What opens a delivery

Publishing a delivery and opening it are two different things. Your client can see that a delivery exists without being able to take it yet.

That is what lets you say "it is ready" before being paid, rather than sitting on your work hoping the transfer turns up.

The three conditions

Every delivery carries its own.

Condition	What opens it
Straight away	Nothing. It is available as soon as you send it.
When I say so	You, with a button, at the moment you choose.
When the payment arrives	The payment request attached to it being settled.

Which to choose

Straight away for a proof, a mock-up, a proposal. Anything you want your client to look at straight away.

When the payment arrives for what gets paid for: print-ready files, sources, full-resolution photos. You attach the payment request to the delivery, and when it is settled, access opens on its own, at whatever hour that is, with nobody having to deal with it.

When I say so for everything else: a transfer that landed in your account, a cheque banked, an agreement over the phone. You decide, and that is the point: Kalepio is not your accountant.

What a locked delivery gives the client

Nothing. No link, no greyed-out button, no address hidden in the page. The files and links of a closed delivery never leave the server.

And access is checked again on every download rather than only when the page is drawn: a link that was copied, forwarded, or left in a history stops answering the moment the delivery is closed again.

"When the payment arrives": the detail that matters

If several payment requests are attached to one delivery, all of them have to be settled before it opens. It is not the first that counts: otherwise a thirty per cent deposit would open one hundred per cent of the work.

A delivery cannot be sent with that condition and no payment attached. That would be a lock with no key, and your client would read that their files are ready with no way in.

If the money arrives before you have published the delivery, that is fine: it is published and opened at that moment. There is no order you have to follow.

After a refund

A full refund on a delivery opened by the payment arriving closes it again. The logic is symmetrical: the money was the key, the money goes back, the lock turns.

Three qualifications:

• A partial refund closes nothing.
• A chargeback closes nothing either: it is a claim nobody has won yet.
• A delivery opened "when I say so" is never closed by a movement of money. You opened it, and a Stripe event does not overrule your decision.

Finally, whatever has already been downloaded is gone. Closing stops the next request, not the last one.