Guide

Commissions: how a piece made to order works

Published 23 September 2026 — Buying

Commissioning art is the transaction with the most trust in it and usually the least structure. The buyer pays for something that does not exist, the artist starts work on a promise, and if either loses confidence halfway there is rarely a good answer.

A Veriroo commission is a milestone escrow agreement, which is a formal way of saying the money moves in steps as the work does.

How it runs

The buyer pays the agreed price up front into escrow. Funds release to the artist stage by stage as the buyer approves progress, with the final portion held until the buyer confirms delivery.

Neither side is carrying the whole risk. The artist is not working for weeks on a maybe, and the buyer is not handing over the full amount for something they have not seen.

Registering it properly

This is where artists most often take a wrong turn. Start the piece from My Collection and tick the commission option when you create the item. That links it to the commission from the start and switches on the milestone workflow.

Do not use the + Upload button for commission work in progress. That flow is for finished works and will not link to the commission tracker.

From there the piece has a Work in Progress section where you add dated notes and photographs as it develops. On a commission that is not just good practice: it is what the buyer approves each stage against, and it becomes permanent evidence that you made the work.

Before you submit the final stage, you must replace the work-in-progress placeholder with a photo of the finished piece. Veriroo will not let a commission complete against a placeholder.

Shipping

The artist chooses. Either their own courier, with a fixed shipping fee collected into escrow alongside the price so the buyer pays one total, released fee-free at settlement. Or a Veriroo-arranged courier at a live rate, with the label generated automatically.

Finishing

The buyer confirms receipt and the commission completes. If they do not, it settles on its own: 48 hours after a tracked delivery, or about 14 days for untracked or collection, unless somebody reports a problem.

Either party can report a problem, which pauses settlement and holds the funds in escrow until both confirm it is resolved. That is deliberately symmetrical. A buyer who has gone quiet is a different problem from a buyer with a genuine complaint, and only one of them should be able to strand an artist’s payment indefinitely.

Cancelling

Free before payment. After payment but before any stage has been released, the artist can cancel with a full refund to the buyer. Once a stage has been released it goes to support, because real work has been done and paid for and that needs a person rather than a rule.

The certificate

A commissioned work gets a full provenance record showing the commission as its origin, the buyer as first owner and the artist as creator.

There are two routes to a Certificate of Authenticity. The collector can add one when they pay, for a small separate fee, and it is then reserved and issued automatically the moment the commission settles. If nobody added one at that point, the artist can issue one afterwards in the usual way.

A certificate is never issued against a work-in-progress placeholder, which is the same rule as the finished photo, for the same reason.