How to write a welder and fabricator invoice

What goes on a welder and fabricator invoice

Six things, in the order they belong on the page. The invoice generator opens a welder / fabricator document with the lines already in place, so most of this is checking rather than typing.

1. Separate shop hours from site hours. Site work carries travel, mobile plant and lost shop time, and it should carry a different rate.
2. Price steel by weight or length with the specification. Grade, section and quantity. It is what the customer is buying and what a repeat order depends on.
3. Put consumables and gas on the invoice. Wire, rods, discs and gas are real cost per hour of arc time.
4. Bill finishing separately. Grinding, dressing, galvanising and paint are separate operations, often subcontracted.
5. State the certification or procedure where one applies. Coded work is bought on the coding, and it belongs on the document.
6. Charge delivery and lifting. Fabricated steel is heavy, and getting it to site and into place is a job.

The lines a welder and fabricator invoice usually carries

The generator opens with these lines when you pick Welder / fabricator. The figures are placeholders to type over, not a going rate.

Add, rename, reorder or delete any line, and set tax per line where it applies. Priced as they open, that comes to $1,540 before tax.

How to write a welding invoice, step by step

1. Reference the drawing or order. Open the welder / fabricator invoice and put the drawing number or the customer's order number at the top. Commercial customers cannot pay an invoice they cannot match.
2. Enter shop hours from the job card. Eight hours of cutting, forming and welding at your shop rate. Site hours, if any, go on a separate line at the site rate.
3. Price the steel with the specification. Section, plate and fasteners, with the grade and sizes named. Consumables and gas belong on this line or their own.
4. Bill finishing on its own. Dressing the welds, painting or galvanizing is a separate process, often done by someone else, and priced accordingly.
5. Add delivery and install, then send. Getting a heavy piece to site and fixing it down is its own line. Set 30 days for commercial work and send it once it is fitted.

Welding invoice example, filled in

A steel handrail fabricated in the shop, painted and fitted on site. The drawing number and order reference are at the top, and the steel specification is in the note, so a commercial customer can process it and a future contractor can match it.

Subtotal $1,540, tax $154, total $1,694. Eight shop hours at $75 are kept apart from the delivery and install line, because shop and site time cost you differently. The specification note is what a building inspector or the next fabricator will ask for.

Shop rate against site rate, and why they cannot be the same number

An hour in your shop uses your bench, your power and your equipment with nothing lost. An hour on site costs you the travel, a van full of gear, a generator, and the work you could have been doing at the bench.

Publish two rates and use them plainly. Site work at a higher hourly rate, with travel and mobile plant as their own lines, is normal in fabrication and easily understood by trade customers.

The related discipline is minimum charges on site. A short repair two hours away is a full half-day of your capacity, and pricing it as one hour of welding is how mobile work quietly loses money.

Materials, consumables and the cost of the arc

Steel is straightforward: specify the grade and section, show the weight or the length, and price it as supplied goods. What gets forgotten is everything the welding itself consumes.

Wire or rods, shielding gas, cutting and grinding discs, and the offcut waste from standard lengths all cost money per hour of work. Either build them into a consumables line or into your rate deliberately, but do not let them be the thing you never charged for.

Cutting waste deserves its own mention on custom work. A part that needs a six foot section from a six meter length has consumed material the customer cannot see in the finished piece, and stating it as an allowance is better than absorbing it.

Certification, drawings and the invoice a commercial customer can process

Fabrication for a builder, an engineer or a factory is a business-to-business transaction, and those invoices are paid by a person who never saw the work.

Reference the drawing number, the job or purchase order number, and the item or mark numbers you fabricated. Where the work was coded or made to a stated procedure, put that on the invoice as well, because it is often what the customer needs to file.

Keep the descriptions the same as the ones on the drawing rather than describing them in your own words. An invoice that matches the drawing gets approved; one that has to be interpreted gets queried.

Hourly, fixed price or per unit: how welders and fabricators price the work

Fabrication is priced on the bench and delivered on site, and those two places cost different money. A shop hour uses your equipment with nothing lost. A site hour costs the travel, the van, the generator and the work you were not doing at the bench.

Charge the arc as well as the hour. Gas, wire, rods and discs have a real cost per hour of welding, and either they are a consumables line on the invoice or they are a deduction from your margin that nobody ever sees.

Working out what to charge

Fabrication prices depend on the steel, the finish and whether the work is in the shop or on site, so a rate from a web page cannot price yours. The cost estimator builds a price from your own steel and hours, and the markup calculator sets the margin on materials.

Getting paid once it is sent

On material-heavy jobs, take a deposit that covers the steel before you order it, and invoice commercial customers against their order number the day the work is fitted. If the due date passes, the late fee calculator works out what your terms allow and the due date calculator sets the new date.

Five dates decide whether a welder and fabricator gets paid on time, and four of them are set before the work starts.

Mistakes that cost welders and fabricators money

• One rate for shop and site. Mobile work quietly subsidized by the bench.
• Consumables never charged. Gas, wire and discs paid from your margin every hour.
• Steel specification missing. No record for a repeat order and no defense on a spec dispute.
• Finishing folded into fabrication. Galvanising and paint disappear into a labor figure.
• No drawing or order reference. A commercial invoice nobody in the office can match.

Welder / fabricator invoice questions

Free welder and fabricator invoice template

The free welder and fabricator invoice template opens with the lines above already priced, in any of 1 design made for the trade, and exports a print-ready PDF with nothing saved to a server. Opening a design needs a free account.

Invoicing guides for related trades

Everything on this site, set up for welders and fabricators

The whole toolkit, with the reason each one matters to welders and fabricators rather than in general. The four marked links open with welder / fabricator already selected.