Carpenters
What belongs on a carpentry invoice
Four things that decide whether a carpentry invoice gets paid or gets a phone call. The generator further down opens with the lines already in it.
Bespoke work needs a deposit and the invoice should show it. Timber cut to a customer’s measurements has no second buyer, and a third up front is normal in the trade and unremarkable when it is written down.
Separate shop time from site time. Hours in a workshop and hours in someone’s house are different rates in most of the trade, and an invoice that blends them invites a question about the higher one.
Hardware — hinges, runners, handles — belongs on its own line, because it is the part a customer may want to upgrade and the part they may want to supply themselves.
Where you have made good after another trade, say so. “Adjust and rehang doors after plastering” is a line nobody argues with; the same hours inside a labour total look like overrun.
Note the finish on the line. Oak veneer and oak are different materials at very different prices, and ’oak wardrobe’ on an invoice will be read as solid oak by the person paying for it. One extra word on the line prevents the single most common argument in fitted joinery.
Where the customer chose a material against your advice — MDF for a wet room, softwood for an exterior gate — record the choice on the line. It is not defensiveness; it is the only way the guarantee you offered means the same thing to both of you in two years.
The lines below are real work at plausible quantities, and deliberately carry no prices. A price is a local fact about a local market, and a made-up one would be worse than none.