Selling something expensive puts you in a bad corner. Ask for the full amount upfront and you lose sales — people who would happily commit still hesitate when the invoice lands as one big number. Start the work for free and you lose money — custom furniture, made-to-order goods, and event catering all burn time and materials before the final payment arrives.
The industry's usual answer is a deposit. That part is fine. The way most stores actually implement deposits on Wix is not.
They invent a product called “50% Deposit,” sell that instead of the real item, then chase the balance later with invoices, spreadsheets, or a second fake product. Tax is wrong. Inventory is wrong. Reports are wrong. And when someone asks what the customer actually ordered, the answer lives in a Slack thread.
That is the problem Order Deposits was built to solve: let buyers pay a deposit and the balance later — on one real order — with the books still intact.
The fake-product trap
Placeholder deposit products feel clever the first time you set them up. They are not. They quietly break the parts of your store that are supposed to be automatic.
Tax engines see a $500 “deposit” line item, not a $1,500 cabinet. Inventory never decrements for the real SKU. Revenue reports show half-sales that are not half-sales. Shipping and fulfillment tools think the order is complete when only the deposit cleared. Support has to reconstruct the real purchase from notes.
None of that is a checkout problem. It is an order-model problem. The platform recorded the wrong thing because the merchant was forced to sell the wrong thing.
We did not want another workaround that looks tidy in a tutorial and falls apart the first time accounting asks a question. We wanted the order itself to stay honest: full merchandise total, correct tax, correct inventory, partly paid.
What a deposit should look like on the order
The buyer shops normally. At checkout they pick your deposit option. The full order is created with the real products, quantities, tax, shipping, and inventory impact — then marked partly paid.
The buyer pays the deposit right away. When the order is ready, you send a balance link. No second fake SKU. No manual card entry. No spreadsheet that only one person understands.
Some trades call this a down payment. The mechanics are the same: secure commitment now, collect the rest when the work or goods are ready, hold fulfillment until you are paid in full.
Terms are not optional
Deposits create arguments when the wording is vague. What is refundable? When is the balance due? What happens if the buyer disappears after you start fabrication?
Order Deposits requires buyers to accept your deposit terms before paying. The acceptance is recorded with a timestamped copy of the exact wording shown. That is not legal theater for its own sake — it is a shared record of what both sides agreed to at the moment money moved.
You can keep a simple store-wide rule, or set terms and deposit amounts more carefully as you grow. The important part is that the policy travels with the payment, not with a buried FAQ page nobody opened.
Balance tracking beats memory
High-ticket orders fail in quiet ways. Someone marks an order fulfilled because the workshop finished the piece. Someone ships because the packing slip looked complete. Nobody noticed the balance was still open.
So the app tracks outstanding balances and surfaces fulfillment warnings before you ship with money still owed. The goal is not to police your staff. It is to make the unpaid state impossible to miss at the moment it matters.
What it is not
Order Deposits is a deposit tool, not a lending product and not buy-now- pay-later. Goods are held until paid in full. Deposits are calculated on the merchandise subtotal, so the amount shown before checkout is the amount charged for the deposit itself — not a surprise later.
That distinction matters for merchant expectations and for buyer trust. If you need installment financing, that is a different product category with different regulations. We stayed inside the deposit job.
Who it is for
Furniture and cabinetry. Custom fabrication. Made-to-order goods. Wedding and event vendors. Bakers. Artists. Contractors. Equipment sellers. Anyone whose order value is high enough that full prepayment kills conversion, and whose work is expensive enough that starting unpaid is reckless.
Setup is two one-time steps in the dashboard: enable a manual payment method named for deposits, and publish a Payment Request Page. The app walks you through both.
What it does
Concretely: customers choose your deposit option at checkout. The full order is recorded correctly and marked partly paid. Buyers get a deposit link immediately, accept your terms, and pay. You send the balance link when ready. Outstanding balances stay visible, with warnings before you fulfill unpaid orders.
It is live on the Wix App Market with a free tier.
Where it fits
This is the fourth app we have shipped for Wix, alongside Checkout Links, Extra Fees & Surcharges, and DeliverSure. Each takes a moment in the commerce flow that is more awkward than it needs to be. Checkout Links shortens the path to checkout. Extra Fees handles money that does not fit the product model. DeliverSure catches bad address data before it becomes a delivery problem. Order Deposits keeps high-ticket payments honest without wrecking the order record.
Baseplate Digital builds practical software for Wix and Shopify merchants. More field notes at The Build Log.