Invoicing for plumbers

Invoice Koi is an invoice app for plumbers: a call-out priced at the door, and a bathroom quoted as an estimate that becomes the invoice when the work is done.

Make an invoice free

The iPhone app is coming to the App Store.

An illustration of a pipe wrench, copper elbows, a blowtorch, a pressure gauge and a roll of tape, with a koi swimming among them.

Plumbing bills in two shapes and they fight each other. There is the emergency (a call-out, an hour, a part off the van) and there is the install, quoted weeks ahead and paid in stages. Doing both out of the same notebook is how a £40 part ends up unbilled.

01On the document

What plumbers
put on an invoice.

Save these items with your own rates. Tap to add them to an invoice, with the unit, price and totals filled in.

Line	Unit
Plumbing labour	hrs
Call-out, standard hours	each
Call-out, out of hours	each
Boiler service	each
Parts and fittings	job
Bathroom installation	days

Set your own prices. The app's starter rates are placeholders. To bill one job today with nothing installed, the free plumber invoice template opens in your browser with these lines on it.

A job, grouped Subtotals per section

CALL-OUT

Call-out, out of hours£145

Plumbing labour£210

Subtotal£355

PARTS

Pump, replacement£385

Valves and fittings£95

Subtotal£480

MAKE GOOD

Plumbing labour£140

Subtotal£140

Total£975

Grouped line items work on all nine templates.

A photograph of a plumber standing at the kitchen sink he has been working under, phone in one hand.

02Why plumbers use it

Three things that
save the evening.

Photograph the merchant receipt in the car park

Merchant, amount, tax and category come off the paper. The photograph is filed against the job either way, so the parts you paid for at eight in the morning are on the invoice at six.

Annual services that invoice themselves

Set a boiler service to repeat weekly, monthly, quarterly or yearly, and the next one is drafted and waiting rather than remembered.

Out-of-hours priced as out-of-hours

Keep a standard call-out and an out-of-hours call-out as two lines in the price book, and pick the right one at eleven at night without doing arithmetic.

03 · Questions

Asked by plumbers.

Can I add parts at cost to a plumbing invoice?

Yes. Keep a "Parts and fittings" line in your price book priced at zero and set the figure per job, or scan the merchant receipt and put the real number on it.

Can it handle emergency call-out rates?

Keep both call-outs as separate lines in the price book. Tapping the right one fills the description and the price, so an out-of-hours job is never billed at the daytime rate by accident.

How do I take a deposit on a bathroom install?

Record what the customer has paid against the invoice as it comes in. The balance, the status and every report figure follow from the payments you record, so a part-paid invoice shows what is still owed.

Weighing up apps? Invoice Koi vs Joist and Invoice Koi vs Contractor+ set the features side by side, including where they win. Or see all 12 comparisons.