Labor and materials, side by side
Almost every handyman invoice is the same shape: labor and materials, on separate lines, totalled together. Getting that split right removes most of the queries you would otherwise get.
Materials belong on their own line because customers check them. They know roughly what a tap costs. If your labor and the tap are combined into one figure, they cannot tell whether the number is reasonable, so they ask. Split them and the invoice answers the question before it is asked.
Whether you charge for parts at what you paid or add something for the trip to the hardware store is your call, and both are normal. What is not fine is calling a marked-up figure “at cost”. Either label it plainly, or fold the collection time into a labor line described as what it is.
Pricing time on small jobs
Hourly works badly for handyman work, because the jobs are short and the travel is not. Two hours at one address is rarely two hours of your day. Most people settle on one of these:
- A minimum call-out covering the first hour or two, then hourly after that. Honest about the fact that turning up has a cost.
- A half-day rate for anything likely to take a morning, including the small extras that get added while you are there. Simpler to quote and simpler to invoice.
- Flat prices for jobs you have done fifty times. Mount a TV, replace a tap, rehang a door. You can price these from memory, and a fixed number is easier for the customer to say yes to over the phone.
Example
A morning at one address
A half-day rate covering three small jobs, the bracket bought on the way, and one thing added on site.
- Half-day rate — mount a TV, rehang bathroom door, replace two blind brackets8 August, 8.30am–12.30pm
- $260.00
- TV wall bracket, tilting, up to 55"Supplied, at cost
- $38.99
- Blind brackets and fixingsSupplied, at cost
- $11.40
- Additional: reseal kitchen sinkAgreed on site, 30 mins @ $55/hr
- $27.50
- Subtotal
- $337.89
- Tax (6%)
- $20.27
- Total due
- $358.16
Invoice INV-0207 · Due on receipt. Card or bank transfer, details below. Receipts for materials available on request. The sink reseal was added on the day and agreed before starting.
“While you’re here…”
The extra job added on site is the defining feature of this trade and the single most common source of invoice disputes. The fix is not a policy, it is a sentence said out loud before you pick up the tool: “I can do that, it’s about half an hour, so around $28 on top — want me to?”
Then put it on the invoice as its own line, described as added on the day. The customer reads a line recording something they already agreed to, rather than discovering a number.
When to quote instead
Some jobs cannot be priced from the doorway. Anything behind a wall, under a floor, or attached to plumbing of unknown age. For those, send an estimate first with the uncertainty written into it — “assumes the existing waste pipe is serviceable; if it needs replacing that is quoted separately before any work starts”.
That sentence is worth more than any clause. It sets the expectation that the price may move and why, and it means the follow-up conversation is a continuation rather than a surprise. Invoice vs estimate covers how the two documents line up.
What Invoice Tiger handles
- Quantity and rate on every line, so hours at a rate and parts at a price live on the same document without a workaround.
- Saved services for the jobs you price flat, and your hourly and half-day rates, ready to pull in.
- Estimates with their own numbering, for the jobs you have to look at first.
- A notes fieldfor the “assumes…” sentence, and for what the customer should do next.
- Everything on the phone, which is where you are.
What it will not do
No job scheduling, no diary, no dispatch, no parts inventory, no photographs attached to jobs, no automatic reminders. It is a document tool. If your day needs managing as well as billing, that is a different product.
If your jobs are getting longer — priced scope, deposits, subcontractors, weeks rather than hours — the contractor page covers that shape of work, which bills quite differently from this one.