You are selling preparation
On most interior work, more than half the labor happens before any finish coat goes on: filling, caulking, sanding, priming bare patches, and the prep and masking that keeps paint off the floors, the sockets and the customer’s furniture. It is the part that separates a decorator from someone with a roller, and it is the part that leaves no trace.
So write it down. A quote and an invoice that both say what preparation was included turn an unexplained day rate into a scope the customer understands they bought. It also gives you somewhere honest to put the extra half-day when a wall turns out to be worse than it looked.
Quote by the room and the surface
Painting prices best as a scope rather than as hours, and the scope is surfaces: walls, ceilings, woodwork, doors, radiators, per room. Write the invoice in the same shape as the quote so the two documents can be held side by side.
Two details belong in every scope line. The number of coats — two coats over an existing similar colour is the usual assumption, and a dark colour going light is three, which is a conversation worth having before the quote rather than after. And what counts as finished: cutting in to edges and frames, sockets and switch plates removed and refitted, radiators pulled out or painted around. Customers assume all of those differently, and an assumption that was never written down is settled at the end of the job by whoever is more insistent.
Who is buying the paint
Both arrangements are normal and they invoice differently.
If you supply, take a materials deposit before you start. Nobody expects a decorator to carry four hundred dollars of paint for a fortnight, and a deposit is easier to ask for when it is plainly earmarked for materials rather than presented as a payment on account. On the final invoice, list what was supplied — the paint, the finish, the quantity — and show the deposit coming off, so the customer sees the arithmetic instead of reconstructing it.
If the customer supplies, say so on the invoice: “Paint supplied by customer”. It is a five-word line that records why you are not answerable for coverage, and it is the line you will be glad of if a cheap emulsion needs a third coat.
Colour changes after the paint is mixed
This is the painting trade’s version of the change order, and it is the most common one. A tinted tin generally cannot be returned, so a customer who changes their mind on Thursday is buying paint twice — and that is a fact they will only accept if they hear it before they choose, not when the invoice arrives.
Say it at the quote stage, then record it on the invoice as its own line, with the date it was agreed and what it covers. Never adjust the original scope line to absorb it: the quoted figure should still be visible on the final document, exactly as quoted.
Example
A three-room interior, quoted and then invoiced
The quoted scope is unchanged, the extra prep and the colour change are their own lines, and the materials deposit is deducted at the end.
- Interior decoration — hall, stairs and landingWalls and ceilings two coats, woodwork prepared and finished · per estimate EST-0026
- $1,850.00
- Additional: filling and sanding, stair spindlesBeyond quoted prep, agreed on site 14 May · 3 hrs
- $135.00
- Colour change — landing wallsSecond colour mixed 24 May; original 5L tinted and not returnable
- $58.00
- Paint and materials supplied15L emulsion, 5L eggshell, fillers and sundries
- $285.00
- Subtotal
- $2,328.00
- Materials deposit paid 6 May
- −$300.00
- Balance due
- $2,028.00
Invoice INV-0091 · 3 Vernon Terrace · Against estimate EST-0026 of 2 May · Remaining paint left on site for touch-ups · Due 7 June · Bank transfer, reference INV-0091.
Exteriors, and the weather clause
Exterior work is quoted on the same surface-by-surface basis, with two additions. Access — scaffolding, a tower, a long ladder day — is a real cost and goes on as its own line rather than being buried in the labor. And the quote should say plainly that the schedule depends on the weather and that the price does not change because of it, which is the one sentence that prevents an argument in a wet August.
On anything running longer than a couple of weeks, bill in stages rather than at the end. The pattern is the same one contractor progress invoices use: the agreed price, what has been billed already, and what is left.
What Invoice Tiger does on a decorating job
- Estimates and invoices in the same place, with separate number sequences, so the quote keeps its reference while the job runs.
- Saved services for your day rate, your usual room prices and the materials you buy repeatedly.
- A deposit field that shows the materials deposit already taken and leaves the balance due on the document.
- Notes for the coats, the paint left on site, and the weather wording on exteriors.
- Your logo on a clean PDF, with nothing on it advertising the app that made it.
What it does not do
No colour visualiser, no paint calculator, no job diary, and no photographs attached to a job. It is the quote and the bill. For the underlying question of how to describe work that leaves no physical product, how to invoice for services is the guide, and what to include on an invoice covers the elements every one of these documents needs.