For a 3,000-piece sterling silver order released in three monthly shipments, the balance should be paid release by release, and that arrangement belongs in the purchase order before production starts. Use the standard trade split: a 30% deposit on the full order to buy materials and open the line, then a 70% balance for each release, calculated on the quantity actually invoiced in that shipment and paid only after you have verified that specific batch, for example against a batch video plus the final inspection records. Requiring the entire balance when batch one ships means paying 70% of an order you have mostly not seen, and it removes your leverage over the quality and delivery dates of releases two and three. Storage, insurance, currency conversion and bank fees for three payment cycles also need to be allocated in writing.
A 3,000-piece order split into three releases of 1,000 pieces is not one payment event; it is three shipments that share a single deposit. Silver moissanite jewelry manufacturers such as Amara Jeweiry, a factory in Shenzhen’s Luohu district since 2010, quote the same baseline: a 30% deposit to start production and the 70% balance before shipment, settled by T/T bank transfer. On a single-shipment order, “before shipment” is unambiguous. On a three-release order, it is ambiguous by design: before the first shipment, or before each shipment? The payment clause in your purchase order exists to remove exactly that ambiguity, and a factory that will not define it in writing is telling you something before you have wired a cent.
The increment most buyers miss is that the balance clause is not one sentence about percentages. For a three-release order it should define four things precisely:
Buyers without in-house contract staff can adapt this skeleton (a commercial template, not legal advice):
Writing this down is not legal theater: it converts “pay the balance before shipment” from a phrase two parties can interpret differently into a schedule both sides can plan and audit against.
Understand the request before you refuse it. When a small workshop commits to 3,000 pieces, it buys silver, stones and plating capacity against the deposit alone. Its working capital stays underwater for months while batches two and three sit finished on its shelves. Demanding the entire balance at first shipment is the workshop hedging against you, not against production risk.
Accepting it is expensive: you finance the whole order while holding a third of it, your leverage over batch two and three quality disappears, and if release three quietly slips, your money has already left. If the factory genuinely cannot carry finished stock, negotiate a middle structure instead of conceding: a higher deposit, for example forty to fifty percent instead of thirty, in exchange for strict per-release settlement, or a balance-per-release schedule paired with a capped and defined storage fee. What you should not accept is the asymmetry of paying everything at shipment one with no enforceable schedule for shipments two and three.
Finished goods do not warehouse themselves. If batch two is ready in month two but you take delivery in month three, someone is paying for shelf space, secure storage for 2,000 pieces of finished silver, and insurance against fire, moisture and theft while they wait.
Allocate it in the same clause. A structure buyers can defend: a free storage window per batch, counted from the date that batch passes inspection; a capped weekly or monthly storage fee beyond the window; and the seller bearing risk of loss or damage to finished stock until each batch is handed to the carrier, because until then the goods remain under the seller’s control, the same logic behind Amara’s batch-video practice: goods stay with the seller until the buyer confirms the video and inspection records conform. Ask your insurer whether finished goods awaiting release at the factory are covered by your cargo policy or remain the seller’s risk; the answer varies by policy and delivery term.
Delivery terms and payment terms are separate instruments. The Incoterms rules published by the International Chamber of Commerce, first issued in 1936, are eleven three-letter trade terms clarifying the tasks, costs and risks of delivering goods from sellers to buyers, recognized by UNCITRAL as the global standard for that purpose. They tell you when transport risk and cost transfer; they do not tell you when the balance falls due, which is exactly why your PO needs its own payment schedule alongside the delivery term.
Three balances mean three international transfers, each with its own costs: your bank’s outgoing wire fee, intermediary correspondent charges, and the receiver-side fee if the seller’s bank deducts one. Each balance also differs in amount unless the releases are equal in quantity and unit price, so your books show three separate settlements of one order.
Handle the mechanics in the clause, not in last-minute wire instructions:
Per-release settlement is also the enforcement mechanism, and its strongest justification. A balance paid per batch, against per-batch evidence, keeps every release on the same leash as the first. Make the verification pack identical for all three releases:
Each release’s balance follows its own evidence: conforming pack, then payment, then shipment; non-conforming pack, no balance for that release, remedies settled in writing, the other two releases unaffected unless the failure is systemic. Staged releases quietly beat single shipments here: you inspect batch one against a 15-to-25-day production run, and any correction feeds into batch two before it is made, not after all 3,000 pieces exist.
Yes. The split does not change; its timing does. The published terms remain thirty percent deposit to start and seventy percent balance before shipment by T/T. In a three-release PO, “before shipment” is defined per release: seventy percent of each release’s invoiced value, triggered by that release’s verification pack, not by the first shipment alone.
You do not pay that release’s balance until the non-conformity is corrected or a written remedy is agreed. Because the deposit funded materials for the whole order and each balance falls due only on conforming evidence, the factory still holds inventory it has not been fully paid for, which keeps both sides at the table. The retest-cost default keeps the argument short: the factory pays when the retest confirms a failure, and you pay when it confirms a pass.
Only if all three batches have already passed verification, and you accept financing the entire order ahead of receiving all of it. Saving one or two wire fees is trivial next to holding no leverage over the last two releases.
Not when the factory plans for it. An initial run takes 15 to 25 days and a reorder run 10 to 15 days, and with molds and CAD kept free for three years, batches two and three pay no tooling again. The schedule risk sits in the release dates, so those dates and their delay remedies belong in the PO, batch by batch.
Split releases with per-release balances are normal commerce, not a favor to request nervously. State in your RFQ that the 3,000-piece order ships in three monthly releases, that the deposit is thirty percent of the full order, and that each release’s balance is seventy percent of its invoiced value against that release’s verification pack. Ask the factory to confirm the same structure on its sales contract before you wire the deposit. A manufacturer that accepts those terms in writing, backed by batch videos, AQL records and per-lot test reports, has told you how it treats the last seventy percent of every order; a factory that answers “full balance at first shipment” has told you something too. Amara’s programme grossiste, with its thirty-percent-deposit terms and a thirty-piece minimum order, styles and sizes mixable, is one place to test the structure on a smaller order before committing 3,000 pieces to it.
