frame is still open: decisions like these are locked in by the next stage, and no inspector flags them, because nothing about them is wrong. In our own renovation, the crew set the ceiling beams while a pillar we meant to remove still stood. Nothing in that work was below standard, so no check built on quality would have caught it; by the time we saw it, taking the pillar out had turned from a line in the plan into a structural intervention, and it stands in the room today. Before any stage that locks in the one before it, walk the site and say what you need changed. That walk costs an hour; skipping it cost us the pillar.

The retention: at least 10%, held to the end

Hold at least 10% until the work is approved, no defects stand open from the handover check, and the site is cleared. This floor is for a project: a written outcome you asked for and accepted. A day’s work, a handyman running a string of small jobs, or a single repair is one invoice on completion, with no retention to hold. Keep the retention large enough to be worth enforcing; a token holdback gets waved through at the end of a long job. One limit sits above the floor: never hold more than your market’s law allows, which in some markets is below 10%, and where the statutory ceiling is lower, it wins over the floor.

The retention works because of how the job is priced underneath. The advance and the progress tranches cover the contractor’s costs roughly as they land, which puts the margin in the last tranche. A snag list standing between a contractor and their margin gets closed; the same list, presented after full payment, is a favour you are asking. The effect sharpens at year-end, when the contractor wants the invoice closed and on the books.

Write the release condition into the assignment as a clause:

Any deviation found at inspection, whether from the job description, from the contractor’s warranty terms, or from manufacturer-specified material use, is corrected at the contractor’s cost before the retention is released.

For work you cannot check yourself, roofing being the standard case, the release rides on a visit from your own inspector: someone credentialed and independent whose report you can rely on, paid by you and chosen by you. On a job with stages that were covered as it went, this is the last of several inspection points and the one that releases the money; the earlier checks, made while those stages were still open, were the higher-value ones. Budget every visit as part of the job from the start, not as an extra you decide on at the end. It is your expense, separate from the retention, and the two work as a pair: the retention makes the contractor fix what is found, the inspector is what finds it, and a professional handover check catches the small details a crew working in good faith walks past.

Time the visit while scaffolding, tools, and crew are still on site, so what the inspector finds gets fixed on the spot instead of becoming a call-back negotiation. When to hire a building inspector covers choosing one and what the post-work visit costs.

Write it into the assignment

Name each tranche in the written assignment before work starts: its percentage, its amount, and its trigger. Put the deviation clause under the retention line. State both warranty periods in the same document, the contractor’s on the workmanship and the manufacturer’s on the materials; a quote that omits them is incomplete, and what the warranty covers after handover is a separate question from what the schedule enforces before it. Consumer protection differs across European markets, so where it runs weaker, the agreed periods in writing are what you have; agree them before work starts rather than relying on a default being enforced later. For work you cannot check yourself, name the inspection in the same document: the assignment states that the retention releases on your inspector’s sign-off, which makes the visit an agreed step of the job rather than a demand you produce at the end. Add the mandate clause for anything found during the work, so extras arrive as a written adjustment instead of a surprise on the final invoice.

What the law already backs

The schedule is contractual, but its direction is not a private preference: consumer law in the markets this guide serves already leans the same way. A contractor who calls the structure unusual is arguing with more than you. As of mid-2026:

• Sweden: under the Consumer Services Act (konsumenttjänstlagen 1985:716, 41 §), unless you agreed otherwise, payment falls due on demand after the service is performed. The legal default asks for no advance at all.
• Finland: the consumer authority’s renovation guidance (KKV) says to weight instalments toward the end of the project so payments follow the work, which preserves your right to withhold payment over a defect until it is fixed.
• Netherlands: the statutory 5% notary depot on the final instalment (BW art. 7:768) covers consumer new-builds, and courts have held it does not extend to renovations. On a verbouwing, the retention exists only if your assignment names it.
• Germany: instalments may only cover work already performed (BGB § 632a), and on a consumer construction contract their total is capped at 90% of the price, with a 5% completion security owed to you at the first instalment (§ 650m).

The same law sets a ceiling you must not cross. Holding more than your market allows adds no protection and creates a danger: a retention above the statutory limit is a position a contractor can take to court and win, which hands them the leverage the retention was there to give you. Where a market caps what you may withhold below the 10% floor, the cap wins. In the Netherlands the new-build depot is fixed at 5% (BW art. 7:768); on a renovation there is no statutory depot, so the retention is only what your assignment names and the 10% floor stands. In Sweden and Finland the right to withhold is proportionate to the defect, so once the work is otherwise delivered, hold against the open snag rather than the full sum. Elsewhere, where a market sets no figure you can point to, hold only what an open defect plainly justifies, not a number you picked.

None of this replaces the written schedule. Statutes and guidance set floors and ceilings that differ by job type and market; the schedule in your assignment is what makes the structure enforceable on your job, wherever it is.

The schedule, worked out

Daan accepts a EUR 5,800 quote for a partial roof replacement, the middle of three. Roof tiles are a large share of a roofing job’s cost, so the full 30% advance, tied to the tile order, earns its place; on a labour-heavy job the same slot would hold 10%.

Tranche	Trigger	Amount
Advance, 30%	Tile and underlay ordered; advance matched to the supplier’s payment terms	EUR 1,740
Progress, 30%	Old covering stripped, underlay and battens complete	EUR 1,740
Progress, 30%	Tiles laid, ridge set	EUR 1,740
Retention, 10%	Inspector sign-off, snags closed, site cleared	EUR 580

A roof is work Daan cannot judge himself, so the inspector comes twice, at about EUR 500 a visit and his own expense, budgeted alongside the job from the start. The first visit is the higher-value one: it checks the underlay and its upstands while the battens are open, before the tiles close over the layer that keeps the roof watertight. That open state is what the first progress tranche releases against. The second visit is named in the assignment as the step that releases the retention; booked for the week the tiling finishes, while the scaffolding is still up, it finds the chimney flashing dressed short of the manufacturer’s instructions and offcuts left in the gutter run. Under the clause, each shortfall is corrected at the contractor’s cost that same week; then the EUR 580 moves. At no point was Daan’s money ahead of the work, and the snag list closed because EUR 580 stood behind it.

Keep the signed schedule, the order confirmation, the tranche receipts, and the sign-off report together with the component they cover. If the flashing leaks in year two, you open the warranty conversation from what was agreed, paid, and signed off. appkeep holds those documents against the component, so that conversation starts from the file rather than from a search through two years of email.

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Related guides

• How to compare contractor quotes: the process that produces the quote this schedule attaches to.
• How to read a contractor quote: what to check, including extras pricing, before you accept.
• When to hire a building inspector: the sign-off that releases the retention.
• What your warranty actually covers: what the stated periods are worth after handover.
• How to set a mandate: the ceiling for extras found during the work, and the tool for corrective repairs.

Glossary terms used in this guide

• Glossary: Retention: the held-back tranche defined.
• Glossary: Mandate: the budget ceiling for extras.
• Glossary: Inspector: the independent check the release rides on.