Generally a lot of groundwork needs to be done before even starting
the work to define the ending.  A bad time to start thinking about
this is after all the work is done...

Typically I've required 50% of the estimated payment at the beginning
of the work, and the remainder after delivery of the work (meeting all
requirements).  If the job takes longer than a month or so
arrangements are made for intermediate milestone work deliveries and
payments.  The contract I use stipulates that if either party is
unable to agree that the requirements were completely met and the
payment was completed then they agree to jointly employ a third party
arbitor.

That said, I've never had a client I didn't trust.

In your case, since neither party appears to fully trust the other, I
would suggest either:

1) Have them pay you 50%, deliver the code 100%, receive remainder of
payment once the code works on their webserver.
2) Employ an escrow service.  For a fee they will receive both the
code and the payment, and then deliver both to the correct recipient. 
This solves the "who hands what over first" but can be more expensive
and time consuming (a hassle) than alternatives.

Good luck!

-Adam

On 8/12/05, Philip Pemberton <philpem@dsl.pipex.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>   I know a few PIClisters do consultancy work for others, so I'm asking this
> here. Apologies if some of you consider it a waste of bandwidth, please feel
> free to ignore it.
> 
>   I've developed a PHP-based application for someone. He now considers it to
> be "complete enough to use" (and I do too), and wants to get it all up and
> running on his server. Problem is, I don't want to hand over all the code
> without payment, and I doubt he'll want to hand over any money without seeing
> the source code.
> 
>   So, what would you do? The best plan I've come up with is to hand over half
> of the code, then when the payment comes through send the other half... How
> is this sort of thing generally done in the software development industry?
> 
> Thanks.
> --
> Phil.                              | Acorn RiscPC600 SA220 64MB+6GB 100baseT
> philpem@philpem.me.uk              | Athlon64 3200+ A8VDeluxe R2 512MB+100GB
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