Invoicing a plumbing job

The call-out is the first decision on the document

Almost every plumbing invoice starts with the fact that you turned up. How you charge for that shapes the rest of the bill, and there are three common answers.

• A call-out fee that converts. A flat amount covering attendance and the first hour, then hourly after it. The most common arrangement and the easiest to explain, because the customer gets something for the money.
• A call-out fee that stands alone. Attendance charged separately from all labor. Defensible, but it needs saying on the phone before you set off — meeting it for the first time on the invoice is what generates the complaint.
• No call-out at all, priced into the hourly. Fine for planned work, expensive for you on a twenty-minute job.

Whichever you use, put it on its own line and say what it includes. “Call-out — includes first hour on site” tells the customer what the money bought, which is the thing they are working out when they look at the first figure on the page.

Out-of-hours work should look different on paper

Evenings, weekends and bank holidays are the bulk of emergency plumbing, and the out-of-hours rate is the single most disputed number in this trade. Two habits remove almost all of that friction.

Say the rate when they call, in money rather than in multiples — people hear “time and a half” and calculate optimistically. Then label it on the invoice: the line reads “Additional labor — 0.75 hr @ $95 (out-of-hours rate)”, not just an amount. The customer already agreed to it; the invoice is only reminding them what they agreed to.

Make safe now, price the repair later

A lot of plumbing is two visits: stop the water tonight, replace the corroded section when the part arrives. Bill them as two documents that reference each other.

The first invoice covers attendance, the labor to make safe, and anything you fitted in the process. The second job goes out as an estimate, with the uncertainty written into it — “assumes the existing pipework behind the unit is serviceable” — so that a price change later is a continuation of a conversation rather than a surprise. Invoice vs estimate covers how the two documents relate.

Parts you carried in with you

Plumbers are unusual in fitting most parts off the van rather than buying them for the job. That changes the honest wording. There is no receipt to show for a valve you have carried around for two months, so “supplied from van stock” describes it accurately, priced from your own list.

For anything collected specially, say so and say whether the price includes the collection. Both are normal; describing a marked-up figure as “at cost” is the only version that causes trouble. The general rule for pass-through costs is in the services guide.

Several faults, one address

You went for the toilet, and while you were there the bath tap was dripping and the outside tap was seized. Three faults, one visit, one invoice — but three lines, not one.

A landlord may be recharging one of them to a tenant. A homeowner may want to defer the outside tap until spring. An agency will approve two and query the third. Separate lines make each of those a two-minute conversation; a single “plumbing work — $410” makes it a renegotiation of the whole visit.

Who is actually paying

Three payers, three different invoices. The homeowner wants it plain, in their name, payable now, and will very often pay while you are still parked outside. The landlord wants the property address on it, because their accountant will match it to that property later. The letting agency wants their own reference on it and sends it into a system, which means it needs an address, a job number if they issue them, and a realistic term rather than “due on receipt”. Payment terms explained covers what to ask for from each.

What Invoice Tiger does on a plumbing day

All of it happens on the phone that is already in your pocket, which is the only device you reliably have on a job. How to make an invoice on your iPhone covers the other realistic ways to do it, including the ones that need no app at all.

• Saved services for the call-out, the standard and out-of-hours hourly rates, and the fittings you use every week — with their prices, so the invoice is assembled from a list.
• Saved customers for the landlords and agencies you work with repeatedly, including the address the invoice has to go to.
• Estimates with their own numbering, for the return visit you cannot price until the wall is open.
• Search by customer or number, so “what did we charge at Priory Gardens in August” takes ten seconds in the van.
• A PDF shared however you already talk to them — Messages, WhatsApp or email, through the iOS share sheet. Domestic customers usually want a text; how to send an invoice by text covers doing that so it still counts as a document.

What it deliberately does not do

No job diary, no dispatch, no route planning, no van stock counts, no photographs attached to jobs. Most software sold to plumbers is field-service software with invoicing bolted on, and if you are running three vans you probably want one of those instead. This is the document half, on the phone in your pocket.

It also does not know whether you have been paid, and does not chase anyone. Your bank account is the record. If the reason you are looking is the percentage taken out of card payments, that page covers exactly what is and is not charged. And if your work is drifting towards installation projects with deposits and stages, electrical work bills the same way and is worth reading for the staged-billing pattern.