Invoice Koi

Invoicing for builders

A build is not one bill, it is six. The customer wants to see what the groundworks cost separately from the roof, the estimate has to be detailed enough to win the job and survive it, and the whole thing runs over months while the receipts pile up in the van.

An illustration of a spirit level, a brick trowel, three bricks, a tape measure and a string line, with a koi swimming among them.
01On the document

What builders
put on an invoice.

These go in your price book once, with your own prices against them. After that a line is one tap: the item, the description, the unit and the price fill themselves, and the totals resolve underneath.

LineUnit
General labourhrs
Day rate, two tradesdays
Skip hire, 6-yardweek
Plant and tool hireweek
Materials and consumablesjob
Site visit and quoteeach

Prices are yours. Invoice Koi ships a handful of round placeholder lines to start from and never fills your book with figures you did not set.

A job, grouped Subtotals per section
STRIP OUT
Skip hire, 6-yard£260
Clearance labour, two trades£720
Subtotal£980
STRUCTURE
Steel and fixings£1,450
Day rate, two trades£1,440
Subtotal£2,890
MAKE GOOD
Plaster and paint, two coats£1,180
Subtotal£1,180
Total£5,050
Grouped line items are free, on all nine templates.
A photograph of a builder standing on the slab of a half-built extension with the frame going up behind, phone in one hand.
Price book
General labourhrs
Day rate, two tradesdays
Skip hire, 6-yardweek
One tap puts the line on the invoice.
This job, grouped
STRIP OUT£980
STRUCTURE£2,890
MAKE GOOD£1,180
Total£5,050
No signal needed. It is written here.
02Why builders use it

Three things that
save the evening.

Stages the customer can actually read

Group line items under your own headings with a subtotal each. A £40,000 job reads as five decisions instead of forty rows, which is the difference between a query and a payment.

The estimate becomes the invoice

Quote it once. When it is accepted the estimate converts, carrying the lines, the client, the tax and your terms, so the thing you bill is the thing they agreed to.

Your signature on every document

Drawn once, printed on every estimate and invoice at whatever size the page needs: sharp on a phone and sharp in a PDF somebody prints out.

03 · Questions

Asked by builders.

Can I bill a building job in stages?

Yes. Group the work under headings with their own subtotals, and record what has been paid as each stage settles. The balance and the status follow from the payments recorded against it.

Can I send a detailed estimate before the work?

Yes, with the same grouped structure and the same nine templates as an invoice. When it is accepted it converts rather than being retyped.

Where do the receipts go?

Photograph them. Merchant, amount, tax and category are read off the paper and filed, and the photograph is kept whether or not the reading worked.

Other trades