Plumbers
What belongs on a plumbing invoice
Four things that decide whether a plumbing invoice gets paid or gets a phone call. The generator further down opens with the lines already in it.
Split labour from parts on separate lines, always. A customer who queries a bill is almost never querying the parts — they are querying the hours — and a single “supply and fit” line gives them nothing to agree with. It also means you can show the parts at what they cost you if you want to, and be seen doing it.
Put the call-out on its own line even when you waive it. A waived call-out at 0.00 is worth more than a call-out that never appears, because it shows what the visit would have cost and that you did not charge for it.
Emergency and out-of-hours work belongs on its own line with the hours stated, not folded into a higher rate. A doubled rate looks like opportunism; “Sunday call-out, 2.5 hrs” looks like a Sunday.
If you left the job needing a part on order, say so on the invoice rather than in a text message. The invoice is the document that survives, and “balance due on completion of second visit” written on it is what stops the argument six weeks later.
Where a customer is a landlord, address the invoice to the landlord and note the property. Managing agents pay against a property reference and not against a tenant’s name, and an invoice they cannot match to an address sits in a folder until somebody chases it.
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.