Most used clothing payment disputes do not begin with a bad bale. They begin with money that left the buyer’s account before both sides had agreed, in writing, on what that money was buying.
This guide is about the payment structure of a used clothing order rather than the price of it. It covers what each transfer should release, which parts of an order you can verify from your desk and which you cannot, how much deposit is defensible on a first order, and how a bank-transfer order is actually structured. It puts a number on the deposit – 40% against the proforma invoice is the common starting point in this trade – and then spends the rest of the page on what that number has to be attached to before you send it, because the deposit only protects you when the order confirmation and the document set behind it are specific enough to check.
Quick Takeaways
- Payment terms are not a price negotiation. They decide what evidence you hold before each transfer leaves your account.
- Separate the order into what can be verified at a distance – documents, declared gross mass, packing records, container count – and what cannot, such as grade feel, brand mix or sellable yield. Then place your payments against the verifiable part.
- A deposit only means something when it sits behind a written order confirmation that names the category, the grade definition, the bale weight and the packing.
- A used clothing order is normally paid by bank transfer: a deposit against the proforma invoice, commonly 40%, and the balance when the order is completed.
- The riskiest step is often not the first deposit. It is the change of beneficiary details that arrives by email later in the order.
What Payment Terms Mean in a Used Clothing Order
Payment terms describe a sequence of releases rather than a single transaction. Each release should mark a point where the buyer’s exposure changes, and each one should be tied to something the buyer can inspect, read or compare.
The Three Moments Money Moves
Every import order contains three payment windows: a deposit before the goods are built, a balance against documents or before release, and any settlement after arrival. Suppliers compress or expand these windows differently, but the three moments exist in every version of the deal, and so do the failure patterns that follow them.
A deposit fails when nobody wrote down what it was buying. A balance fails when it is released against documents that describe the wrong goods, the wrong quantity or the wrong consignee. An arrival cannot be repaired by a payment clause at all, which is why the earlier two windows carry most of the risk.
Why Grade and Weight Behave Differently
Some parts of a used clothing order are measurements, and some are judgements. The measurements travel well: declared gross mass, container size, bale count, packing format, and the documents that describe them. A judgement does not travel well, because grade is applied by a sorting line to soft goods, against a definition that two buyers can read differently.
That difference is the reason to build a payment ladder. The sellable percentage method explains why a bale has no universal yield figure, and the damage guide explains why “not sellable” and “damaged” are not the same statement. Neither can be settled by bank transfer, and neither should be the milestone that releases your money.
The Milestone Ladder: What Each Payment Should Release
Read the ladder as a sequence of exposures. At each step you are deciding whether the next slice of money buys you more information than it costs you in risk.
Milestone 1: Inquiry and Specification
Nothing is paid while the specification is still being discussed. A supplier who asks for a deposit before stating what the order contains has given you the most useful information available at that stage – not about the goods, but about the process.
Milestone 2: Order Confirmation
The order confirmation is the document that gives a deposit meaning. Written properly, it names the product category, the grade definition, the bale weight and the packing, so that both sides can later compare what arrived against what was sold.
This is where Indetexx states the category, grade definition, bale weight and packing for the order being shipped. That sentence is what makes the deposit checkable, because it replaces “grade A” as a slogan with a definition you can hold against the bale specification sheet. The boundary matters as much as the sentence: a confirmation describes the order being built, and it is not a standing guarantee that a later booking will carry the same specification, weight or availability.
Milestone 3: The Deposit
A deposit buys capacity. It tells the sorting line to hold volume for your category and to build bales to your packing, and it compensates the supplier for work that cannot be sold to another buyer if you walk away. That is a legitimate purpose, and it is also the reason the deposit should be the smallest transfer that still gets your order built.
Before sending it, read the confirmation for four things: the exact product, the grade definition, the weight basis, and what happens if the shipping window moves. If any of those are missing, you are not being difficult by asking; you are fixing the only part of the deal you can hold in your hand later.
Milestone 4: Pre-Loading Evidence
The pre-loading stage is the last moment where a problem can still be corrected cheaply. Once the container is on the water, every mistake converts into a claim, a discount negotiation or a write-off.
Ask for the packing and loading records, the bale count, the declared gross mass and photographs of the load. Indetexx plans 20ft and 40ft loads from the order specification and issues the commercial invoice, packing list and loading record that travel with the container, which is the material your forwarder needs for the verified gross mass filing. What those records do not do is certify the contents of every bale – they document the load, not the grade inside it, which is why the remote inspection guide treats sampling as a separate exercise.
Milestone 5: Documents Against the Balance
The balance is usually the larger payment, and it is normally released against documents rather than against goods. That makes the document set the milestone, not the sailing date.
Check the bill of lading before the money moves. The consignee and notify party fields decide who can claim the cargo at the destination, and a consignee that does not match your company or your bank’s instruction is a problem that costs far more to fix after the vessel sails than before it loads. The import documents checklist lists the rest of the set, and the FOB versus CIF comparison explains which costs sit on your side under each term.
Milestone 6: Arrival and Settlement
No payment structure repairs an arrival. What a payment structure can do is preserve the evidence that makes a claim checkable: the confirmation, the packing and loading records, the documents, and a receiving inspection done within the window the carrier allows.
Use the receiving checklist for the first twenty-four hours, photograph what you find, and compare it against the order rather than against your memory of the sample. Settlement conversations go better when both sides are reading the same document.
Paying by Bank Transfer: What You Actually Confirm
Most used clothing orders move on bank transfer, usually written as T/T, and the protection does not come from the instrument itself. It comes from what you check before the money leaves and from what the money releases.
The Proforma Invoice and the Bank Account
The order starts with a proforma invoice that carries the supplier’s company details and the bank account for the deposit. Treat those two fields as the first thing you verify rather than the last. The account holder’s name should match the seller named on the order confirmation, and if a payment platform or an intermediary appears anywhere in the chain, ask who is receiving the money and on whose behalf before you send anything.
Deposit Plus Balance
A deposit against the proforma invoice plus a balance when the order is completed is the structure most used clothing orders are written on, and the 40% figure that circulates in this trade refers to the deposit share. The deposit funds the sorting, the packing and the documents for one buyer; the balance follows when those steps are finished. Its strength depends on how precisely the confirmation names the category, grade definition, bale weight and packing, which is why this article keeps returning to the specification rather than to the split.
Paying a Larger Deposit to Settle Later
If you want to hold the balance until after the goods have sailed – typically until the supplier sends a copy of the bill of lading rather than at order completion – expect the deposit share to rise, because the supplier is then carrying the risk for longer. A 50% deposit against a copy of the landing bill is the structure some buyers use for that trade, and it is a real exchange rather than a concession: you are buying time with cash. Ask for the exact split for your order in writing rather than assuming a market number.
Some buyers ask about a letter of credit or an escrow service. Both exist in international trade, and neither is universal in used clothing: many exporters work on bank transfer against a proforma invoice and do not accept a letter of credit at all, so confirm what your supplier actually accepts before you plan the order around an instrument. If a credit is available to you elsewhere, remember its limit – it pays against documents, and no bank adjudicates the feel of a bale.
How Much Deposit Is Reasonable
A 40% deposit against the proforma invoice is the common structure in this trade, and the honest question is not whether that number is normal but what it releases and what you hold if the order stops.
What the Deposit Actually Funds
A deposit covers the work that cannot be resold if the order is cancelled: capacity held on a sorting line, bales built to a specific packing, and documents prepared for one buyer. The more specific your order, the more real that cost is, and the easier it is for a supplier to justify a larger share up front.
Seen from the other side, the deposit is the buyer’s unsecured exposure. Your question is not only how much to send, but what you will hold if the order stops: a written specification, a partial loading record, a provisional document set. If the answer is nothing, the size of the deposit is the wrong conversation.
First Order Versus Repeat Order
The split that makes sense changes with history. On a first order between strangers, the buyer’s information is thin, so keeping more of the value against documents is reasonable. On a fourth or fifth identical order, both sides know the product and the process, and a supplier may reasonably ask for a structure that reflects confirmed capacity rather than unproven intent.
That progression is a negotiation about evidence, not about trust in the abstract. A buyer who can point to the previous order confirmation, the loading records and the receiving inspection is arguing from documents, which is a stronger position than arguing from a market rumour about what percentage is normal.
What to Offer Instead of a Larger Deposit
If a supplier asks for a bigger share up front than you are comfortable with, there are other things to trade that cost you less than cash risk. A smaller first order sizes the exposure down instead of restructuring it. A larger second order contingent on the first arriving as specified rewards performance. A tighter packing or weight specification gives the supplier certainty it can plan against. Any of these keeps the relationship working without moving the whole risk onto your side of the transaction.
Red Flags That Belong in Payment Review
Most of the money lost in this trade is not lost to a supplier who never existed. It is lost to a legitimate conversation that an outside party interrupts.
A Change of Beneficiary Details
Foreign payment fraud frequently arrives as a plausible instruction: the bank details have changed, the account is being restructured, please update your records. US authorities advise verifying “requests for changes in account information” through a secondary channel or two-factor authentication, and checking the address an email was actually sent from before acting on it (IC3).
Make this a standing rule with your own team. A change of beneficiary is confirmed by a call to a number you already held, never by reply to the email that requested it, and never on the day the balance is due.
Pressure to Change Channels
A request to move from the agreed channel to a faster, less reversible one is a signal in itself. The same is true of a request to split a balance across several accounts, or to pay a different company than the one named on the confirmation. Legitimate operations do restructure; the point is that a channel change is a document change, and it should be handled like one.
Documents That Cannot Be Checked
A supplier who will not name the shipping line, the bill of lading consignee or the loading window is not necessarily acting in bad faith, but you have no way to distinguish the two cases. Ask for the document set before you release the balance, and treat silence as a reason to slow down rather than to push harder.
No Written Specification
The single most reliable predictor of a difficult order is a supplier who will not put category, grade definition, bale weight and packing in writing before payment. A written specification is also what makes a claim checkable later, and it costs a supplier nothing to provide if the operation is real.
What to Write Into the Order Confirmation
Before the deposit moves, ask for these eight items in the confirmation. They are the same items you will need again when the container arrives.
- Product category and any exclusions the sorting must respect.
- The grade definition used for this order, in the supplier’s own words rather than a single letter.
- The weight basis: net weight, gross weight, and whether the figure is a target or a tolerance band.
- Bale weight, packing format, and how the bales are wrapped.
- Container size, planned loaded weight, and the packing record you will receive.
- The document set that releases the balance, named individually.
- The beneficiary, the currency and the payment reference format.
- The handling procedure if the shipping window moves.
Frequently Asked Questions
What deposit percentage is normal for a used clothing order?
A 40% deposit against the proforma invoice is the common starting point, with the balance once the order is completed. If you want to hold the balance until after shipment instead – typically until you receive a copy of the bill of lading – expect the deposit to move up, because the supplier is carrying the risk for longer. What matters more than the percentage is what the deposit releases: a written specification, capacity held for your category, and a confirmation that names the grade definition, bale weight and packing.
Is a letter of credit worth the cost for a used clothing container?
A letter of credit substitutes a bank’s undertaking for the buyer’s promise and pays against documents, which makes it secure but demanding and relatively expensive. It is not universal in this trade: many used clothing exporters, Indetexx included, work on bank transfer against a proforma invoice and do not accept a letter of credit, so establish what your supplier accepts before you plan the order around one. If you use a credit elsewhere, remember that it pays against documents and never against the feel of a bale.
How do I pay the balance without losing my leverage?
Release the balance against a named document set rather than against a sailing date, and check the bill of lading consignee and notify party before the money moves. Ask for the packing and loading records and the declared gross mass at the pre-loading stage, which is the last point where an error can still be corrected cheaply. Indetexx plans 20ft and 40ft loads from the order specification and issues the commercial invoice, packing list and loading record that travel with the container, which is the set a balance trigger can be written against; those records document the load and do not certify the grade inside each bale.
What should the order confirmation state before I send a deposit?
The product category, the grade definition in the supplier’s own words, the weight basis, the bale weight and packing, the container plan, the document set that releases the balance, the beneficiary and reference format, and what happens if the shipping window moves. Indetexx states the category, grade definition, bale weight and packing for the order being shipped, and that confirmation describes that order rather than guaranteeing the specification, availability or timing of a later one.
How do I know the payment details are genuine?
Treat any change of beneficiary as a new instruction that must be verified through a channel you already held, never by replying to the message that requested it. Confirm the company name on the account matches the seller named on the order confirmation, and never rush a balance payment because the request arrived close to a deadline.
Confirm the Order Before the Money Moves
Work backwards from the risks you can actually measure. If the grade of a bale cannot be settled by bank transfer, then the money should be tied to the things that can: a written specification, a packing and loading record, a document set, a declared gross mass, and a beneficiary you verified through a channel you already trusted.
That order of decisions is what turns a payment schedule into a buyer-side control. Ask Indetexx for the current written order details for the category and destination you are planning, put the specification in front of your bank or your forwarder, and let the payment milestones follow the documents rather than the deadline.
Ready to Put the Payment Behind a Written Specification?
Send the destination market, product category, grade definition, target bale weight and packing preference. You will receive the current written Indetexx order details so your deposit, your document set and your balance trigger are built on the same specification.
- State the category, grade definition and target bale weight for this order
- State the packing format and the document set that releases the balance
- Confirm current availability and commercial terms for the shipment
Or review our how to buy process before you confirm the order
