Payment schedule
The contract table that says exactly how much the client owes at each date or milestone, instead of leaving the whole fee until the end.
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What it is
A payment schedule is the contract table that says how much becomes payable, and when. The trigger can be a calendar date, contract signature, delivery of a named milestone, or another event both sides can verify. It is not the same as net terms: the schedule triggers the invoice, while Net 15 or Net 30 says how long the client has to pay that invoice.
Reach for one before any project where a single final invoice would leave you financing weeks of work. Construction has priced this way for decades: the contractor files an AIA G702 payment application each month for the percentage certified as complete, and nobody waits until the roof is on to get paid. Put the amount or percentage, the trigger, the invoice date, and the due date on every row. For milestone payments, connect each trigger to written acceptance criteria and state whether work pauses while an earlier invoice is overdue.
Gotcha: a schedule full of percentages can look complete while adding up to 90 or 110 percent. Check the arithmetic against the total fee, and do not tie the final payment to an event controlled entirely by the client, such as public launch. Tie it to your final delivery instead.
Ask AI for it
Draft a payment schedule for the project below. Output a table with invoice number, trigger, deliverable, acceptance criteria, amount, percentage of total fee, invoice date, and due date. Make every trigger observable, make the percentages total exactly 100, and tie the final payment to delivery rather than public launch. Then provide the matching Stripe Invoice settings for each row using `collection_method: send_invoice` and a concrete `due_date`, plus a contract paragraph stating that later work may pause while an earlier invoice is overdue.