Gardeners
What belongs on a gardening invoice
Four things that decide whether a gardening invoice gets paid or gets a phone call. The generator further down opens with the lines already in it.
Maintenance visits should be invoiced as a set, monthly, with the dates listed. It halves your admin and it stops the customer wondering which visit they are paying for.
Green waste disposal is a licensed activity and a real cost. Charging it as a line, with the licence mentioned once, distinguishes you from whoever is fly-tipping the neighbour’s hedge.
Seasonal work — hedge cutting, autumn clearance — is not the maintenance rate and should not be billed at it. Put the hours on the line.
Where you hold a key or a gate code, note the access arrangement on the invoice once. It is the record that survives a change of gardener.
Note what you did not do and why. ’Rear hedge not cut — nesting birds’ on a September invoice is both a legal position and a reason the price is lower than expected, and it stops the customer thinking the visit was short.
Say who supplies the machinery and who supplies the fuel. It is a real cost, it is invisible, and it is the reason a gardener with a ride-on charges more per visit than one with a strimmer while finishing in half the time. Also record what you have been asked NOT to touch: the shrub that looks dead and is not, the corner left wild on purpose. An invoice is the only place either of you will find that written down next spring.
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.