Contractor Payment Tracker

Deposits, stages, retentions & what's owed · 2026

The short version: a contractor payment tracker keeps every deposit, stage payment, final invoice and retention straight, per contractor, so you never pay ahead of the work, never lose track of what's owed, and can settle up at the end with a clear record. Here's what to track and how to keep it honest.

Renovation payments rarely happen in one go. A typical job runs on a deposit up front, staged payments as work completes, a final balance on handover, and sometimes a retention held back for a few weeks against snags. Spread across several trades, that's a lot of moving money — and "I thought I'd already paid you for that" is one of the most common (and expensive) disputes on a build. A simple tracker prevents it.

What to track for each contractor

Field	Why it matters
Agreed total	The committed price — what you owe in full once the work is done.
Deposit	Paid up front; note the date and what it covers.
Stage payments	Each amount, the milestone it's tied to, and the date paid.
Paid to date	The running total actually paid out.
Outstanding	Agreed total − paid to date = what's still owed.
Retention	Any amount held back, and when it's due for release.

Keep these per contractor and you can answer the two questions that matter at any moment: have I paid ahead of the work? and what do I still owe this trade?

The golden rule: pay for progress, not promises

The single most useful habit is to tie every payment to work that's actually done. A deposit is normal; paying a large stage payment before the milestone is reached is how homeowners end up out of pocket if a contractor walks or under-delivers. Track committed money (the agreed price) separately from paid money, and let the gap — what's still owed — be the number you watch. Paying slightly behind progress keeps the leverage on your side.

Common mistakes

No written payment schedule. Agree the deposit, stages and final split in writing before work starts.
Paying ahead of milestones. If the cash is out and the work isn't done, you've lost your leverage.
Forgetting retention. Money held back for snags is easy to lose track of — note the release date.
Logging payments "later". The merchant deposit you paid on site gets recorded days later, and the picture drifts out of date.
No paper trail. Keep receipts and a dated record; it's your evidence if there's ever a dispute.

Spreadsheet vs a real tracker

A spreadsheet can hold this if you're disciplined, but it doesn't follow you to site, won't show what you owe across every trade at a glance, and can't produce a clean statement to share with a contractor when you reconcile. That's where a purpose-built tracker earns its place.

Track contractor payments in Storypole

Storypole records each contractor's agreed price (committed) and every payment against it, shows outstanding per trade and per project, and can generate a statement of account — a dated ledger of paid, committed and outstanding — to share or settle up. Free for one project, on your device, works offline.

Try Storypole — free