[morog]

Same for gov contracts. You might only get paid right at the end of the project + whatever their payment period is, but with an order number in your hand you know they will pay. Good luck getting a downpayment from big corp accounting depts if you're small fry.

[FpUser]

I got downpayment from a company with about $100M revenue. Not sure if it qualifies for big corp. I normally do custom product development from scratch and it takes about a year of work in average. There is no way I would sit for a year without getting paid. Normally we would write a contract that among the other things specs stages and what is delivered for each stage. Each stage is paid upfront so first one qualifies as a downpayment. Obviously if by the time I am to start stage N it is not prepaid I would simply inform client and will not start working and the whole contract timeline shifts. But it is all in the contract and frankly had never happened. I've always got paid on time and had / have good relations with my clients.

But I normally develop software for companies whose main business is not software per se but they need software to conduct their business.