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Working with deposits

A deposit turns a signed proposal into a committed job. When you require one, the homeowner pays it by card or bank transfer on the proposal page and the money routes to your connected bank account. Your deposit rule lives in Settings → Money; your payout account in Settings → Wallet. Both are admin-only.

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1. Set your deposit rule

  1. Open Settings → Money.
  2. Turn on the Deposit toggle — “Require an upfront payment from your customers to secure their projects.”
  3. Pick how the deposit is calculated:
    • Fixed Amount — the same dollar amount on every project.
    • Percentage — a percentage of the project total.
    • Custom Formula — a rule based on the project subtotal, for policies a single number can’t express (for example, a percentage with a cap).
  4. Save.
The rule is account-wide. On each proposal, XBuild computes the amount from the homeowner’s current selections and recalculates live as they change the estimate or add-ons. The homeowner sees a Deposit due today line under the total, with the percentage shown when your rule is percentage-based. Deposits are only collected once your payment account can accept charges (step 4). Until then, proposals go out without a deposit line even with the toggle on.

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2. How the homeowner pays

After typing their signature, the homeowner clicks Proceed to Payment and lands in a secure checkout for the deposit amount — marked “Secured by Stripe”; XBuild never sees the card or bank details. They can pay by card or from a US bank account:
  • Card — the payment goes through right away and the homeowner sees Payment Successful!
  • Bank transfer (ACH) — the transfer takes 3–7 business days to clear. The homeowner sees Payment Processing instead, and there’s nothing more for them to do.
  • Bank account that needs verifying — if the homeowner enters their bank details by hand, Stripe makes a small deposit into the account within 1–2 business days and the homeowner confirms it before any money moves. They see Verify your bank account with a Verify bank account button, and the same prompt whenever they reopen their link until it’s done.
Once the payment clears:
  • The homeowner gets a receipt email with the amount, description, and date, and you’re notified the payment came in.
  • The proposal moves from Signed to Funded — see E-signatures and authorization.
  • If the project is linked to a QuickBooks customer, the deposit posts to QuickBooks as an unapplied payment — see the QuickBooks connector.
The cart, deposit line, and checkout as the homeowner sees them are in What your customer sees.

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3. One deposit per project

XBuild takes one deposit per project. Once a deposit is paid — or a bank transfer is still clearing — on any version of the proposal, the proposal page won’t take another one. This keeps a homeowner from paying twice while a bank transfer clears, or paying again on a newer version.
  • A homeowner who comes back to a proposal they already signed sees “A deposit for this project has already been paid.” — or “A deposit for this project is being processed.” while a bank transfer clears — and no Pay button. If their bank account still needs verifying, they’re asked to verify it instead, with a link.
  • If you publish a new version, the homeowner signs it without a payment step and gets the signed copy by email instead of a “Deposit due” request. Under Final authorization your authorized signers are asked to approve right away — see E-signatures and authorization.
  • A deposit you refund in full no longer counts, so the homeowner can pay again. A partial refund still counts as the project’s deposit.
Tip: If a new version raises the deposit, the difference can’t be collected through the proposal page yet — collect it another way.

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4. Connect your bank account in the Wallet

The Accept customer payments section of Settings → Wallet routes homeowner deposits to you. You must be an organization admin.
  1. Click Enable Payment Account and complete the embedded setup — business details and identity verification, handled by Stripe.
  2. Add your bank account details. You can finish the business-details step first and link the bank later — the button reads Complete setup → until everything is in.
XBuild emails your admins at each stage: Deposits collected before your bank is linked are not lost — they’re held securely, and the moment your account goes Active the held funds begin paying out automatically.

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5. Track balances and payments

Once you’re collecting payments, the Wallet’s Customer payments section shows your current and pending balance, payout history and schedule, and every payment received with its details, including refund and dispute handling. The Wallet’s other sections — XBuild payment methods and Billing email addresses — cover how you pay XBuild, not how customers pay you. See Invoices and receipts.

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6. Troubleshooting common issues

  • My proposals aren’t showing a deposit. Two switches must be on: the Deposit toggle in Settings → Money, and a payment account in Settings → Wallet that has reached at least the charges-active stage. The deposit also only appears once the homeowner has selected an estimate — no selection, no total to calculate from.
  • A homeowner paid but I don’t see money in my bank. A bank transfer takes 3–7 business days to clear before it pays out. Otherwise, check your Wallet status. If your bank isn’t linked or is pending verification, the funds are held and pay out automatically once you’re Active. If you’re Active, check the payout schedule in Customer payments — payouts batch on a schedule rather than landing instantly.
  • Stripe is asking me for information, or my payouts are paused. Stripe sometimes needs more from you before it can keep paying out — for example, a new proof of bank account ownership when the one on file is more than a year old. When it does, a banner appears above Customer payments in Settings → Wallet saying what’s needed. Open it and submit the information right there — Stripe may first send you a one-time code to confirm it’s you. Payouts resume once Stripe accepts it. Only admins see the banner.
  • The deposit amount looks wrong on a proposal. It’s computed from the homeowner’s current selections. If they switched estimate options or removed add-ons, the deposit moved with the total. Percentage rules show the percentage next to the amount; fixed and formula rules show the amount alone.
  • The homeowner says there’s no Pay button. The project already has a deposit paid, a bank transfer still clearing, or a bank account waiting to be verified — the top of the page says which. If it’s waiting on verification, they finish it from the Verify bank account link. You’ll see the payment in Settings → Wallet → Customer payments. If the bank transfer fails, or you refund the deposit in full, the Pay button comes back.
  • A new version is Signed, not Funded. The deposit was collected on an earlier version, so the new version doesn’t take another one and stays Signed. The project itself still shows as Funded in your projects list and pipeline.
  • The earlier version’s bank transfer failed after the new version was signed. The new version stays Signed with no deposit, and nobody is notified yet. The homeowner’s Pay button comes back on their link, so ask them to reopen it and pay.
  • Can the homeowner pay some other way? The proposal collects the deposit by card or bank transfer through the secure checkout. Payments taken outside XBuild (cash, check) won’t move the proposal to Funded automatically.
  • The deposit didn’t show up in QuickBooks. Sync requires the project to be linked to a QuickBooks customer and payment sync enabled on the connector. See QuickBooks for the held-deposit retry flow.
For further assistance, contact XBuild Support at support@x.build.