The common answer is 25 to 50 percent of the total, taken as a non-refundable retainer at booking, with the balance due somewhere between the week before and the day of the shoot. Weddings sit at the lower end of that range because the absolute numbers are larger. Portrait sessions often just take a flat 50 to 150.
That is the easy part. The money actually leaks somewhere else: in the reschedule you allowed three times, the date you held for a fortnight on a promise, and the refund you gave because you had never written down what happens when someone cancels six weeks out.
What the deposit is actually paying for
This matters because it determines the number. A retainer is not an advance on your editing time. It compensates you for taking a date off the market, which is the one thing you cannot restock. Turn down two enquiries for the third of June, and the third of June is genuinely gone.
That framing tells you when a retainer is defensible and when it is not. A proportionate retainer, roughly matching what you plausibly lose by holding the date, is normal practice. A 90 percent non-refundable deposit taken eleven months out is the kind of term that gets challenged, and in a fair number of countries consumer protection rules will override whatever your contract says regardless of how firmly you worded it. Keeping it proportionate is the real protection, not capitalising NON-REFUNDABLE.
Two vocabulary notes worth adopting. Call it a retainer rather than a deposit in your paperwork, since "deposit" implies a part payment that comes back. And say what it buys in plain words: "this reserves your date and is non-refundable." Clients accept it far more easily when the sentence explains itself.
Set the number from your calendar, not from a template
Work it backwards from what a lost date costs you. If your average wedding is 3,000 and you shoot twenty five a year, an empty Saturday in June costs you 3,000 that you will not recover, because you cannot sell that Saturday twice. A 25 percent retainer covers a third of that. Fine, if the date is far enough out that you can rebook it.
For portraits the calculation is different. A weekday family session is easier to refill and worth less, so a flat retainer that covers your travel and your admin, usually 50 to 150, does the job without making the booking feel heavy.
The one rule that holds everywhere: the retainer should be large enough that cancelling costs the client something real. A retainer of 25 on a 900 session is a rounding error, and people cancel rounding errors without thinking.
If you have never worked out what an hour of your time is worth across the whole job, the hourly rate calculator is a faster way to get there than guessing, and it tends to move retainer numbers upward.
Write the refund ladder before you need it
The retainer answers what happens at booking. It says nothing about a client cancelling three weeks before the date, which is when the argument actually happens, because by then you have turned down other work and it is too late to refill.
A ladder solves this and takes four lines:
- More than 90 days before the date: retainer retained, nothing further owed.
- 30 to 90 days: retainer plus 50 percent of the remaining balance.
- Fewer than 30 days: the full fee is due.
- If the photographer cancels for any reason: everything paid is refunded in full, including the retainer.
That last line is not generosity, it is the clause that makes the rest look fair, and it is the first thing anyone reads for one-sidedness. Set your own thresholds if 30 and 90 do not match your market, but set them at booking rather than mid-dispute. The cancellation policy generator will write these clauses in plain English along with the weather and late arrival terms that usually get forgotten alongside them.
The reschedule clause is where the money quietly goes
Almost nobody cancels outright. They reschedule, and then they reschedule again, and each time the retainer politely follows them into a new date you could have sold to someone else.
Write it down explicitly: one reschedule permitted, at least 14 days notice, to a date within six months, subject to availability. A second reschedule requires a new retainer. Same for the client who wants to move a date twice inside a month because of a forecast.
A retainer that can be moved forever is not holding a date, it is a coupon.
The date is not held until the money lands
The most expensive habit in this whole subject is the verbal hold. A client says they will send it this week, you pencil them in, you turn away two enquiries, and three weeks later they have booked someone else and you never had a contract.
Say the sentence out loud at enquiry stage: the date is confirmed when the contract is signed and the retainer is paid, and until then it stays available. Then make that easy to do. Contract and payment in one link, signed and paid in the same sitting, ideally within a day of the conversation. Every extra step between "yes" and "paid" is somewhere the booking can die, and enthusiasm has a half life measured in hours, which is why fast, structured replies to enquiries convert so much better.
Take the money properly, and keep the paper trail
Card payments through a proper processor, not a bank transfer you have to chase and reconcile by hand. Cheaper in fees than a chargeback, and dramatically cheaper than the twenty emails.
If a dispute does arrive, what wins it is boring evidence: the signed contract with a timestamp, the terms the client agreed to, and the payment record. Keep all three together and attached to the booking rather than scattered across your inbox.
One thing worth raising with your accountant rather than guessing: in many places a retainer counts as income in the year you receive it, not the year you shoot. Take a run of large wedding retainers in November for the following summer and you can end up with a tax bill for work you have not done yet.
When to refund anyway
Have a policy, then keep the discretion to override it quietly. A family bereavement, a hospital admission, a genuinely unrecoverable situation: refunding in those cases costs you one retainer and buys you a reputation. Just do it privately, as an exception, without rewriting the policy in public.
What you should not do is negotiate the ladder every time someone pushes back. A policy applied inconsistently is not a policy, and word travels between clients faster than you expect.
Make it one moment, not three
The version that works is a single step: the client picks the date, reads the terms, signs, and pays the retainer in one sitting. Terms in front of them at the moment they pay, e-signature attached, date held only once the payment clears. That is how Xposure bookings sequence it, and the sequencing is the whole point, because a policy the client meets after something goes wrong prevents nothing.
None of this is about being tough with clients. It is about having already decided. The photographers who lose money here are almost never the ones with harsh terms, they are the ones improvising a fair answer under pressure while staring at an empty Saturday. Write the four lines, put them next to the deposit button, and the improvising stops. If your contract does not yet have the rest of this covered, the clauses every photography contract needs is the place to start.
