Placing a hold on a month costs nothing. After the discovery call, if we both agree the engagement is a fit, a deposit confirms your booking: it locks your start month and your team, and takes that capacity off the market for everyone else. Until the deposit is received (or waived), the booking remains a hold.
The deposit is a commitment marker, not an extra cost: it is credited in full against your first month's invoice (section 3).
We may waive the deposit at our discretion: for example, for an established client. A waived deposit confirms the booking the same way, and nothing in these terms about refunds or forfeiture applies to it.
2. Amount and payment
The deposit is 20% of the total cost of the first booked month, and is stated in your proposal. Amounts are in Australian dollars unless we agree otherwise, and exclusive of GST.
Payment is by invoice and bank transfer. We don't process card payments and never ask for card details.
The deposit is due after the discovery call, once we've agreed the engagement is a fit, never before. Your services agreement is signed as part of the same onboarding.
3. What the deposit covers
One deposit covers one engagement: a contiguous run of booked months. It attaches to the first month and is credited in full against that month's invoice.
Back-to-back extensions of a confirmed booking never need another deposit.
A new booking that isn't contiguous with an existing one is a new engagement and carries its own deposit.
4. Refunds and forfeiture
If you cancel your whole booking before it starts, your deposit is forfeited. By then the month has been held off the market for you through the window in which someone else could have booked it. This applies whenever the cancellation happens; there is no cut-off or grace period for a new engagement's deposit.
Once your engagement has started, the deposit has already been credited against your first invoice, so there is nothing to refund or forfeit; cancellation of later months is governed by the notice rules in our Terms, which affect invoicing only, never the deposit.
Shortening a booking (cancelling later months while keeping earlier ones) never affects the deposit.
5. If we cancel
If we cancel a confirmed booking before it starts, or can't deliver the booked month, your deposit is refunded in full, promptly; or, if you prefer, credited to a rebooked month. This is the only case your deposit is ever refunded.
6. The queue and deposits
Joining the queue for a full month costs nothing and creates no obligation. If we offer you a slot and you accept, that places a normal hold: the usual discovery-call and deposit steps then follow. Declining an offer keeps your place in the queue and never involves a deposit.
7. Relationship to other documents
These deposit terms sit alongside our website Terms and your signed services agreement. If they conflict, the signed agreement prevails, then these deposit terms, then the website Terms. Nothing in these terms excludes any consumer guarantee, right, or remedy that cannot be excluded under the Australian Consumer Law.
8. General
These terms are governed by the laws of Western Australia.
We may update these terms from time to time; the version in force when your deposit is invoiced applies to that deposit. The current version lives at yellowace.com/deposit-terms.
Questions: ask us through the contact form at yellowace.com/contact.