Taking deposits on babies from a litter

Your babies are on the ground, you have a waitlist, and you work down it one buyer at a time. Each buyer picks the one they want, sends a deposit to hold it, and pays the rest at pickup. Creatures runs that whole sequence for you, so who paid, how much, and when stops living in a notebook and a message thread.

This article is for a litter that already exists, where buyers are choosing a specific animal. If you are taking reservations before the babies are born, use a count group instead.

What you need first

To take a deposit you need a verified identity and a verified phone number. That is all. If either one is missing, the deposit page shows you the checklist before you fill anything in.

You do not need payouts set up to take a deposit. You will need a payout account connected before you can send the final invoice, but the bank details themselves only have to be finished before you withdraw the money, so you are never blocked from collecting. See What you need to start selling.

Step 1: add each baby as an animal

Deposits are taken on a specific animal, so each baby needs its own profile. If you record the birth on Creatures, the babies are created for you: see Recording births and creating a litter. Otherwise add them the way you add any animal.

Adding one asks for name, species, breed, sex, color, a photo, and an age: a date of birth, an estimate, or just "unknown". If you keep animals under more than one farm or business, you also pick which one it belongs to.

Step 2: send a deposit link for the baby they picked

Open that animal's profile, select the More menu, and choose Request a deposit.

Your buyer does not need a Creatures account to start. This is the part that matters most if your waitlist came from social media. Creating one happens inside the link when they go to pay, so from their side it is just part of checking out. You have three ways to reach them:

• Search by name if they are already on Creatures.
• Send by email, if all you have is an email address.
• Send by text, if all you have is a phone number.

Either way you type their name too, since that is what the link and the messages show them. If you send by text, you confirm that you have their permission to text them about the reservation, and Creatures records that you did.

Then set the deposit amount and pick a deposit policy. The policy is your refund terms, and your buyer reads it before paying. If you have not saved one yet, you can create it right on this page and reuse it on every deposit after that.

After you send it, the page shows the invite while it is waiting, along with the claim link, so you can copy it into a message yourself if that is easier. You can resend it or cancel it at any time. Invites are good for 30 days. The example below went by email; a text invite looks the same, with the phone number in place of the address.

One live deposit request per animal at a time. That is what stops two people putting money on the same baby.

Step 3: what your buyer sees

They open the link, create a free account or sign in, and land on a page for that one animal. It shows the amount, your refund terms, and what happens next. They pay by card.

The link does not list the animal publicly. Treat it like a key, though: anyone who ends up with it can open it, and the first person to sign in and claim it becomes the buyer. Send it only to the buyer you mean it for, and cancel it from the invite card if it goes astray.

Creatures holds the deposit. It is not paid straight out to you, and it is not an extra charge to your buyer either. It comes off what they owe at pickup.

Step 4: keeping track

Once the deposit is paid, that animal's deposit page becomes your record of it: who paid, how much, and the date.

Repeat this for each baby as each buyer picks. Your waitlist becomes a list of animals with names attached to them, and you can see at a glance which ones are still open.

Step 5: collect the balance at pickup

When the baby is ready to go home, select Send the balance invoice on that same card. Start from there rather than from the More menu: that button is what carries the deposit onto the invoice. If you do start an invoice another way, it warns you ("Creating this invoice without it will not apply the deposit as a credit") and offers a Load reservation button. Take it, or your buyer gets billed the full price with nothing taken off.

The deposit already tied this animal to that buyer, so the invoice goes to them automatically and you do not choose a recipient again. You can add one extra copy by email or text, which is handy when a couple is buying together and only one of them handles the paperwork. (A Private sale invoice started from scratch, with no deposit behind it, does let you search for a buyer or invite them by email or text.)

Enter the full sale price, not what is left over. Creatures subtracts the deposit for you.

The invoice then shows the whole picture: the sale price, the deposit coming off as a credit, and the balance your buyer actually pays. Any fees are shown here too, before you send it, so there are no surprises. See Seller fees and the Creatures Pro subscription.

You can also attach an agreement for them to sign before they can pay, which is useful for pickup terms or a health guarantee. See Creating and managing agreement templates.

When the balance is paid, ownership of that animal transfers to your buyer, a bill of sale is created for both of you, and the sale posts to your books. The full walkthrough of the invoice itself is in Send and get paid on a private invoice.

If a buyer backs out

They never paid. Nothing was charged. Cancel the request on that animal's deposit page and the baby is free for the next person on your list.

They already paid. The terms your buyer accepted are what governs, which is why it is worth writing them down once and reusing them. Those terms are your policy combined with any minimum your buyer's state requires: where state law is stricter, it wins, and Creatures shows the buyer the combined result before they pay. If you do need to undo the sale, use Request cancellation and refund on the deposit card. Creatures reviews it, and if it is approved we refund your buyer in full and cover the card processing fee. The animal stays reserved until that refund finishes, so it cannot be sold twice by accident.

Related information

• Recording births and creating a litter
• Send and get paid on a private invoice
• Offering a count group to buyers, for reservations before the babies are born
• Requiring buyer applications and building a form
• What you need to start selling
• Reserving from a breeder: applications and deposits, the buyer's side of this

Updated on: 07/08/2026