Booking with a partial payment or initial deposit allows you to go through a project without paying the total balance up front.
Currently, Partial Payments/Deposits are a setting that must be turned on by your engineer in their service settings for it to be available upon booking.
If offered, the Partial Payment feature enables you to book and complete your mix/master projects without the burden of submitting upfront payment in full. You get to book and start the project with an initial minimum deposit (amount specified by the engineer), and then pay the invoice remainder at the final review or download stage of the project. This lowers the financial barrier for you to get a booked project started, while ensuring your engineer gets paid for their completed work, a fair exchange for both parties.
1. Engineer Opt-In
The Partial Payment feature can be turned ON or OFF for each type of service. At the discretion of the engineer, it means they can allow partial payments for mastering services they offer, but not for mixing services, as an example.
Note: When booking a service and you are unable to find the partial payment option during checkout 'Pay $x Now, and $x Later', it means the engineer you are booking has not opted into enabling the Partial Payments feature.
2. Booking
Click 'Book Now' on the service package you wish to pay for from your engineer.
Fill out all necessary details like song title, scheduled release date, service type, alts, and you can also indicate that your engineer already has your files. Once everything looks right click 'Check Out'. This will bring you to payment options.
3. Payment Options (Initial Deposit)
When the payment options pop up, you will notice an orange button at the bottom to 'Check Out' at full price and a white button that say 'Pay $x Now, and $x Later'.
Click this button to pay the specified minimum initial deposit to begin the project (this amount is specified by your engineer and ranges between 25%-75% of the project total). Later on, you can pay the remainder of the balance upon project completion when reviewing or accessing final deliverables from your engineer.
4. Project Permissions (Pay Remaining Balance)
During the review stage or accessing final deliverables at the completion of the project, you will be prompted to pay the remaining balance for the project's total invoiced amount.
NOTE: the below images shows the different project permissions you will encounter when you will be invoiced the project's remaining balance as final payment to completing your project.
The project permission depends on how the engineer has arranged the final payment requirement step for their services. Your engineer may require final payment before you can listen to the finished mix/master, before you can request revisions to the finished mix/master, or before you can download final asset files for the approved mix/master.
Permission 1: Mix/master playback not allowed without payment
You must first pay the invoice in order to listen to the uploaded mix/master in the project player
Permission 2: Mix/master playback allowed before payment
You are able to listen to the track in the player and provide time-stamped comments; but must first pay the invoice in order to request a revision or to approve the uploaded mix/master in the project.
Permission 3: Reviews and revisions allowed before payment
You are able to listen to the track, request revisions and approve the mix/master; but must first pay the invoice in order to download asset files after the engineer has uploaded the final deliverables.
Once payment has been submitted in full, you will be able to proceed with accessing the project's deliverables.