Get paid immediately, not weeks later once you've chased it. How it works: with payment escrow, the customer funds the whole job up front, before the work even starts – so the moment they sign off a milestone, the payment lands. No invoice to send, no "sorry, can it wait till payday".
The money is held by an FCA-authorised payment provider and released to you as each milestone is approved, so you stop being the one left waiting to be paid for work you've already done.
Below: why the wait happens now, what escrow costs, and what to do when a customer drags their feet.
Why do tradespeople wait so long to get paid?
Because the standard arrangement has you working as an unsecured lender. You buy the materials, do the work, invoice at the end, and then the money is in the customer's hands until they choose to send it. Every lever at that point is soft: a reminder text, an awkward phone call, a "just waiting on payday" you can't verify.
On homeowner jobs it's softer still. The statutory late payment regime – 8% over base rate and fixed compensation under the Late Payment of Commercial Debts (Interest) Act 1998 – applies to business-to-business work, not consumer jobs [1], so unless you've written interest into your own terms, a homeowner who pays six weeks late costs you six weeks of cash flow and nothing happens to them. (Our guide to what payment terms a tradesperson should use covers how to tighten that up on ordinary jobs.)
And underneath the timing problem is a worse one you can't see from the outside: whether the customer can pay at all. An invoice sent after the work is done is a question you've already bet the job on.
How does escrow change when you get paid?
Escrow reverses the order: the money moves before the work, and the release follows the work. When a customer accepts an escrow quote on Renofy, they pay the full job value into escrow before you start. The funds are held by OPP, an FCA-authorised payment provider – not by Renofy, and no longer by the customer – and each milestone's payment is released to you as that milestone is approved.
That changes three things at once:
- The money is proven before you lift a tool. A funded escrow account is not a promise or a mood – the full project value left the customer's account before day one.
- Payment follows approval, not an invoice cycle. Finish the milestone, submit it, customer approves – the payout is triggered then, not 30 days later.
- The last payment is as safe as the first. The final-balance haggle – "I'll pay the rest once you've come back and looked at this scratch" – loses its leverage when the balance is already committed and tied to defined milestones.
How do you prove the work is done?
With evidence, not assertion. When you finish a milestone on Renofy, you submit it with photos and notes showing what's been completed – the boarding up before it's plastered over, the finished second fix, the tiled bathroom. That submission is what the customer reviews, and it stays on record.
This is worth doing even before you care about payment speed. Payment rows are rarely about money alone – they're about whether the work is "done". A photo record made at the moment of completion turns that from an argument into a look at the pictures, and if a dispute ever does get formal, your evidence is already sitting there, timestamped, rather than being reconstructed from memory a month later.
What if the customer sits on the approval?
They can't sit on it indefinitely – the review window has a clock. Once you submit a milestone, the customer has 7 days to respond. Approve, and the payment is released. Request changes, and the milestone pauses while you put the work right and resubmit. Do nothing, and after 7 days the milestone is treated as approved and the payment is released anyway. Silence stops being a payment strategy.
If the customer genuinely disputes the work, the process is structured rather than a stand-off. Both sides make their case with the milestone evidence on record; an independent reviewer with relevant experience can be appointed to look at it, with the cost split equally between the two sides; and the held funds are released or refunded based on that review. A dispute also can't be left to drift – the funds stay held while it's open, and each step has a set period with reminders before it runs out. Compare that with the alternative on an ordinary job: a customer who simply stops answering, and a county court claim as your only lever.
What does it cost?
A 2% platform fee on escrow payouts, deducted from each milestone payment as it's released – on a £2,500 milestone, £50, with £2,450 landing with you. There's no fee on anything refunded to the customer, no separate payment-provider charge, and it's free for your customer.
Price it like you price everything else: against the alternative. Two percent buys out the invoice chase, proves the customer's money is real before you commit materials and weeks of labour, and puts an evidence-backed process behind the payments instead of your patience. One final invoice that never gets paid costs more than the fee on a year of escrow jobs.
Getting set up takes a few minutes inside Renofy, and from then on offering escrow is one choice on the quote you already send: pick escrow as the payment method, and the customer accepts it along with the price. For how that lands with customers – and why it wins work rather than complicating it – see why offering escrow payments wins you more jobs.
With Renofy, the customer's money is in escrow before you start and each milestone pays out as it's approved – photo-backed, with a 7-day review clock, for a 2% fee on payouts. Stop invoicing and start getting paid when you finish.
References
- Late Payment of Commercial Debts (Interest) Act 1998 – statutory interest and compensation apply to qualifying commercial contracts, not to contracts with consumers. https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1998/20/contents