How Much Deposit Should a Tradesman Ask For? (UK Guide)

How much deposit should a tradesman ask for? The short answer: enough to cover what you would actually lose if the customer cancelled, and not a penny that looks like a punishment. In practice that lands at a small fixed booking fee for little jobs and somewhere in the commonly seen 10-25% range for bigger ones, with materials-heavy work at the top of the range and labour-only work at the bottom. This post is about the amount. If your question is how to take one (the wording, the timing, the terms), that is a different post, and we wrote it here: how to take a deposit before a job. Read this one first, then that one.

The one principle that sets the number

Ask yourself: if this customer cancelled tomorrow morning, what have I actually lost?

That is the whole game. A deposit is not a fee for the privilege of hiring you, and it is not a tax on customers for being customers. It is cover for your real exposure: the slot you held and turned other work away from, the materials you ordered for their job, the time you have already spent. Price the deposit to that exposure and you are being fair, you are on solid legal ground, and you can explain the number without blushing. Price it above that and you have drifted from deposit to penalty, and UK consumer law treats those two very differently.

The Consumer Rights Act 2015 is the backdrop here. Its list of terms that may be unfair specifically flags making a consumer pay a disproportionately high sum when they cancel. Plain English: keep a fair deposit that reflects real loss and you are fine. Keep an amount miles above your real loss and the term can be challenged as unfair and unenforceable. The law is not against deposits. It is against penalties wearing a deposit's clothes.

Commonly seen ranges, by job type

These are not rules and nobody hands out a tariff. They are the ranges you see across UK trades, and the logic underneath each one.

Small jobs and callouts: a flat booking fee, not a percentage. A tap washer, a fault-find, a small repair. Ten percent of a £150 job is £15, which is barely worth the admin. A flat fee (commonly seen in the £20 to £50 bracket, set against your callout economics) does the real job here, which is making the booking serious so you do not drive to an empty house. If you already charge a callout fee, the deposit and the callout can simply be the same money. We covered that overlap in should you charge a callout fee on small jobs.

Labour-heavy jobs: the lower end, commonly 10-15%. A day or two of your time, minimal materials. Your real exposure is the held diary time, so the deposit mostly exists to confirm commitment. If the job cancels with notice, you may even refill the slot, which is exactly why the fair number here is modest.

Materials-heavy jobs: the upper end, commonly 15-25%. A boiler ordered for one address. A bathroom suite. Made-to-measure anything. Here the deposit is covering real cash you are about to lay out, so a bigger number is honest, and most customers understand it when you say the words "that covers the boiler I am ordering for you".

Big or bespoke jobs: staged payments beat one big deposit. On multi-week work some firms ask for much more up front, but a large single deposit makes savvy customers nervous, and consumer advice bodies tell homeowners to be wary of it. The structure that protects both sides is stages: a modest deposit to book, a materials payment when you actually order, then the balance on completion or in agreed chunks. You are never far out of pocket, and the customer is never funding work that has not happened.

The customer's side of the table

Two things your customer may know, and you should too.

The 14-day cooling-off period. Under the Consumer Contracts Regulations 2013, when a consumer books you at a distance or off-premises (phone, text, online, or agreed at their kitchen table), they usually have 14 days to cancel and get their money back. If they want you to start inside those 14 days, get that request in writing, because then you can charge for work already done even if they cancel. For deposits this matters: a deposit taken today is not fully yours until that window closes or work has begun at their request.

Deposit protection exists, and informed customers ask about it. Some trade association memberships and competent person schemes include deposit protection or insurance-backed guarantees through FCA-regulated providers, which protect the customer's deposit if a firm ceases trading. Schemes commonly cap cover at around a quarter of the contract price. You do not have to offer it, but on bigger jobs a customer who has done their reading may expect a deposit in that sort of proportion, and may push back on anything that looks outsized. A deposit inside the commonly seen ranges rarely gets questioned. An outlier does.

One more honesty note: none of this is legal advice, and edge cases (commercial customers, insurance work, disputes) have their own rules. For anything contested, Citizens Advice for the consumer view and your own solicitor for yours.

Two amounts that cause trouble

Worth naming the two numbers that generate most deposit disputes, because both are avoidable.

Half up front, asked at the first visit. Whatever the trade, 50% before any materials are ordered reads as "funding my business with your money", and it is the pattern consumer bodies warn homeowners about most. If your cash flow genuinely needs that much that early, the honest structure is a materials invoice at the point you order, itemised, not a giant deposit on day one.

The round number that maps to nothing. £500 on a £1,800 job, because it sounded right. When the customer asks what it covers and the answer is a shrug, you have handed them the argument. Every deposit should survive the question "what is this for?" with a one-sentence answer: the slot, the boiler, the bathroom suite. If yours cannot, change the number until it can.

When not to take a deposit at all

A deposit is a tool, not a doctrine. Skip it when the maths or the relationship says so.

• Repeat customers with a good record. Mrs Patel has paid on the day for nine years. Asking her for a deposit now costs goodwill and buys you nothing.
• Genuine emergencies. Water through the ceiling is not a booking, it is a rescue. Charge a clear callout rate instead. Asking for a deposit at 2am reads badly and slows the job down.
• Jobs too small to bother. If the deposit admin costs more than the no-show risk, let it go or fold it into a callout fee.
• When you cannot say what it covers. If you cannot finish the sentence "the deposit covers..." with something real, the honest amount is zero. Take deposits where you have exposure, not everywhere by reflex.

Collecting it without awkwardness

The amount and the ask are linked: a fair number stated confidently at the moment of booking gets paid without a second thought, and the same number requested apologetically three days later starts a negotiation. The mechanics matter too. The businesses that collect deposits most smoothly take them at the booking itself, by payment link or card, so commitment and slot are one event.

This is the layer where OptiTech Automation sits, so one plain paragraph on it. When a customer books through your OptiTech Automation booking page, the deposit is taken at the moment of booking and lands in your own Stripe account. The platform takes 0% of it, your rule (flat fee or percentage) is applied consistently to every booking, and the amount comes off the final bill. What it does not do is decide your number for you: the ranges above are your call to make for your trade and your jobs. The detail is on the deposit software for trades page. And the honest line: if you take two bookings a week and know every customer by name, you do not need software for this, a payment link from your bank app does the job.

The short version

• Set the deposit to your real exposure: held time plus ordered materials, nothing punitive.
• Commonly seen: modest flat booking fees on small jobs, 10-15% labour-heavy, 15-25% materials-heavy, staged payments on big work.
• Respect the 14-day cooling-off rule on remote and doorstep bookings, and get "start now" requests in writing.
• Expect informed customers to know about deposit protection on bigger jobs, and keep your number inside the range you can justify out loud.
• Skip deposits for trusted repeats, true emergencies and trivial jobs.

For how to word it, quote it and keep it enforceable, go next to the how-to post. For how booking and deposits fit together across a trade business, the guide walks the whole picture.